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“Hey, what are you, the wedding planner?” Trent kids.
She rolls her eyes and smiles. “Seriously, we’realldue over there. You, too, buster.” She looks me in the eye for the first time since she joined us, and my soul flips over.
Like it’s a plane, in the sky, doing a trick for a crowd.
I feel upside down to the core, and it’s because of her… this close.
“Hey, Olivia,” I say to her before I can stop myself. It’s the wrong thing. I messed up again. But her eyes stay matched to mine, and she doesn’t say the usual…
I wait for it, though. That“hey, yourself.”
A beat of silence stretches between us instead, and Trent glances between us.
“You guys okay? Is there some kind of staring contest going on that I don’t know about?”
“We’re—” Olivia says.
“We have to talk,” I cut in.
She nods. “Yeah, we do. Alone.” She nudges her brother, and he gives us another curious back-and-forth glance before heading away.
And then I’m standing in front of Olivia.
She’s stunning, in her blue satin gown, with her hair spilling over her shoulder, her eyes luminous and lively as ever. She glances down. “I know I probably look like a wreck. This is what getting dressed five minutes before a wedding looks like.”
I can’t speak.
My soul feels wild. A bucking bronco that I can’t reign in. Can’t control. I don’t want to say anything dumb, but I have to tell her.
Now.
“Olivia, you look… you look gorgeous.”
“No, no,” she protests, looking down toward her dress again and smoothing it over her hips. “I don’t. I barely had time to—”
“Really, Olivia. You look beautiful. “
“Wow—um. Cole. Thanks. You look… really good, too. We clean up nice, hm?” She rocks to the side to peer around my side. “I don’t want to hog you. You’re here with Danielle, right?”
“No.”
“No? She couldn’t come?”
“I canceled. It wasn’t right. Didn’tfeelright… you know? Like, in my core. What about you… You find some handsome golf course super to be on your arm or something?”
“Ha. No. No golf course supervisors. Or gondoliers.”
“How about that co-host of yours? I thought maybe he’d make it to town.”
“Who, Spencer Mackie? No way. He’s probably already in Bora Bora.”
“You’re heading out tomorrow, I heard.” My chest aches as I say the words.
She hesitates, and her breath hitches.
“I—I actually… I actually said no. Just now. In the parking lot. It’s like you said… it didn’t feel right. I should’ve been happy about that job, but I wasn’t. And all week I’ve been trying to get excited about it, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
