27. Nelly

Chapter 27

Nelly

I just had to go and cry and ruin my goddamn makeup.

Even though I’d gotten it all off my chest, even though I felt a million pounds lighter and we’d talked it out, I still looked like a wreck. We’d both done our best to keep my mascara from getting everywhere, and I’d worn my strongest waterproof just in case I hadn’t been able to hold it together tonight for other reasons, but it just flaked instead, covering my streaked foundation with little flecks of black.

“We could just go,” I offered, clutching my phone in my hand as I tried to use the front camera to clean myself up. But in the low light of the porch, I could barely see what I was doing, and I certainly couldn’t reapply my makeup here.

“Not a chance. I don’t want to give them the slightest chance of thinking you couldn’t handle it and had to leave early,” Seb said. He hooked his thumb and finger on my chin and turned me to face him, tilting my face back and forth to inspect it. “Did you bring makeup?”

I nodded just as much as his hand would allow.

“Then we just need to get you to the bathroom unnoticed.” He pressed a kiss against my cheek and turned the door handle, letting the soft light and booming music pour into the outdoors.

“Wait,” I said, reaching up and grabbing a fistful of his suit jacket to get his attention. “I don’t care what they think. I’d much rather spend the rest of my night with you.”

He huffed out a chuckle and poked his head inside the door before turning back to me, a playful little grin on his face as he squeezed my chin. “You,” he rasped, pausing for a beat as he studied me, “will have all the time in the world with me after this.”

We slipped back in through the doors, his hand clutching mine instead of my face as he kept me behind him and shielded me from view. I clutched at his jacket with my free hand, determined to hide my face in the rigid muscles that covered the expanse of his back if someone so much as dared to look at me.

We came to a T in the halls, and he peeked around the corner, his broad shoulders hunched like we were sneaking into some top-secret government facility instead of navigating the halls of a wedding I didn’t even want to be at. “All clear,” he whispered, glancing back at me with a stupid little grin on his cheeks.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “This is not a joke.”

His smile fell, and he flashed the same look I gave to him back at me. “Obviously,” he said, completely deadpan in delivery, but the little twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed him. Why did he have to be so cute? “I’m taking this very seriously. Now come on, agent, let’s move.”

Going right would have led us back to the reception hall, so he pulled me to the left, his head swiveling every few seconds to check behind us. My heels clicked too loudly on the marble floor, but I hoped and prayed that the Cha Cha Slide was doing enough to cover it as it boomed from the speakers down the hall.

In front of us, twenty-odd feet down the hall, a single foot appeared around the corner of the hall, and Seb immediately blocked my line of sight. By the time he finally shifted enough for me to see, the man’s waistcoat and empty tray tucked against his side made it obvious enough that he was staff — and he was walking away from us.

With one last check over his shoulder, Seb whipped me around to the front of him, both hands firmly on my shoulders as we came to a stop a few paces from the ladies’ room. “All right, agent. This is it. Go in, fix your face, and I’ll stand guard. Anyone comes this way, I’ll distract them.”

I snorted. “What’s your plan for that, exactly? Not everyone knows who you are.”

“I know that,” he chuckled. “But I’m sure I could get just about anyone to speak to me. And as soon as I start speaking about hockey stats, they’ll run as far as possible.”

Despite what had happened this evening and the horrible ache of even being here, I cracked a laugh for the first time since we’d been plotting ways to make the two of them uncomfortable. It was a small one, but it felt good, and even better because it was because of him and nothing else. “You’re ridiculous,” I said, shaking my head.

“And you’re stalling.” He shot a smirk at me as he stepped back and leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “Go on. I’ll be here when you get out.”

Sighing and deciding that being in there was far safer than being in the hallway, I slipped inside the little lounge area with plush blue carpet and white recliners before pushing open the swinging door to the bathroom.

The tile was ornate, laid out in zig-zag patterns that formed a cohesive image of a geometrical lioness in the middle of the floor, and the second my heels touched down, I worried the clacking of them would break the tile — but the sound of irritated grunts coming from the handicap stall immediately drew my mind elsewhere. Fuck. Someone’s here.

“This dress is such a nightmare to get back down over you,” a voice I didn’t recognize huffed.

I turned to look at myself in the mirror over the sinks, watching in horror as my tanned skin paled significantly.

“No. You know what the fucking nightmare is, Mags?”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit ? —

“Nelly having the goddamn nerve to show up,” Ruby growled, her voice barely concealed by the shuffling sound of layers upon layers of tulle sliding against each other. “I mean, when she said she was bringing her boyfriend , I almost laughed. I was positive she’d made it up. But she just had to show up with Sebastian fucking Blue.”

Swallowing down every bit of bile that dared to rise in my throat, I dug through my bag silently, pulling out the little tube of concealer I’d stashed in it before making quick work of my under-eyes. This was nauseating and satisfying all rolled into one horrifying, hilarious package — I’d gotten under her skin. Both of them, hopefully.

“Does it help that I don’t know who that is?” Another voice asked, and that one had a specific ring to it, a cadence that hit my ears and felt somewhat familiar.

“No, that doesn’t fucking help,” Ruby hissed. “It doesn’t matter if you know who he is. I do, Morris does, and half of the guests do.”

“What does he even do?”

“I don’t know , Sarah.” Sarah. I remembered Sarah. She was one of Ruby’s backup singers when she was in her wedding singer days. “I just know he plays for the Atlanta Fire. He’s some billionaire’s son or something, it’s ridiculous—ouch, ouch, don’t tug on the laces.”

I froze with my fingers on my cheeks, halfway through tapping the hell out of my concealer since I’d forgotten a blending brush.

Did she say billionaire? I must have misheard her. Surely.

“He probably just owes her some kind of favor,” Sarah said, barely covering the scoff and aggravation in her voice. “Do you honestly think he’d be with her if he didn’t? I bet she convinced him to come and pretend to be her date to mess with you two. Didn’t you say she knew Mor is a fan?”

My freeze response was threatening to take over, and I fought it, shoving my hands beneath the faucet and rinsing the leftover smears of concealer from them. My heart thumped hard against my chest, little palpitations only heightening my anxiety, but I tried to breathe through it. This wasn’t satisfying anymore.

This just hurt.

Ruby’s laugh hit just as hard as I thought it would, and I wanted to grab my bag and either run out the door or hide in a stall and wait for them to leave, but the idea of them passing Seb alone in the hall and putting two and two together stopped me from doing the latter. But I wasn’t going to do that.

I could stand my ground. If I could do it with Sebastian, I could do it here.

The lock clicked open and I gave myself one more glance in the mirror to make sure I didn’t look like I’d been crying — I just had to hope that the blood vessels in my eyes gave the impression I’d had a few drinks instead.

“Shit.” The word was so quiet, so muffled, that without looking at them, I couldn’t tell who it had come from .

I turned from my reflection, locking eyes with Ruby from across the bathroom. “Hey, Rubes.”

She blinked at me, her fingers clutched in the layers of tulle that made up her ridiculously large skirt. “Hi, Nelly.”

“Really thought you’d have a private bathroom just for the bride. Wasn’t that in one of your binders?” I said, and I watched, my mouth almost salivating from satisfaction as she flinched. Who was I? “Or did you let Morris decide against that, too?”

Ruby’s jaw steeled, and Sarah crossed her arms over the corset of her blue satin bridesmaid dress, her eyes rolling.

Adrenaline surged through my veins, and I was surprised as I moved, slipping my hand into my purse, and pulled out my phone — normally, I’d be stuck in place, nothing but the words in my mouth to propel me forward if they weren’t locked behind my teeth. But I just… moved . It was so easy.

I pulled up a photo Seb’s teammate, Luke, had taken after the game before the last one I’d been to. In it, Sebastian and I stood along the boards at the rink with Matty on my back, his little arms squeezing the crap out of my neck with his head poking up around my shoulder between us. I flipped my phone around, holding it out in Ruby’s and Sarah’s direction. The other girl, the one I didn’t know, was far too busy playing with her hair in the mirrors to give a rat’s ass about the conversation.

“Does this look like a favor?” I asked, swiping across to the next image. It was Seb on the couch with Matty in his lap, both of them grinning ear to ear as Matty held up his brand-new skates. The white box beside them held the skates that Seb had bought me, and as I turned my phone back to me, I couldn’t help but feel a little pang in my chest for leaving those behind in the guesthouse .

Sarah opened her mouth to speak but closed it a second later, pushing out a frustrated breath of air through her flared nostrils.

Ruby, on the other hand, had no problem talking. “Come on, Nelly, you showed up here with him . It’s wildly convenient,” she scoffed. “What were we supposed to think?”

I slipped my phone back into my purse and smiled half-heartedly at her. “You don’t have to think anymore, do you? Morris can do that for you now,” I said, clicking my tongue on a swallow as I stepped back toward the door. “He can do it for the rest of your miserable, married life together.”

Ruby’s lips and eyebrows went flat, a ripple of… is that regret? … flickering across her face.

I pushed on the swinging door as I turned, letting my heels click noisily as I moved from tile to carpet. “Hope you enjoy the honeymoon I’m sure he picked out for you! Let me guess, Cancun?”

Giving her one last glance as the door swung shut, her head turned in frustration toward the mirror instead.

Seb had been right — leaving when I’d originally asked him to wouldn’t have been worth it. I wanted to stay, I wanted to piss them off, wanted to upset them more than I could have ever imagined. But more than anything, more than any revenge I could have dished out, I wanted to make them painfully aware of how okay I was, how much better off. And I couldn’t have gotten to a point where I could do that with any amount of confidence without Sebastian.

He wasn’t just giving me lessons on how to be better in bed. He was giving me lessons on how to stand up for myself.