CHAPTER 35 Sophie Summers
Something’s About to Go Wrong
The wedding was beautiful. Life itself is beautiful.
I have no complaints as I wake up to a bright and beautiful morning in Miller’s arms.
Tanner is married, Miller and I are getting married, and my entire life has been flipped upside down. They say things always work out how they’re supposed to, and it feels like this right here is how it was supposed to happen.
Which gives me that weird, ominous feeling like something’s about to go wrong.
It can’t be this great, can it? Someone’s going to get sick, or something will cause problems for Miller and me, or the cruise ship will get swallowed up in a hurricane.
Okay, it’s all worst-case scenarios, but I have to allow them to play out in my mind, or else they’ll chew at me.
And once they play out in my mind, I need to voice them. Usually I voice it by writing it into a book, but this time I don’t have that luxury since we need to get to brunch. So instead, I push it off the plate of my conscience and onto good ol’ Miller’s .
It’s after I get out of the shower and he’s standing at the sink next to me brushing his teeth while I’m applying some makeup that I say, “Hey, so you know how when things are going too well, you sort of just expect it to all come crashing down?”
He glances over at me in the mirror, and I can see the haze of sleepiness still surrounding him that tells me it’s too early for this conversation.
“Huh?” he asks, his voice muffled by the toothpaste in his mouth.
I plow ahead anyway. “Like, oh, I don’t know. Like something bad will happen on the cruise. Someone will get a tummy bug, and it’ll pass through all thirty of us, or a hurricane will hit the boat. I don’t know.”
He spits and rinses his mouth before he glances up at me in the mirror. He wipes his mouth with a towel and tilts his head a little. “Babe, I don’t think it’s hurricane season.”
I lift a shoulder. “Well, what if one just forms out of the blue? They can hit when it’s not in season, can’t they?”
“I think that’s only ever happened, like, twice.”
“What if the third is while we’re on the boat?”
“Have you been on a cruise before?” he asks.
I shake my head, and he walks over and wraps his arms around me. “Listen, Sophie. There are tons of precautions in place these days. It’s not like the days of the Titanic when they hit an iceberg. They can track that kind of stuff now, and they can reroute if they need to. Nothing bad will happen.”
“What about the tummy bug thing? Or food poisoning? What if I get food poisoning and you have to share a bathroom with me and you’re so grossed out by me that you don’t even want to sleep in the same bed as me let alone have sex with me?
” I ask, and I hear the ridiculousness of my own question, but I still feel that it bears asking anyway .
“Jesus, Sophie. I promise you, nothing will ever make me feel that way about you.” His eyes drop to mine, and when I see the sincerity there, I feel a whole lot better.
I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly, and he drops a quick kiss to my lips. “Now get ready, or we’re going to be late to brunch, and everyone will eyeball us walking in late and assume it was because I was having my way with you.”
“What if it was me having my way with you?” I shoot back, and he chuckles.
“Do you feel better?”
“I just get a little nervous before big trips. I know everything will be fine.”
We pack up our stuff, check out of the hotel, and head to Lincoln and Jolene’s place for brunch.
Tanner and Cassie are opening their gifts when we walk in.
Jess is keeping track of who got them what, and the kids are fighting over who gets to pick the next present.
Jolene’s baby, Joey, who’s somewhere around six months old, is crawling all over the place while his big sister Josephine—who’s three and a half—is playing mom to him as she babbles in toddler talk about where he can and can’t crawl.
It’s a little bit of chaos, and it’s actually sort of adorable.
But then Lily starts to cry because Luca picked the next gift out of turn, and Cassie decides it’s time to eat rather than continue opening gifts as a way to distract the kids from their current fight with each other.
Whew. I am so not ready for that sort of life. I’ll just take my books and Miller for the moment, thank you very much.
We’re halfway through the meal when Miller leans over and whispers, “What if I am the one who gets the food poisoning and you’re grossed out by me?”
I giggle. “Okay. I get it. I was being ridiculous.”
He’s not laughing. “I’m serious. ”
My eyes widen. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offload my own worries onto you. I just needed to get them off my mind.”
He twists his lips. “You’re right though. Things are going well. Too well. Something’s going to snap.”
I wrinkle my nose a little nervously, and he taps it.
“Whatever it is, we’ll be okay. Right?” I ask. Actually, it comes out as far more than an ask . It’s more like a beg .
“We’ll be just fine,” he assures me, but there’s something there in his eyes that tells me he’s not so sure about that himself.
Food poisoning and hurricanes aside, though, what really could go wrong?
It’s probably a question better left unasked—especially now that I’ve passed some of my anxiety onto Miller.
I let it go as we finish eating, and then the newlyweds finish opening their gifts.
We spend the day at Lincoln and Jolene’s house with the Nash clan, and Tanner and Cassie duck out early to do whatever it is newlyweds do while we stay with the rest of the family and start a poker tournament.
We have to end it early since some of us have an evening flight down to Florida—Miller and I included—and we hitch a ride with Grayson and Ava over to the airport.
I haven’t had the pleasure of spending much time with Ava, so I’m excited to get to know her better. All I know is that Grayson is hilarious, and Ava seems like his perfect match.
“So how did you two meet?” I ask on the way to the airport as I sit beside Ava in the backseat.
“He’s my brother’s best friend,” she says.
“Oh, come on, babe,” Grayson says from the front seat. “That’s sort of leaving out the entire story, isn’t it?”
“You tell it,” she says petulantly, and he barks out a boisterous laugh.
“We hadn’t seen each other in a decade when I was traded to the Vegas Aces. I went out to a bar to celebrate and ran into her. I didn’t recognize her. We spent the night together, and I won’t bore you with the details, but eventually we ended up married and running a bakery together.”
“That’s adorable,” I say. “Who’s manning the bakery while you’re on vacation?”
“Oh, my best friend, Kelly. She works on and off for me, but our staff there is totally incredible. What about you two? How did you meet?” Ava asks.
“Miller and me? We go back to high school. We met in freshman English class, became best friends, and—”
“And only recently admitted how we really felt,” Miller says.
Oh, okay. So that’s how it is…keeping up with the ruse.
But where’s the lie, really?
I guess it’s in the fact that we haven’t exactly admitted our feelings for one another, and maybe it’s because I’m not even really sure where we stand. I know one thing for certain, though.
I can’t get enough of Miller Banks.
I just don’t know exactly how he feels about me, but we’ll be in tight quarters together for the next week. I can’t think of a better time for the truth to come out.
The only problem is that there are just a whole hell of a lot more truths that emerge over the next week than I ever thought possible.