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And yet, here I am, and it’s the whole fucking shebang.
The ridiculously huge white dress. The church. The guests. The white flowers fuckingeverywhere.
It’s all so real.
Except it isn’t.
Whatisreal, though, is the dark, murky, throbbing mess of thoughts swirling through my head. And at the very epicenter is the skin-tingling memory of what happened two nights ago at Dante’s penthouse.
I shiver in spite of myself, my face turning pink in the dressing room vanity mirror in front of me.
The idea reallydidstart as getting Bianca home. She wasn’t the only one who’d had too much. Even the three glasses of champagne I had were way more than my usual intake. Taylor and Fumi were definitely feeling the vodka, and Elsa wascomicallydrunk, to the point that her husband Hades had to come get her as we were all leaving the club and throw her, giggling, over his broad shoulder before carrying her to quite possibly the world’s coolest vintage muscle car.
But since I was the least drunk of the whole crew, I got in a taxi with Bianca. That’s when she mentioned in between hiccups that Dante kept a penthouse in the city, which was half the distance compared to her apartment on the Upper West Side. So after fumbling her way through the key code…finally…that’s where we ended up.
The plan initially was to put her to bed and leave. But then she crashed hard on the couch while I was peeing. And after that, the little worm of an idea buried deep in my head came to life as I flashed back to what she’d told me at the ladies’ luncheon.
Dante collects rings.
Part of me was terrified to even go looking, for fear of what I might find. Which ended up being nothing, because there were no rings in his office—at least, none that I found.
But I did find something else.
Heat. Pleasure. Excitement.
Intimacy, when I was sure that part of me was long dead and buried.
I haven’t let anyone comecloseto touching me like that since that awful night. There’s even been times where I had to stop things when it was just me and my own fingers, because the resulting sensation brought back terror. When Dante first grabbed me, it was pure fear that exploded through my system.
And then it melted away, leaving only fire and need.
Want and desire.
A hunger I thought I’d lost.
When he touched me, I didn’t go cold. I didn’t retreat in on myself.
I came alive. I craved more; ached for it. He could have told me to do anything in that moment—anything—and I’d have done it, willingly.
…Thank God it was just making me explode all over his fingers.
Everything after that thunderous orgasm is a blur. I vaguely remember realizing I was kissing him. I remember tasting his lips and wanting more and more before he pulled away. Then I have hazy, embarrassing memories of putting my dress back on and blushing fiercely as he licked his fingers clean.
The next thing I knew, I was in a cab heading home, the window down and my head hung halfway out of it, positivelyinhalingthe night around me.
I felt like I was finally living again that night. And I’m not sure what to make of that, or how it fits into my plan for the short remainder of my life.
I stand, smoothing down the supremely overdone white wedding gown. The sound of people pulls me to the window of Dante’s Hamptons estate, where the wedding is being held today. It’s not a huge crowd gathering in the rows of white chairs outside in the gardens, but it’s not small, either. I spot my brothers. Maeve isn’t here, for obvious reasons, and although I think he was invited, Charles isn’t coming either.
I spot Taylor, Fumi, Elsa and Hades, and Elsa’s little sister Nora. Bianca is sitting with an older man I recognize as Vito Barone, who I’ve now heard via my brothers sort of raised Dante and his sisters.
Guess I’m not the only one who lost their parents young.
The string quartet outside continues to play as more guests take their seats. And suddenly, this whole thing becomes very, very real.
Holy-fuck-I’m-getting-MARRIED-today.
It might not be real, but it is happening. And it might have an expiration date, but it’s not tomorrow. Suddenly, the realization that for the foreseeable future, I will beMRS. Dante Sartorre, and that I will be living with him, hits me like a brick to the face.
