Chapter 1 Sloane #2
I’m worrying my bottom lip between my teeth, bordering on ruining the carefully placed layers of lip stain, gloss, and liner Kima applied to give me the most natural yet glamorous look.
Thoughtful silence pools between us, and I wait patiently, even though I know it won’t be long before we have to move.
“One day, you’ll have to stop blaming yourself for what happened between me and your mother.” A tender palm cups my jaw. “She made her choices, and so did I. Our divorce isn’t your fault, and the fallout is not your responsibility. Today is a happy day, Bean. Let’s keep it that way, yeah?”
Everyone, from Mama, Mal, and Dom, has given me some version of this speech, but I’ve found no comfort in their words.
Dad’s words don’t exactly give me comfort either, but they do move the needle some.
Taking my torn-up heart from guilt-ridden to something less, something lighter.
Something that allows me to nod and slip my arm back through his, clutching tightly to his surprisingly hard bicep.
“Have you been working out?”
Humor pulls his lips up into a contagious smile. “A little.”
“You two ready?” We both look up to see Amelia, the on-site coordinator, rounding the corner, her fingers wrapped tightly around the clipboard in her hand, eyes bright with adrenaline and purpose.
Dad glances at me, waiting for my signal, and despite the butterflies that have just taken flight in my stomach, I manage to arrange my features into a mask of calm. “Yes.”
Amelia, who’s probably had this exact conversation in this very spot more times than she can count, gives us a genuine smile. “You look beautiful, Sloane. Dominic is going to be beside himself when he lays eyes on you in that dress.”
Blushing, I run my free hand over the beaded lace that makes up most of the see-through bodice of the gown Mal and I found together. It was the first one I tried on the day we had our impromptu, and still secret, dress-shopping experience.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now, let’s get you married.”
She turns on her heels and leads the way to the room where the ceremony will occur.
Her red-bottom stilettos are like the opening cadence of a drum line, purposeful clicks of wood on the metal rim of a snare drum, tapping out the beat of my heart.
The rhythm of a new beginning I never allowed myself to dream of, let alone want.
It hits me then, like it has so many times during the planning of this wedding, that doing this again—not just getting married but loving someone like this, with fervor and reverence, with ferocity and trust—was a reality I’d suspended the moment Eric walked out of my life for the last time.
Dom was an unlikely surprise.
He took a sledgehammer to my never-agains, laid waste to all the impossibilities I held close.
Demolished any and every idea of what I thought my life would look like after Eric.
At first, I thought he’d come to ruin me, to disrupt the precarious balance I’d created in the wake of a loss that destroyed us both, but when the doors swing open, revealing me to him and him to me, I’m reminded that ruin was never his goal, restoration was.
He believed in us when I didn’t even know that we could be anything.
He wanted me when all I thought I could be was a grieving widow.
A living, breathing grave marker. I used to look in the mirror and see nothing but a shell of a woman, a husk of a life that once was and would never be again.
But when he looked at me, he saw life. He saw fire.
He saw passion and a well of love waiting to be unearthed.
That same look is there in his eyes as he watches me walk down the aisle. Twin pools of obsidian glitter with unchecked emotion that sucks all the air out of the room. That whittles the world down until there’s nothing and no one except me and him.
I don’t remember everything from the night we met, but Dom’s told me about it enough times to impress his own memories onto the dreams I’ve been having on and off for years.
His words fill in the lines of the blurred images that have danced through my head for so long, straightening them out, giving them shape.
I’m still not sure what’s real or not, but every time I dream of the moment I found him on that back porch and sat on his lap, declaring that he was exactly the kind of trouble I was looking to get into, he looks at me just like this.
Like the sun rises and sets on me.
Like his every breath is an extension of the air I draw into my own lungs.
Like he’d wait another lifetime for a moment like this, where he gets to stand at an altar and declare in front of a room full of our family and friends that he’s mine and I’m his.
We hold each other’s gazes until I’m standing before him, and I only look away to hug my dad and kiss his cheek.
As soon as he steps back, taking a seat in the front row beside Mama, I’m back in the warm perfection of Dom’s orbit.
He takes my hand, offering me steady support as I navigate the two steps that deposit me at the altar in front of him and the officiant.
“Angel.” Heat-filled eyes run down the length of my body. It’s indecent. The desire he’s infused in one word. The need tightening his throat, making it hard for him to say more.
He doesn’t need to.
“Hi.” The greeting comes out soft. Shy. And Dom chuckles, “Hi? That’s what you decided to go with?”
“Yes, Dominic. That’s what I decided to go with.”
A thick brow rises, and he leans in close, so close his lips brush mine. “Back to Dominic, are we?”
“Mm-hmm.” I blink up at him, pulling in a lungful of his scent. “You smell amazing.”
“And you look good enough to eat.”
Before I can answer, the officiant clears his throat, and we reluctantly pull apart. Everyone in the crowd chuckles, and I blush profusely. Not just because of his words but because of what they’ve done to me. I’m wet now, anxious for this ceremony to be over so he can eat me.
Mischief plays across Dom’s handsome features as he straightens his tuxedo jacket.
It’s late August, hot and humid, but he doesn’t look the least bit uncomfortable.
In fact, he looks downright regal. Like his body was made for the lines of expensive black fabric.
Like he was made to stand before me with love shining in his eyes, prepared to make vows he’s already begun to keep.
The officiant begins the ceremony with a rueful chuckle and a joke about the impatient lovebirds.
Neither Dom nor I catch the specifics of the remark that has everyone in the room laughing loudly.
We’re too busy staring at each other. Wide hazel eyes on reassuring obsidian.
The thread that’s existed between us for so long arching between our bodies, alive and restless, eager for the finality of kiss-sealed promises.
From the rehearsal we had yesterday, I know it takes approximately eleven minutes and thirty-four seconds to get to the vow exchange.
I count every second in my head. We decided I would go first, but I’m still caught off guard when it’s my turn.
My fingers shake as I hand Mal my bouquet and take the piece of paper filled with words I’m still not sure convey the depth of feeling I have for this man.
She offers me a gentle smile. “You got this.”
Despite the confidence in her words, I’m still telegraphing anxiety. Before I can even unfold the paper, one of Dom’s long fingers is under my chin, tipping my head up so that I’m looking him right in the eyes.
“I love you, and I know you love me,” he says. His voice is a quiet, private murmur while his thumb runs a soothing circuit over the line of my jaw. “The rest of it is inconsequential.”
A symphony of sighs rings out from the line of women behind me, making me laugh nervously while the click and shutter of the ridiculous amount of cameras aimed in our direction freeze the moment in time.
When the room settles again, he pulls back, leaving me with the imprint of his adoration on my skin and just enough strength to say the words I’ve agonized over for months now.
“Dominic, I don’t think it’d be an understatement to say that no one pictured us ending up here.
” Another stream of laughter, this one rippling throughout the entire audience, follows my opening line.
Everyone in the room knows about our adversarial history, but only a select few know where it stems from.
“But you knew. Before I could imagine ever falling in love again, before I believed that I deserved something more than the heartache I’d resigned myself to living with forever, you knew.
You knew my heart and my mind. My dreams and my fears.
You knew what I was scared to want, and what I was too stubborn to think I deserved. ”
I abandon the quivering sheet of paper in my hands, trading the blurred letters for the lines of a face I could draw in the dark, and my breath catches in my throat.
Stalls in my lungs. Stutters and gasps and aches in my chest because of the storm clouds gathering in his eyes.
Layers of love and understanding greet me.
Remind me that everything I am is safe with him.
“Our forever existed in your mind, and you nourished it in your heart, crafted it with your hands. You made it real. You made us real. And we wouldn’t be here today, standing in front of our family and friends, on the precipice of our happily ever after, if it weren’t for you.
You never gave up on us, and I promise to never give up on you.
Your dreams are my dreams. Your home is my home.
Your heart is mine to cherish, nurture, and protect, not just today, but every day for the rest of our lives. ”