Chapter 6
chapter
six
Heath
I have four hours between breakfast and the rehearsal and I spend most of them working.
Because work does not require anything from me emotionally.
It’s familiar and absorbing in the way that only something you’ve spent decades building can be.
I sit in my suite and go through the reports from the resort manager and answer emails and review the quarterly projections for the other two properties and I am almost completely successful at not checking my phone every twelve minutes to see if somehow, through some mechanism I cannot explain, Clover has found a way to contact me.
She has not.
I don’t know her room number. I gave instructions to have her upgraded, but I hadn’t asked which room.
I could find out in about thirty seconds.
This feels like a line I shouldn’t cross, showing up at her door without warning when she doesn’t know I own this place and doesn’t know I’ve been thinking about her since I woke up to find her gone.
Well. She’ll find out I own it eventually. Probably.
I move on to finalize my best man’s speech. It takes me the better part of an hour, not because I don’t know what to say about my son, but because I want to say it right.
How do you express everything you want to say to the little boy who grew into your best friend? Leo and I have been through everything together. My son deserves a great speech. I read it back to myself once, make two changes, and decide it’s done.
Then I get dressed for the rehearsal and go downstairs.
The beach in the late afternoon is something else entirely.
The light goes golden and flat this time of day.
The resort’s wedding coordinator, Jana, is already there when I arrive, tablet in hand, speaking rapidly into a headset with the focused energy of someone running a small military operation.
Which, in fairness, is not far from what a destination wedding is.
I take my place where Jana directs me and watch the wedding party begin to assemble.
Leo comes and stands next to me, and for a moment it’s just the two of us and the sound of the water.
I think, not for the first time, that whatever I did right in this life, Leo is it. The rest of it I can take or leave.
“I don’t think I need to walk down the aisle,” Leo says, studying the setup with the practical air he gets from me and the architectural eye for how spaces work that he apparently got from somewhere else. “You and I can just come out together.”
“However you want to do it.” I pause, glance down at my bare toes in the sand. “With the fact that you already convinced me not to wear shoes to the wedding, I’m game for whatever now.”
Leo laughs. “It’s a beach wedding. Shoes would be dumb.”
“Fair enough.”
Jana begins directing traffic with calm authority. She walks us through the sequence, the flower girls, and the processional order. I watch the setup with half my attention and spend the other half scanning the assembled wedding party with a casualness I am not actually feeling.
KiKi’s not here yet, so that cuts down on any potential drama. At least for the moment.
Lizzie, Graham’s wife, is helping navigate her kids down the aisle.
Bennet, the ring bearer, has the pillow hanging at his side.
Lydia, the flower girl is tossing petals at people.
Which frankly is what I’d want to do with them too.
I see my brother smile. He’s taken to fatherhood naturally and I won’t be surprised if he and Lizzie announce they’re adding to their family soon enough.
It makes me grateful all over again that my brother found her.
“Then we have our maid of honor,” Jana says.
I look up and nearly swallow my own tongue.
It’s her. Clover.
She’s wearing a sundress the color of sea glass, her red curls half-pinned up. She has the slightly distracted air of someone counting steps in their head. She hasn’t seen me yet.
Then she does.
I watch it happen. The exact moment her eyes find mine. The way her whole body goes still for half a second, like a record skipping. And then she stumbles.
I’m moving before I’ve decided to move. It’s reflexive, the way catching something before it hits the floor is reflexive.
I’m at her side, hand at her elbow, steadying her, and I am close enough to smell her shampoo and feel the warmth radiating off her skin and every single sensible thought I have assembled over the course of this afternoon evaporates.
Her eyes are wide. She’s looking up at me like she’s trying to solve a math problem, but the equation keeps changing.
“We’ll talk about everything later, baby girl.
” I say it quietly, just for her. I settle her on her feet, and then I turn and walk back to my son.
Because we’re in the middle of his wedding rehearsal and I have duties here that exist whether or not my heart is currently running at twice its normal speed.
I resume my place next to Leo.
He glances at me. I look straight ahead.