Chapter 15
Marius
My hands won’t stop shaking, which seems strange since although today is my wedding day, I’m already married to Duck. Why the hell am I so nervous?
“Are you okay? You look like you’re going to be sick,” Ronan says, chuckling at me.
I hold out my hand to show him how unsteady I am at the moment. “It seems the answer is no. I’m not sure what’s going on with me.”
“Wedding jitters,” he answers confidently. “Remember how I was on my wedding day? Kate and I knew each other for years and had lived together for a while, and I still looked like I was going to either puke or pass out right before the ceremony. Maybe it’s a family thing?”
Kellen sits in the chair near the window in my old bedroom at Matthias’s house listening to us and rolling his eyes. “What has happened to you guys? All this talk of being nervous. You’ve been with these women for ages. What the hell are you so nervous about?”
The three of us look over at him and frown. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out, shithead,” I snap, clearly overreacting to his stupid comments.
Matthias ignores him and focuses on me instead.
“Forget Kellen. He never understands anyway. You’re nervous because it’s a big deal.
You’ve got hundreds of guests downstairs in the yard, an ice sculpture on the patio that’s never going to make it through this day, and a fountain with booze near it that’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. ”
That breaks the tension in the room, and we all laugh. “That’s my concession to my mother-in-law. It seems that’s the trade-off Eden chose because her mother was upset I’m not Sicilian.”
My brothers look at me strangely, which I understand since I’ve never said something so odd, so I explain, “It seems there was a problem in her mind that I’m not the same nationality as Eden and her family. What are we anyway?”
The four of us shake our heads since neither of our parents ever talked about what nationalities we were. I’ve always suspected we were just of some vague northern European descent. Nobody ever talked about it, so it never meant anything.
“Well, Eden is one hundred percent Sicilian. It means something to her family.”
“You mean Italian, right?” Ronan says, thinking he’s correcting me.
He’s wrong, though. She explained it all to me after that day she talked to her mother. “No, it’s Sicilian. There’s a difference.”
Matthias sits down on the bed and adjusts his bow tie. “So her father didn’t care but her mother did? That seems weird. I’d think her father would have had a problem with it.”
I laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. “No, in fact, Nico loves me. He has from the moment we met. It was Janine who had the problem. So that’s the story behind how my wedding reception got a whiskey sour fountain.”
All of this talk about my mother-in-law and her issues at least has the effect of calming me, so I turn to Ronan and ask him to give me one last look to make sure I’m ready. He scans my tux before moving his attention to my head.
“I think you’re good to go. Kellen and I better get down there. Matthias, you stay here and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid,” he says, throwing his head back in laughter.
“Like what?” my older brother asks, clearly not getting the joke.
I pat Matthias on the shoulder. “He means just in case I get cold feet.” I turn to Ronan and say, “I’m already married, you idiot. This is mostly just for show and to make her parents happy. I was fine just going on with life once all of you found out.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. Well, we need to get downstairs anyway. Your guests are waiting.”
Ronan and Kellen walk out, leaving Matthias and me alone. I look around the room as I think about how many times this was the start of our teenage antics, although we usually had one other partner in crime.
“Remember how many nights the three of us snuck out? We’d meet up in my room here because it was farther than yours and Theo’s from Mom and Dad’s room and quietly tiptoe down the stairs.
Then Eleanor would see us but pretend she didn’t, which was the final hurdle before we headed out to cause trouble. ”
Matthias smiles. “I wish he was here to see you get married. He’d get a laugh out of how nervous you were before.”
“You mean he’d bust my balls about being in love. Theo never failed to find my romantic life amusing.”
The memory of the day I found out he slept with that girlfriend I just broke up with flashes through my mind. “I guess I should be happy he isn’t here. He might try to sleep with Eden.”
That makes Matthias laugh. “She’d never go for it. She hated him.”
Shocked to hear that, I try to remember her ever saying anything about Theo. Nothing comes to mind.
“Really? I don’t think she ever said anything to me that made me think she hated him. Why?”
“Ava told me a long time ago. Maybe it was because she felt like she was in competition with him for her friendship. Or maybe she just read him right and knew he was a dog. I don’t know. All I know is Ava told me Eden couldn’t stand Theo, so even if he did make a move on her, she’d shoot him down.”
I like that idea, and knowing my wife, she’d make it painful when she rejected him. Good. That would make us even for all the shit he pulled otherwise.
Matthias may feel like having Theo here would be nice, but I’m not that sentimental. Too many things happened to make me not care at all that he’s not here today.
I stand in front of my older brother and spread my arms out. “One last check before I go down and stand before God and far too many people I don’t know well enough to feed a nice meal. How do I look?”
He scans the front and back of my tux like Ronan did and nods. “Looks good. Let me see you smile.”
I do as he asks and wait as he looks at my teeth. “Nothing stuck in them. I think you’re ready.”
“Thanks, man. That’s what the best man’s real job is. Checking for stray pieces of lettuce in the groom’s teeth.”
A knock at my bedroom door surprises the two of us, and I open it to find none other than my mother-in-law Janine standing there in a dark purple dress I’m sure is meant to signify she’s in mourning over today’s nuptials. Not exactly the person I thought I’d see right before my wedding.
“I want to talk to you,” she says as she pushes past me to walk into my room. She looks at Matthias and points toward the doorway she just strolled through without an invitation. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Marius alone.”
My older brother has always been a generally polite guy, but he doesn’t leave because of her request. He looks over at me and waits for me to say something, and as much as I’d love to tell him to stay, I have a feeling I need to let Janine say whatever’s on her mind. It’s not like it’ll change anything.
“I’ll be downstairs waiting for you, Marius,” my brother says, giving Janine the side-eye before walking out into the hallway.
Alone with my mother-in-law, I can’t help but notice how much she looks like my Duck. She’s older, but the signs that she was once as stunning as her daughter still remain.
“What’s up, Janine?” I ask with a chuckle, unsure what she could have on her mind but sure it’s going to be interesting.
“I heard something today, and I want to know if it’s true,” she says flatly while folding her arms across her chest.
Great body language there. I have to wonder if she really does want to know if this thing she heard is true. I guess I’ll find out in a second or two.
I fold my arms across my chest to mimic her and lean against the chest of drawers. “Hit me with it, and I’ll let you know.”
Her gaze slides down my body and back up to my face, like she’s trying to figure out what the appeal is. I don’t think she wants that answer, though. If she did, she’d ask her daughter.
“Did you cheat on Eden?”
I’ve never actually felt gobsmacked, but Janine has finally made that something I can truly say I’ve experienced. My mind races to figure out what she could be referring to, but I have no idea since I haven’t been with another woman since Eden and I got together that night in Vegas.
And I haven’t wanted to.
“No. If you give me some more details about who I supposedly went with, I can probably clear things up for you.”
“Pretty brunette whose sister is married to your youngest brother. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t seem to like you much, which only makes the claim you two hooked up all the more believable.”
How nice. Even as she’s accusing me of cheating on her daughter, she sneaks in an insult about people not liking me. If I didn’t love my wife as much as I do, I’d tell this woman off right here without a single worry about hurting her feelings.
As for Kelly, while I didn’t cheat on Eden with her, I can’t deny I’ve been with her. Why she hates me so much I can only speculate since she dumped me, not vice versa.
“Well, her name is Kelly, and while I did have a relationship with her in the past, it didn’t happen since I met your daughter.”
“You might want to tell her that since she heard what I heard.”
I hate this woman. Why didn’t she lead with that instead of taking up my time with her bullshit?
Without another word to Janine, I rush out of my room and down the stairs to where I know Duck is getting ready.
Matthias sees where I’m going and tries to stop me with the reminder that I’m not supposed to see the bride before the ceremony, but since we’re already married, I don’t think that superstition applies in this case.
And I don’t fucking care if it does.
Waving him off, I knock on the door a single time and push the door open to see Eden and Ava staring at me in shock. I don’t know for sure, but it looks like Eden’s been crying.
I point at her best friend and brusquely order her to leave. “We need to talk, so I need you to leave us alone.”
Ava waits a second and then hurries out when she sees I’m deadly serious. It’s not my usual style, but I need Eden to hear the truth from me.
She’s calm, which makes me wonder if Janine lied to me. “What are you doing, Marius? You aren’t supposed to see me, remember?”
“Yeah, that’s not really apropos since we’ve been married for a while and this is a show for your family. Regarding that, I just had a visit from your mother. She said you heard I cheated on you. Is that true?”
Duck rolls her eyes and lets out a heavy sigh. “My mother told you that?”
“Yes. Are you upset? She made it seem like you believed I cheated on you.”
In her typical fashion, she walks over to me and immediately begins to straighten my bow tie.
Looking up at me, she smiles and answers, “I knew about you and Kelly before we even got together. I never thought you were a monk before Las Vegas, Marius. She and I had a laugh about it at Ronan and Kate’s wedding, in fact. ”
“Then why the hell did your mother act like you were rattled by the news?” I ask before dipping my head to kiss her softly on the lips.
“Because she’s my mother, baby. She’s just that type of person.”
“This is all because I’m not Sicilian, isn’t it?”
She nods and kisses me. “Probably. I’m sorry you’re stuck with the worst mother-in-law. I wish she wasn’t like this, but if it’s any consolation, we won’t have to spend much time with her after today.”
“Janine is never going to warm up to me, is she?”
“No, but think of it this way. If you have to have one of my parents hate you, it’s better to have my mother and not my father be the hater.”
She’s got a point. At least the guy who knows people who order hits on others likes me. I guess I can put up with her bossy, intrusive mother.
“Just tell me you and I are okay. That’s all that matters.”
Smiling, she brushes a piece of lint off my tux lapel and says, “We’re okay, Marius.
Three months ago, we weren’t okay. Today, we’re fine.
Baby, we’re more than fine. We’re about to walk out in front of all our friends and family and have a wedding.
We look great, my bridesmaids and your groomsmen look great, and afterward, we’re going on a two-week vacation, just the two of us.
I don’t think things get better than that. ”
That right there—that ability to put everything into focus and make me see what’s important—that’s the best part of being in love with Duck.
“Well, I better get out there. I hear a beautiful woman in a white dress is coming to see me, and I don’t want to be late.”
I give her one last kiss before the ceremony and start walking toward the door. Behind me, she says, “You can’t be late, baby. You and I are the show today, so no worries. I love you, Marius, and thank you for coming in here to find out if I’m okay.”
Looking back at her, I let the image of her white wedding dress full of lace and satin fill my eyes. “I love you too, Duck. I’m always going to be there to make sure you’re okay. That’s what being your husband is all about. See you in a few minutes. I’ll be the guy checking you out from the altar.”
Matthias and Ava wait outside in the hallway looking worried, so I quickly explain what the problem was. She hurries into the room to talk to Eden, and my brother simply shrugs when he hears what Janine was really up to.
“You’ve got yourself a live one in that lady, Marius. Good luck.”
As much as I know my mother-in-law is going to be a hassle when we have to deal with her, I’m not worried. Duck and I are way too much in love to let one person ruin what we have.
I clap him on the back and point toward the door to the patio. “I think it’s showtime.”