The Big Shebang
SLADE
“Shots,” Tanner declares, and plunks the bottle of whiskey down in front of me.
My mind’s not really on the whiskey or my brothers or any of the hustle and bustle going on around Rosemont.
It’s my wedding day. And all I can think about is the woman who’s about to be my wife.
It might be a very small, intimate wedding that Lila and I are having, just my family, since hers unsurprisingly sent their “regrets,” but there are still caterers and photographers and coordinators milling around the place.
My sister Josie flew in this morning, and that was a whole hullabaloo of greetings and happy reunions among everything else going on.
She and Sadie are with Lila right now, getting hair and makeup done in one of the guest bedrooms.
“No shots,” Walker says, pouring out glasses of amber liquid for all of us. “That ain’t how you treat a thirty-year single malt. Not like that cheap swill you bull riders guzzle.”
Tanner shrugs. “Potato, po-tah-to.”
Walker glowers. “This is a five thousand dollar bottle of whiskey, you heathen. You’re supposed to go slow.”
“Fuck going slow,” Tanner says, and knocks back the whiskey back in one go.
Walker rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I bet your girlfriends could start a complaint hotline about that attitude.”
Tanner grins. “Ain’t heard any complaints yet.”
“That’s because he doesn’t let any girl stick around long enough to become a girlfriend,” Rafe says, eyeing my brother knowingly. “Can’t hear a complaint if you never see her again.”
“I’m a busy man,” Tanner says with a shrug.
“One day,” Walker says, “You’re gonna learn the value of quality over quantity.”
Tanner give him a cool look, green eyes glittering. “I know the difference better than you think, my brother.”
Rafe takes the bottle and pours an extra finger of whiskey in my glass. “You look like you need it,” he tells me.
Rafe’s our brother in all but blood. Started working at Wild Rose when he was a teenager and we just about adopted him. Things were bad at home for him. Mom and Dad and all the rest of us made sure he found a family in all of us.
Him and Tanner are the closest in age, and just the closest, period.
They’re complete opposites: quiet versus never-shuts-the-fuck-up, introverted versus extroverted, serious versus always cracking jokes.
A ranch foreman who prefers the shadows versus a bull rider born for the spotlight.
But somehow they’ve been best friends since they were fifteen.
I never understood the whole “opposites attract” thing.
Then I met Lila.
“No girlfriends,” Walker muses. “Just an endless train of buckle bunnies, huh?” He takes a sip of whiskey. “Hasn’t that gotten old for you yet, T?”
The sparkle in Tanner’s green eyes dims slightly.
“We’re not here to talk about me,” he deflects.
“We’re here to celebrate the unlikely union of one intelligent, talented, beautiful woman to a grumpy meathead with the personality of a rock.
” He pours himself another glass of whiskey and clinks his against mine.
“Stone-cold Slade Rhodes. Never thought you’d make it down the aisle. ”
“Me neither,” I say honestly.
Walker looks at me over his glass. “But this one doesn’t count, right? Being that it’s all on paper.”
He’s testing me, seeing how I react. I don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing that comment get under my skin. But Walker’s words slide in like a sharp splinter anyway, because the honest answer, the one I’m not going to give him, is that it counts to me. Every part of it.
I just drink my whiskey. “This is good stuff.”
Good as it is, it doesn’t do a thing for the wedding day jitters rolling through me.
I’ve stood in front of hundred mile an hour slap shots. I’ve gone into the corners with power forwards who outweigh me by thirty pounds. I’ve played game sevens in front of twenty thousand people with a Stanley Cup on the line.
I’ve never been nervous or terrified about any of it. Hockey is just a game, when it comes down to it. It’s not life or death.
I know life and death stakes.
After Mom got sick, nothing that happened on the ice ever rattled me again. It just didn’t matter. None of it was real.
But standing alone at the altar, waiting for my bride, the stakes feel very real.
What if she gets cold feet? What if I’m a shitty husband, the way I’ve always been shitty at relationships, and I can’t make her happy?
Even if this marriage is just on paper, I want to do right by Lila.
I take a deep breath. Try to concentrate. I reach for my meditation training and focus on something concrete.
The arch behind me is decorated with white roses and trailing greenery and peonies the pink color of Lila’s hair. Even the sky is rose-gold, like it wanted to match her too. The mountains are dark and snow-capped and enormous against the sky. Rosemont behind me. Wild Rose in every direction.
If I was going to get married anywhere, it was always going to be here.
Tanner is beside me, fidgeting with his bolo tie. Rafe at the end, hands clasped, eyes on Rosemont. And Walker on my other side, annoyingly at-ease, like he wasn’t just as nervous at his own wedding not too long ago.
I glance at my watch.
Tanner nudges me. There’s a knowing smile on his face and I expect some snarky comment, but all he says, under his breath is, “Don’t worry. She’ll be here.”
I fucking hope so.
Our wedding is too small to have chairs arrayed for guests, so we agreed to arrange ourselves by the altar.
My sister comes down the aisle first, giving me a wink.
Josie’s eyes flicker across the rest of us and widen briefly when they land on Rafe.
It’s rare to see him dressed up. He cleans up good. I guess we all do.
Sadie comes down the aisle next, a baby girl on each hip.
Both Mari and Anne are little clones of her with their big smiles and copper curls, but they’ve got the Rhodes green eyes, two pair of them blinking wide at the flowers and the candles and the general spectacle of it all.
Mari grabs a fistful of Sadie’s hair and holds on.
Anne slaps a little hand against her mother’s chest and dives for a boob, evidently hungry.
Sadie doesn’t miss a step.
When she reaches the altar she turns to Walker. He’s already reaching for her—for them—before she gets there. She settles their daughter into the crook of his arm and he drops his chin to kiss the top of the baby’s head. Then looks at Sadie.
The intimacy that passes between them in that gaze makes me look away. Theirs is a real marriage. But this is as close as I’m ever gonna get, and I’m gonna savor every second of it.
Assuming my bride makes it down that aisle.
Jonah appears in the doorway next. He’s wearing his little black cowboy boots and a small bolo tie that matches Walker’s while holding the ring pillow out in front of him with both hands, careful as can be. He makes it halfway down the aisle before he looks up, finds me, and breaks into a grin.
I give him a nod. A silent, you got this.
He straightens his shoulders and keeps walking. When he reaches me he holds the pillow up for my inspection with great seriousness.
“Both rings,” he reports. “Counted them twice.”
“Good man,” I tell him.
He takes his place beside me. Then, in a loud whisper: “Are you nervous?”
“A little,” I say.
“Uncle Tanner said you’d be real nervous. He said you’d probably throw up.”
I glare at Tanner, who grins and winks at Jonah.
“I’m fine, JoJo,” I tell him.
I’m not.
It feels like I’ve been standing up here for thirty years and all I want is confirmation that Lila is feeling okay, that she still wants to do this, that this isn’t the craziest thing either of us have ever done in our whole lives.
Then again, it probably is.
Jonah whispers, “I saw her inside. She looks really pretty, Uncle Slade.”
“Was she…” Nervous? Scared? Happy? I settle on, “Was she smiling?”
He grins up at me, missing three teeth and a pink sunburn starting to peel across his nose, but looking wise beyond his eight years all the same. “Oh yeah,” he says. “Big time.”
The doors of Rosemont open.
My dad steps out first. Dark suit, cowboy hat, boots worn smooth at the heel from thirty years of ranch work.
The little leather-bound book of vows in his hand.
He’s doing double duty today, walking her in and marrying us.
I’m grateful to him for it, but I can’t help but think Lila’s father should have been the one to walk her down the aisle.
Her family ought to be here to watch their daughter get married.
And my own mom should be here too. Deep inside me there’s a sudden burst of longing, brief and fierce as a comet across a dark sky.
I let myself feel it for exactly one second. Mom would have loved being part of this wedding. Would have loved my bride.
Then the doors open wider and I let it go.
Lila steps out.
She’s wearing a soft, flowy white dress that makes her look like a Greek goddess.
White cowboy boots beneath the hem. Her rose-gold curls tumble down her back, and she has flowers in her hair, pinned in a crown of braids.
Lucky ambles alongside her with a little flower corsage attached to her prosthetic leg.
Lila’s eyes find mine.
I stop breathing for a second.
She’s walking toward me across my family land, glowing in the blush-colored autumn light, easily the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and my heart actually hurts.
Tanner says something. I don’t even hear it.
I can’t take my eyes off Lila as she comes up the aisle until she’s standing beside me.
Close enough that I can smell her delicious sweet perfume and see the tiny pearl pins holding the braids in her hair.
Her lips curve into a smile, one that seems nervous, and I realize she was just as scared as I was standing up here waiting.
I take her hand without thinking. She looks down at it, my rough scarred hand around her small manicured one, and when her gaze meets mine again she doesn’t look so nervous anymore. She looks… happy.