Chapter 19
Ville
Iwatched the family, watched the guests too. As much as I wanted to sit next to Wren while Demi and Luke were wedded, I didn’t. I stood by the sidelines, keeping an eye on everyone instead. Because that was what I was here for now.
I’d tolerated the way Emery had ignored or avoided me yesterday and this morning, because I understood half of it. He was doing what he could for his twin who was unable to do everything herself. The other half… well, maybe I knew what that meant, too.
“Emery and Ville, come here!” Demi was calling out to us before Emery could respond to my question.
He moved as if an invisible string connected him to Demi—and maybe it did—before he seemed to make a conscious choice to do so. I tagged along, because it was her day.
“What’s up?” Emery asked her.
“I want photos with us and each of my siblings with their partners.” There was a challenge in her gaze.
Emery glanced at me. Something wild and defiant bloomed inside my chest.
“Sure. Where do you want us?” I asked her, and noticed the corner of Luke’s mouth twitch.
She grabbed Emery and pulled him to a sideways hug kind of thing, then told me to go to his opposite side while Luke took hers. We smiled for a few photos, and then she shooed us away to get one with Hawk and Carter next.
Fern was holding her girlfriend’s hand. Isley and Jerrica were there, too, as were Crew and Mal. They’d be at this photo op for a while still.
Because the sun was hot and Demi was not feeling 100%, they took a break for water and making sure her makeup and hair were still good or some such. I walked over to Hawk and raised my brows. He grinned and nodded. Excellent.
Emery was talking to Gemma and the twins, so I went to Demi.
She lifted her hand toward me. “Ville, have you—”
I took the hand and squeezed. “It’s all handled. As soon as you guys leave tonight, I’ll take over.”
She gave me a smile that warmed me on the inside. I could tell she wanted to say something more, but she ended up with, “Thank you.”
“Of course.” Anything for Emery. I didn’t need to say that out loud, she knew.
“Okay, we ready?” the photographer asked, and I stepped away from her again.
Demi and Luke’s first dance as a married couple was to Wren playing guitar and singing his song Where the Creek Flows. It was a love song, of course, and one of his biggest hit ballads.
I stood by the wall to one side, watching as people got teary-eyed and Demi and Luke saw nobody else but each other. As it should be. They looked so good together.
“Mommy looks like a princess!” Aria exclaimed from where she was sitting between Jenn and Luke’s mother.
I chuckled and stepped outside the barn to check on the guys.
We all had our designated spots, including me being inside the barn the whole evening, but I was still running everything and wanted to stay in touch throughout the evening. It wasn’t as if we were wearing earpieces or something; this wasn’t that sort of an operation.
Abigail was inside, too, and Jenn had told us both to take turns getting our meals from the food trucks while everyone else was eating. I was glad she hadn’t tried to make me sit with the family. I wouldn’t have. I had my priorities.
There were speeches. Excellent food. Dessert. Dancing. All the usual wedding things. It was a lovely, perfect evening, and by the time things started to wind down, I realized I’d never finished that conversation with Emery that I’d started earlier.
It didn’t matter now. I was going to kidnap him soon enough.
I stood to the side, watching the proceedings when Demi and Luke got ready to leave. Abigail moved to a better spot to watch after Wren like we’d agreed, because it was time for me to go, too.
As Demi slipped into the car that would whisk them to grab their bags from the house and then to Denver for their mini-moon, she found me in the crowd and gave me a look as if to remind me of my task.
I smiled and nodded, but I didn’t need to be reminded.
She reached out, and Luke stepped aside, letting Emery lean into the car to hug her one more time. Then he hugged Luke, too, saying something to him that made Luke’s eyes glisten.
A few seconds later, the car door closed behind him and Emery stepped back wiping his cheeks.
I dodged a couple of people, took Emery’s hand, and pulled him with me.
“W-What?” he asked, startled.
“You’re coming with me,” I said firmly, and continued to pull him to the side of the barn where I had parked the truck.
“Ville, what are you—”
“Nope. Do as you’re told, Emery.”
His mouth snapped shut and fire flared in his eyes. Then his phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out just as I let go of his hand to open the door for him.
He let out a choked-up sound and showed me the screen. It was a message from Demi.
Do as you’re told, Emery.
It was as if she knew him or something. I chuckled and pointedly nodded toward the seat I wanted him to take.
He sighed, but I could see a small smile playing on his lips as he got in.
As I rounded the truck, I saw Nick peer out from the barn’s service door in the back.
He gave me a thumbs up, and I lifted a hand in return.
“What’s going on?” Emery asked, suspicious as fuck.
“Nothing much,” I lied easily. The second time I’d lied to him, but it was for a good cause. Not that he believed me for a moment.
I drove us to the ranch house. “Let’s go change.”
To his credit, he took Demi’s and my advice and we got out of our suits, took quick showers separately, and got dressed more comfortably. Then I gestured at the door, and he harrumphed, but came with me anyway.
I went to the kitchen and saw the cooler by the pantry door. I picked it up, and led the way back outside.
“We’re taking Bluey,” I told him, gesturing to the UTV parked behind an SUV.
He clearly hadn’t noticed it, which was funny.
Something else that amused me was that I hadn’t paid attention to Juanpablo at all, but I could see him peering at us from his paddock.
I’d become immune to the donkey alarm, or hell, maybe he’d decided that the party atmosphere with all the extra humans in his territory was too much to yell about every time?
In no time at all, I had us on the road, so to speak. I drove us to the gate to the far paddock and hopped out to open it. Then I drove through and this time Emery got out.
“I’ll get it.”
When he came back, I could tell he had relaxed and was getting excited.
I turned the lights on so I could navigate safely in the dimming remnants of daylight. It was peaceful here, which was welcome after the whole day of people everywhere.
“Abigail’s with Wren?” Emery asked after a couple of minutes of driving.
I loved it that he cared.
“Yeah. Most people were gone anyway, and the boys are still around.” And Wren would never take any weird risks, not that I expected any here anyway.
All the guests had been told to not post about anything Wren-related online until after we were gone. That date was approaching way too soon.
Emery took my hand and I stroked his with my thumb as I drove us across the land to the spot. Soon enough, there was a light from an electric lantern in the distance, and I felt the moment he noticed it.
He leaned forward, my hand forgotten as he tried to figure out what he was seeing.
Grinning, I drove us over to the small ridge where Hawk and Carter had come in the morning to set all of this up for us.
Of course, it had been a group effort. It had been Demi’s idea, after I’d asked her what I could do to make things easier for Emery tonight.
It hadn’t hit him yet, but it would at some point soon when he gave himself permission to think about everything.
“We’ll still be as close as we’ve always been,” Demi had confided in me last night before they’d hidden together in her room for their twin time. “It’s mostly the symbolism that’ll get him and hell, it’ll get me, too.”
So yeah. While this was for Emery and me, to get away a little bit, it was more meaningful than that.
“When did you have time to set all of this up?” he asked as I parked just under the ridgeline, not wanting to drive the UTV up the steep side of it.
“I did absolutely nothing. This was mostly your siblings.” I gestured at the glamping style tent and the lanterns hanging from poles around the immediate area.
The creek was making calming noises nearby, and that’s what clued him to where we were.
“This is where we came before,” he said, sounding awed in a way I hadn’t expected.
“Mhmm….” Except this time we didn’t have horses to worry about.
I carried the cooler up the incline and smiled as Emery let out a delighted sound when he peered into the tent.
“I don’t know exactly what they did. I had orders to bring you here for tonight and tomorrow morning. We have until brunch.”
There was another cooler in the tent, filled with drinks. Emery looked inside it and raised a brow.
“What’s in that one?” he asked, pointing at the one I was carrying.
“I don’t know that, either. Whatever Nick deems as evening snacks, I suppose.”
There was a genuine raised king size bed for us to sleep in. There were pillows and blankets and a mosquito net over it just in case.
The fairy lights that were hung along the walls twinkled in a way that was decidedly romantic.
“This is….” Emery looked at everything and then turned to me.
“I know. Pretty awesome.” I smirked, and he rolled his eyes but walked into my arms anyway.
I kissed him, then pulled him out of the tent. “Want to make a little fire?” I asked, pointing at the portable fire pit with a couple of benches set at a wide angle so their ends almost touched.
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
I went to make the fire while he looked around in the dimming light. Stars would be out soon, and I couldn’t wait. The evening was still and mostly quiet. On occasion, a lone moo carried from wherever the cows were at the moment. It was all very peaceful.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked, going to the cooler.
“A pop would be nice,” I replied.
I’d had a glass of non-alcoholic bubbly when we’d toasted the happy couple, and I didn’t feel like drinking any of the beers I was sure Nick had put in the cooler.
Soon, the fire was crackling in the pit and I sat on the bench, watching as the sparks flew upwards to the night sky. Emery came back and handed me a Coke Zero, then sat next to me on the same bench to cuddle to my side.
“This is nice,” he said after a while as we sipped our drinks.
He’d gotten himself a wild berry Poppi, which he set next to himself before letting out a deep sigh.
I wrapped my arm around him and kissed his temple.
After a few minutes, he sighed again. “Can we get the talking out of the way?”
“Of course.” I squeezed him a little, then pulled away enough that we could make eye contact easier.
“I wasn’t avoiding you on purpose,” he started.
I snorted softly. “Maybe not consciously.”
“There was so much to do and—”
“And I could’ve helped.” I wouldn’t have gotten in his way, either, and we both knew that.
He hung his head, starting at the fire from under his curls that were flopping all over after his shower.
“I had it under control. I was doing all the things she would’ve done for herself.”
Raising a brow at him, I asked, “So you admit that you were doing two people’s tasks?”
He made an annoyed face. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
I chuckled quietly. “Okay. But you could’ve still asked for help. Delegated to people you trust. Didn’t have to be me.”
His gaze snapped to my face. “I trust you.” The tone of his voice was almost outraged, as if he couldn’t believe I’d hinted that he didn’t.
“I know.” Then I sighed and looked at the fire again. “We have eight days left.”
“Yeah.”
I held out my hand and he took it, and we sat there in silence for a long while.
Neither of us continued the conversation we needed to have, and he didn’t open up about his twin yet, so eventually I got up to put more fire in the pit and went to the pile of extra blankets inside the tent.
Emery looked at me curiously when I came back with two folded ones.
I rolled them and put one at the end of the bench he was sitting on, then went to the other one and sat down.
“It’s a pillow,” I explained, then gestured up. “Look at the stars.”
He lifted his gaze and gasped. The night had fallen and suddenly we were blanketed by an incredible amount of pinpricks of light from above.
I settled down on my bench, putting the makeshift pillow under my head, then waited for him to lie down.
When he did, I reached my arm back, and soon felt his fingers tangle with mine.
We laid there on our benches, heads almost touching in the still night.
The fire crackled, and the sparks danced toward the stars as we soaked it all in.
I thought we were probably mulling over similar things in our heads. About the clock ticking on our time together. About how nothing was changing between him and his twin, but how things might still be different soon.
I was sure he was worried about Demi’s pregnancy, and for a good cause. Triplets were no joke, and I would certainly be asking for updates along the way. She was Emery’s other half in ways I couldn’t understand, but I didn’t have to.
“Can we finish the talk later?” he asked quietly.
I squeezed his fingers. “Of course.”
He let go of my hand and sat up, so I followed suit. When he offered his hand to me again, I took it and let him drag me into the tent.
“I hope someone packed lube,” he murmured as he started to take off his clothes in a very pointed ‘distract me from my brain’ kind of way.
I chuckled and grabbed the bag I’d packed in the morning that someone had brought in.
Taking out the lube, I tossed it onto the bed. “Get on all fours, baby. I want to eat you out before I fuck you.”
The sound he made was pure sin, and I smirked as I watched him scramble into position while I took my sweet time getting undressed.
Then he suddenly sat up on his heels and undid the ties of the mosquito net so it fell neatly over the bed.
I chuckled. “Good thinking.”
He winked at me, and then settled back down, his delectable ass in the air like I’d requested.