25. Nelly

Chapter 25

Nelly

W ith my head against the steering wheel, I sat in my idling truck, the hum of the engine music to my ears after I’d had the lifter or whatever it was called replaced. I’d paid a ridiculous amount for a full tune-up, using almost every bit of money from Sebastian that I’d put aside to fix it. I didn’t care that it cost more than it was worth.

But sitting here, outside the white mansion an hour from Atlanta, amongst the quiet of the South with the Spanish moss blowing in the breeze and the sun setting over the base of the Blue Ridge mountains, I felt sick to my stomach.

Why had I agreed to come to this?

I should have brought Rosie. I should have brought anyone instead of showing up alone when I’d asked for a plus one. But there was no one in my truck but me, and I’d have to either go in there and put on a brave face, or drive all the way back with the knowledge that Morris and Ruby would be snickering about my failure to show up on their wedding night .

I had to tell myself it would be fine. Worst case, I could pass out a handful of business cards to any parents with little ones running around, even if the idea of taking on a new kid made my chest hurt far more than it should.

At least I felt like a million dollars in my dress.

Deep purple satin slid against my skin as I dropped down from the truck, falling in rippling waves around my feet the moment my heels met the cement. It clung in all the right spots, hugging my hips, my waist, my breasts, with a long slit up the thigh for movement and a hint of a fuck you to Morris. I’d gone easy with my hair, curled it just enough to give it body but left it long and loose around my shoulders and down my back.

I just had to not vomit down the front of the dress, and I’d be fine.

Men and women exited their cars around me, some of them familiar faces and others ones I’d never seen in my life. I tried not to let it get to me that Morris’ grandparents didn’t even wave in my direction, but the lingering glance his grandmother gave me that turned into the hint of a scowl set me even further on edge than I’d anticipated.

Clutching my purse and popping a ginger chew to calm my nausea, I made my way through the sea of cars toward the mansion, my heart beating out of my chest and my feet just barely balancing in my heels.

The man at the door held a clipboard in his left hand and a pen in the other, a stark contrast to the tuxedo that covered his thin frame. I listened as a handful of people in front of me rattled off their names and used the dead time to take in the greenery and the willow trees, the way they framed the house almost like a fence with their wide limbs and hanging moss. Mom had always told me not to touch them because bugs would burrow beneath my skin, but it looked so tempting now — or maybe I was just that desperate to do anything other than this.

“Name?”

“Penelope Moreno,” I said. “Or Nelly. Not sure what they put me down as.”

His pen moved down the paper, scanning the page for my name, and for a horrifying second, I worried that they’d purposely left my name off to drag me all the way here just for the humiliation — but then he ticked a box and nodded, and someone just inside the doors holding a small gift bag ushered me forward, thrusting the bag into my hand.

The halls of the mansion were decorated to the nines with walls and walls of baby’s breath and deep blue drapery. I almost fully stopped in the middle of the walkway as I took it all in.

The music, the decorations, the styling… it was all wrong. All of it.

Ruby was one of those girls who had been planning her wedding from the time she popped out of the womb. She had binders full of ideas, each one slightly different than the last, but there had been themes from the beginning that had never changed. Things that were non-negotiables. Things that she didn’t want, and things that were a must.

She hated baby’s breath. The stench of it made her nauseous to the point of me making sure I never had any around when she was over, but it was everywhere here, lining the hallways and capping the end of every seat along the aisle.

She wanted deep, natural greens for her wedding, but blues and burgundies littered the space instead.

She’d wanted a pianist at the ceremony, but from the looks of the room, there was a harpist set up and no piano in sight .

And the more I thought about it, the more it came back to me. She’d gone far enough to have picked out a venue far before she’d even met Morris, and this place was nothing like it. She’d wanted historic, and this was a new building. She’d wanted the beach, and this was the mountains. She’d wanted cocktails, but all I could see were cans and bottles of beer and glasses of wine.

These weren’t her choices. These were things Morris had floated by me when we’d started wedding planning.

A part of me almost felt sorry for her. How much of this had she been able to decide on? How much had she let him decide for her? How much did he insist on controlling every aspect of this just like he’d controlled me?

A twinge of guilt hit me hard enough to knock the air from my lungs as I picked up a glass of red wine from a tray. I’d introduced them. I’d set her on this path. And as horrible as all of it had been, as much as she’d betrayed me, no one truly deserved to have to deal with that.

But she’d made her choices. She was feistier than me. If she was choosing to let Morris walk all over her, then that was what she wanted.

I hovered by the doors that led into the ceremony space. No one else was sitting down yet, and if I wanted to not stick out like a sore thumb, staying standing and off to the side was my best bet. But I knew it was only a matter of time before someone recognized me, before someone wanted to speak to me, before?—

“You came?”

That voice sent a chill down my spine.

Reluctantly pulling my gaze from my phone, I looked straight ahead at the man who had made my life hell for five whole years. The man who had made me feel like a shell of myself, the man who had fucked me over and buried himself in my best friend, the man who blamed me for it, the man who made me feel less than.

His blonde hair was shorter and styled back and away from his face, his skin pristine, his dusty brown suit well-pressed. He looked stronger now, a little more built now than he’d been two years ago, and it shouldn’t have worried me, but I didn’t know him anymore — I didn’t know if there was any lingering anger with me, didn’t know if he’d become a worse version of himself. I couldn’t imagine how bad it would have been if he’d been that strong when we were together.

“Hi, Mor,” I swallowed. “Congratulations.”

He blinked at me, and I wasn’t sure if it was shock or surprise or pity, but something lingered in his gaze that made me want to run. “Thank you,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d show up.”

I tightened my lips and spread my arms, a half-hearted attempt to silently say, Well, I’m here.

“I’ll have to tell Rubes if she doesn’t spot you during the ceremony.” His eyes raked up and down my body, lingering far too long on my breasts before popping back up to my eyes. “We had a bet going.”

My mouth went dry. “A bet?”

His answering chuckle made my stomach flip, and oh god, I needed to run, I needed to get out of here. “Two, actually,” he clarified. “Fifty dollars on if you’d come.”

My vision tunneled on him as his mouth moved, that wicked little grin spreading across his cheeks the same way it used to when he knew he’d won an argument, when he’d talked me into something I didn’t want to do, when he bent me into positions my body couldn’t handle .

“And considering you’re on your own, it looks like I won the second?—”

Something warm and soft cupped the side of my face and I nearly jumped, but a mouth met my other cheek, pinning me in place as I stared up at Morris’ unmoving frame in front of me, frozen in my heels.

He didn’t.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, baby. Practice ran over.”

I was going to fucking die. Right here, at my ex's wedding, I was going to have a heart attack and be wheeled out on a covered stretcher to the sound of some harpist playing a song Morris probably wrote himself.

I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t move, could only stare as Morris’ wide eyes took in the man on my left as his hand slowly left my cheek.

“I’m Sebastian,” he said, a single arm with a black suit jacket and white shirt covering it extending toward Morris.

Morris’ Adam’s apple moved as he forced himself to actually speak, to reach out and take his offer of a handshake. “Morris. Nice to meet you.”

Shakily, I finally turned my head, forcing myself to look at him and pass it off as at least somewhat natural. He stood tall, clean-shaven, and far, far more attractive than any single man should be allowed to be. I’d seen him in jeans, seen him in workout gear, seen him in his jersey, his boxers, his joggers — but fuck, I’d never seen him in a suit before.

I never wanted to see him out of it.

With his brown hair swept back, his jaw strong and his blue eyes wild yet level as he stared at Morris, I wanted to capture that image of him in my head and burn it to memory. But it was the black suit, the white shirt, the lack of a tie, and the top few buttons undone, that nearly made me feral after not seeing him for four weeks. It was almost enough to make me forget why I’d left in the first place.

“You’re the groom, right?” Seb asked. Morris pulled at his collar but nodded. “Any chance you know where I can get literally anything other than beer or wine? Seems to be all they’re offering.”

Oh, my God. I missed him.

Morris blinked at him before sputtering out, “There’s water at the bar.”

“Was hoping for a whiskey, but I guess water will do.” Seb shrugged as he slotted an arm around my shoulders, his gaze moving down to me. “You look fucking beautiful, by the way. Did I forget to say that?”

Heat spread across my cheeks. I knew exactly what he was doing, and so did he, and from the look on Morris’ face, it was absolutely working. “Thank you,” I gulped.

“I… can we just back up a second?” Morris sputtered, his brows knitting and his nostrils flaring as the facade he’d clung to broke just a crack. “You play for the Atlanta Fire, right? Sebastian Blue?”

“Yeah!” Seb chirped, that grin coming back out in full force. “You a fan?”

“I mean, yeah, you could say that,” Mor said. Someone I didn’t recognize, another man about his height and age, tugged gently on his arm but he pulled away. “I’m sorry, I just don’t quite understand. Aren’t you, like, filthy fucking rich? Why are you here with her?”

“If you’ve got something around, I’m happy to sign it,” Seb interjected, dodging the question completely, and for a moment my mind hung on those words — filthy fucking rich. I knew he was absurdly well-off from hockey, but was there more there that I didn’t know about?

I knew I should have googled him again .

Morris’ pale face went reddened. For as surprised and horrified as I was that Seb had even turned up, I couldn’t deny that he was playing his role so well that I had to bite back laughter. It was supposed to be their day, and yet here Sebastian was, looming even greater as a plus one and offering to give him an autograph.

He was making Morris feel small.

“Morris,” the man beside him hissed. “We need to start.”

“Maybe, uh, maybe later,” Morris said, taking a step back from us with his eyes flitting back and forth between me and Seb. He looked positively confused out of his mind, flustered to the highest degree, and even though I was angry with him and hadn’t spoken to him in weeks, I wanted to kiss the fucking ground Sebastian walked on.

The moment Morris was out of earshot, he turned to me.

“I really am sorry I’m late, for what it’s worth,” he said, his hand dragging along my exposed upper back before settling on my shoulder. “Are you okay? I tried to call you on the way over.”

I stared up at him, lost in a combination of swirling irritation that he’d had the guts to show up here and overwhelming gratitude that he’d had the guts to show up here. I had half a mind to start crying right then and there, and I stuffed it down before the tears could threaten to make an appearance, but other things took their place, things I wasn’t ready to really think about. Things I had no right to think about. Things that I shouldn’t have felt after a few months of being around him, and things that I was almost certain weren’t reciprocated — even if his appearance here made me think twice. “I have Do Not Disturb on while driving,” I said, but the words were croaked and sniffled, and goddammit, I wasn’t fooling anyone. “I’m fine.”

His lips tightened into a thin line as he brushed a single strand of hair from my face. “You’re still mad.”

“Of course I’m still mad.” The words tasted like acid as they left my mouth, but I needed to say it, needed to not pretend at least for a moment that things weren’t still tense between us, even if I was softening to him. Even if I was admitting things to myself that made me want to die.

I missed him. I missed everything about him.

And a part of me, however small that part might be, had fallen for him harder than I’d ever expected to — and the full, unbridled reality of it hadn’t hit home until now.

His mouth pulled to one side, a ripple of what looked like regret crossing his features. “Let’s forget about that for tonight, okay? I’m not here to talk you into coming back to work or to beg you to talk to me. I’m not here to teach you anything, either, if you think that’s my aim.” That regret he’d briefly donned turned into the slightest bit of mischief. “Except maybe some lessons in revenge.”