Chapter 20
Everyone tries to start the day normally, a breath of calm before the chaos begins.
Teddy and I take Bodie and Solly for a ride, watching the wisps of fog pull back around us and slivers of sun push through.
We halt at the end of the meadow, letting the horses tug at frost-tipped grass.
Christian and Garrett thud past on a head-clearing run.
Liv sleeps in. Haley and Sam surface just in time for hair and make-up under the She Said Yes spotlight.
Fortified by glasses of fizz and Loreena’s steadying hand, we make it to the ceremony two minutes fashionably late. Haley hovers just out of sight at the top of the stairs. In our green dresses, bouquets trailing, Sam, Liv, and I pause on the landing and take it all in.
At the front of the ballroom, the guys wait with shiny shoes, neat bow ties, and rock-star manes tamed.
Next to them, is Bethany, the celebrant.
Friend to Haley, Christian and Loreena, and famous for wearing only shades of black; today her choice is one that under the ballroom lights wavers towards green, a sly concession to the wedding party.
Her usual punk-spiked hair is teased into something almost sensible.
Our decorated trees stand proud, tasteful, and a quiet tribute to friends working with, not against, each other.
They flank an arch dressed in ruby satin, bursts of red and white flowers, and twisting winter greenery.
It’s the Christmas wedding Haley has always wanted; every garland and twinkling light hitting Pinterest perfection.
A red-carpeted aisle lined with poinsettias marks our path, guests on either side swivelling with expectant smiles.
I follow a step behind Sam, my pace measured.
I’ve never walked down a wedding aisle before.
I used to look forward to it—first today, Haley’s day, and then my own.
Later I dreaded it, wondering how it would feel to be the not-bride at my friend’s wedding.
Today I’m calm. I’m glad Pierre and I never reached the altar; better the truth before vows we couldn’t have kept.
As I near the front, I feel every gaze on me, but only one catches.
It isn’t wedding nerves; Teddy’s smile tips my stomach into a spin.
“Beautiful,” he mouths, and my heart soars.
I’ve been told it before, but something in the way he says it makes me feel seen, not just the dress, the hair, the makeup—but all the parts underneath.
Behind us, small gasps ripple—Haley has appeared on the landing.
No one expected anything but white. She steps out in winter-berry velvet; the gown hugging her curves before spilling into a train that trails like a fae queen on Solstice night.
Her dark hair is threaded with seed pearls; her eyes, green and bright, find Christian and light up.
She pauses, and the room seems to hold its breath. The perfect Christmas bride.
She takes the first step to the string quartet’s soft spell, and the crowd exhales as one.
Haley’s only halfway down the aisle when disaster strikes.
Kona, the big dog, senses Ollie’s inattention—he’s grinning across at Sam and then back to his sister—and makes a break for it.
His trailing lead catches on a small potted Christmas tree.
The pot skids, fairy lights slithering after it, and the whole arrangement judders up the aisle in Kona’s wake, straight towards Haley.
She stops dead, eyes wide. Guests gasp. The string quartet plays on. They must be the only ones in the room oblivious.
“No!” The cry rips out of her, a most un-bridelike scream.
Ollie’s a heartbeat late, but one of the dog rescue’s lovely older volunteers is quicker.
She nabs the leads in one neat, practised move.
Kona’s momentum checked, the tree wobbles to a twinkling halt.
Haley laughs as Ollie and the dog march back to front, both unrepentant as if they didn’t almost derail a wedding.
With order restored, Bethany gives us a nod. Haley resumes her walk, arriving safely to take Christian’s hands.
After that, time folds: music, a reading, the warmth of Teddy’s eyes from across the aisle, and then the vows.
My heart tightens as Christian makes his promises to Haley, as raw and romantic as the lyrics he writes for her.
This time I don’t try to hold back. I swipe away tears with my thumb and catch Teddy’s there-she-goes-again smile.
When the service ends, because half the wedding party is literally a rock band, the music takes over. By the end, everyone’s dancing in the aisles like they’re at a Stellar Riot gig.
While the guests move off for drinks, a photographer swoops on the wedding party and for nearly an hour we’re primped and posed for the cameras. Exclusive photos mean more money for the refuge, so we suck it up.
“My cheeks are cramping,” I hiss, when we’re finally allowed to breathe.
“Better than running from the paparazzi,” Teddy murmurs, threading our fingers as the camera clicks on. “And with you beside me,” he says, voice low, without even dropping his photo-op smile, “I might even get to like it.”
I linger by the bar, champagne flute in hand, taking a shameless moment to admire Teddy from a distance.
There’s something about a man in rolled-up sleeves that does me in: the thick forearms, broad wrists, fingers tapping a half-heard rhythm on the linen while Garrett mutters in his ear.
His bow tie hangs undone, top buttons loosened, and that little V of copper hair at his throat all but begs for my touch.
I sigh, wallowing for a moment in his undeniable sexiness.
Liv materialises beside me, swiping a glass.
“You’ve got to love him, don’t you?” she says, following my gaze. “Garrett’s got a lot of time for Teddy. He’s a good guy.”
“I know,” I breathe, the admission turning into a dreamy smile. Until a woman with glossy chestnut hair, long and sleek, drifts up to their table. Teddy lights up; he stands, scoops her into a hug.
“Who’s that?” I ask, trying to will away the jealous crack in my voice.
“Sadie—Ewan’s wife,” Liv answers. “Band manager’s other half. God, if you’ve ever seen a couple totally besotted with each other, it’s those two.”
My teeth unclench.
“She and Teddy went out a couple of times,” Liv adds, and the green monster’s back on my shoulder. “But the second she chatted with Ewan backstage—boom, end of story. Age gap and all. Teddy just let her go, no drama.”
I watch them laughing together before Sadie gives him a pat on the hand and moves away.
“I think I need some air.” I nod towards the foyer.
I sink onto the wide staircase, satin pooling at my ankles, smooth banister wood cooling my palm. Deep breath, Rache.
Jealousy—where did that come from?
With Pierre, I never flinched if another girl flirted, and they did, often. Good-looking man, snappy dresser, oozed alpha-male magnetism, wore money like a cologne, yet I was strangely secure. Maybe the warning signs were there, and I laughed it off.
With Teddy, the stakes feel different. He lives in a world of backstage passes and bright-eyed fans. Could I learn to breathe through that? Trust him to tuck a gentle “no thanks” into every smile? Trust—fractured so badly once, it will need more than coaxing to relearn.
And then there’s his past. So many names, all those girls, all those headlines.
Only this morning, Geordie sent me a text: Is this your guy?
A link to another article in The Sun. Another girl from his past, this one a Love Island alum.
He says none of them mattered the way I do.
I want to believe that, to let the words soak in like warm water on weary muscles.
I matter. They didn’t. It’s a mantra I’d need to learn to live by.
Yet it’s Liv’s story that looms largest. Sadie dumped Teddy for Ewan in the space of a heartbeat…
and he just smiled, shrugged and moved on.
Part of me smarts at how easy that sounded.
If Teddy and I try to make something more than this, and then fall apart one day, would he feel it?
Or simply sing a different duet with someone else?
I press my fingertips to my chest, as if steadying the flutter there. Please, let me mean enough that he’d miss me. Not forever-and-always promises; just the quiet certainty he’d feel that honest pang of loss if it ended.
A guitar riff drifts from the half-open ballroom doors. Sounds like the boys have come out to play. I gather the folds of my dress, straighten my shoulders, and head towards it. At least for tonight, I can be someone who matters to him.
“Seriously?” I say, as Teddy yanks me into the narrow cupboard under the stairs. The moment the door clicks shut, the music outside muffles to a dull throb. “Who the hell do you think you are? Harry Potter?” I laugh in the dark.
He flicks a switch, and a single bulb snaps on, casting a sepia glow over stray cables, boxes of Christmas decorations and the crinkles around his eyes.
“You know you’ve got a perfectly good bedroom.”
“Thought you liked a little danger?” He snatches a piece of tinsel from a crate and loops it around my neck, scratchy and ridiculous. “Plus, festive atmosphere. Mood lighting.”
I retaliate, plucking a dented wreath from the box, crowning his copper curls.
“Very Lord of the Autumn Court.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I hope it’s good.”
“Very good.” He kisses me before I’ve finished laughing.
His hands bracket my hips, and in one effortless lift, I’m seated on a low shelf, dress hitched high. His fingers rove up the split in the satin, burrowing between my thighs, then pause, finding only bare skin.
“No knickers, bridesmaid?”
“Satin hates panty-lines,” I say, smug.
“Christ. You’re trouble with a capital T.”
My giggle dies in my throat as his fingers begin to move, circling, pausing, circling, pausing in a slow teasing rhythm.
He holds me close, lips dropped to my collarbone, dusting kisses across my shoulders, mouth melting into my neck, with tiny nips and licks.
I let my head drop back, resting against the wall.
He’s learned to play me, every beat of his hands precise, measured, perfect.
He coaxes the notes from my throat as I arch upwards to him, chasing that sweet, aching crescendo.
The climax steals my voice, and I collapse onto his chest, body sagging, bones dissolved in the heat.
“I need you,” I say, meaning the erection that strains against my palm beneath the dark fabric of his suit trousers—but also more than that. I need him. Teddy. In my life. I just need to figure out how to keep him in it without destroying my fragile self-esteem.
“Are you sure, Rache?”
“Yes. But…condom.”
He slips a foil packet from his waistcoat like a conjurer producing a coin. “Prepared groomsman.”
“What kind of man brings that to a wedding?”
“The kind praying the most beautiful woman in the room will follow him into a broom cupboard,” he says.
I make quick work of his zipper; he rolls the condom on, then gathers my dress and eases forward, one arm cradling my back, the other cushioning my head against the timber.
“Watch me, Rache,” he whispers, and we move together, eyes locked, breaths dovetailing until the final tremor leaves us trembling, forehead to forehead.
After, we dab at ourselves with a packet of Christmas serviettes, picking stray glitter out of our hair and clothes. Teddy sets me gently on my feet, his hands light at my waist.
“All good?” I smooth down my hair, wild from his fingers. “We can’t let the others know we’ve been shagging under the stairs, right? They’d only make a big deal of it. We don’t need Ollie taking the piss on a loop.”
I reach for the latch; he catches my wrist, heartbeat still thudding against my palm. “I can handle Ollie. What I can’t handle is pretending this is nothing. You know you’re more to me than a quick shag in a cupboard, right? Once this wedding’s over, I don’t want to hide us. I want to see you.”
“See me. What does that mean, Teddy? If it’s a couple of dates and then time to move on…
” My voice lowers, aiming for gentleness and the honesty we both deserve.
“I can’t do that. I invested too much of my life in someone who cast me off when some bright, shiny new thing came along.
I don’t expect a signed-and-stamped forever, but… ”
He cups my jaw, the calloused hand firm against my skin. “I’m done with two-week romances. I want something that sticks. I can’t promise the ending, but I’m not looking for a way out, Rache. Not with you. Is that enough?”
The earnestness in those brown eyes makes me want to match him truth for truth. I press a palm over the knot of doubt and hand him the answer I want to believe. “It’s enough.”
“Okay, ready to face the world?” He puts an ear to the door.
I nod, and he eases it open, checks left and right, then offers his hand. As we round the corner, Sam comes out of the loos. She pauses a moment, slides a pointed glance at our joined hands, gives a knowing smile, and heads for the ballroom.
Teddy squeezes my hand once, a quiet reassurance, then leads me back to the music and the bright, bewildering lights of whatever comes next.