Chapter 52 #2
“You’re not my fucking brother.”
“Give it time.”
“Romeo,” King growled.
Jasper’s mouth closed.
Cameron looked up at his father with a smug little smile that said this entire situation was proving something he had been telling the adults for years.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek.
Frank leaned closer to Georgie, speaking quietly enough that I couldn’t hear every word, but I didn’t need to.
I was eighteen. I had made my choice. Jasper wasn’t forcing me into anything.
Georgie could hate the timing and still understand that none of his objections changed the answer I had already given.
Josie slid her hand into his.
Georgie still looked miserable.
But he stopped arguing.
C.C. moved over to Jasper and punched him in the arm. “I’m still pissed at you.”
“I gathered.”
“You owe me.”
“Apparently everybody in this room is keepin’ a tab.”
“Mine has interest.”
“That sounds illegal.”
She smiled sweetly. “Family rates.”
Jasper rubbed his arm and looked toward me.
For a second, the people around us blurred at the edges. His smile was small, almost questioning now that my family was here and the moment no longer belonged only to us.
I smiled back.
The relief that moved through his expression made my throat tighten all over again.
Then Granny started toward me.
My flowers trembled.
I hadn’t noticed until her eyes dropped to them.
She stopped in front of me, and whatever strength I had managed to gather disappeared beneath the familiar warmth in her face.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Tears spilled before I could stop them.
“I’m sorry.”
Granny’s expression changed instantly. “For what?”
“For leaving like that. For not waking you.” I glanced around at the flowers, the priest, Jasper’s family and mine crowded into a Bourbon Bar because apparently this was what my wedding looked like. “For almost doing this without you.”
Her hands came up and cupped my face, exactly as they had countless times since the day she brought me into her life. “There is nothing for you to apologize to me for.”
“I left you a note.”
“You left me two phones, a note, and enough reason to put an entire motorcycle club on an airplane before lunch.”
A laugh broke through my tears.
Granny wiped beneath my eye with her thumb. “I’m furious with him. That is entirely separate from you.”
Behind her, Jasper muttered, “Good to know.”
Glorianna smacked his arm.
He shut up.
Granny’s faint smile disappeared as she looked at me more closely. The hands holding my face gentled, and I knew what she was going to ask before she said it.
“Are you sure?”
I looked past her.
Jasper stood where I had left him, his mother beside him and C.C.
on his other side. Gator was a few feet away.
King still looked as though marriage wouldn’t prevent him from committing homicide later.
Cameron had somehow acquired something to eat and was watching the entire thing as calmly as if he had arranged the day himself.
But Jasper wasn’t watching any of them.
He was watching me.
The man who had spent nearly a year waiting for me.
The man who stopped when I kissed him because he wanted me to be certain.
The man who listened when I finally told him about Charlie and found something to love in the part of myself I had been most afraid to show him.
The man who had asked me to become his wife and then stood in front of every person I loved without retreating when they demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing.
The answer settled inside me with a familiarity I recognized.
There had only been one other time in my life when I had known something with that kind of certainty.
“Yes.”
Granny searched my face.
I smiled through the tears. “I’ve only ever been this sure about one other thing.”
Her brows drew together.
I looked toward Frank and Claudia.
Claudia’s hand rose to her mouth.
Frank went completely still.
I didn’t have to say Charlie’s name.
Granny understood.
So did they.
Years ago, I had looked at Claudia and known I could trust her with the most important thing I had ever been responsible for.
The decision had hurt. It had frightened me.
None of that had ever made me question whether it was right.
Charlie had the parents and the family I’d wanted for him, and seeing Frank and Claudia standing together now only reinforced what I had always known.
This decision was different because it was for me.
But the certainty felt the same.
Granny’s eyes filled. She nodded once. “Then that’s good enough for me.”
My breath left me in a shaky rush.
She pulled me into her arms, careful of the flowers caught between us, and I held on as tightly as I could. For those few seconds, I wasn’t standing in the Bourbon Bar in New Orleans about to marry a Cajun biker after the strangest twenty-four hours of my life.
I was Granny’s girl.
When she released me, she kissed my cheek and turned toward Jasper.
He straightened immediately.
Granny studied him for a long moment before looking down at her left hand.
I saw her fingers touch the ring before I understood what she meant to do.
My breath caught.
I had never seen Granny without it.
Not once.
The ring had been on her hand every day I had known her, worn smooth through years of living and loving the man who had put it there.
Sometimes she twisted it when she talked about him.
Sometimes she touched it without seeming to realize she was doing it at all.
I had stopped thinking of it as jewelry years ago. It was simply part of Granny.
“Granny.”
She slid it from her finger.
The tears came back immediately.
Granny looked at the ring resting in her palm for a long moment before lifting her eyes to Jasper. Whatever she saw in him seemed to settle something inside her, because she walked over and held out her hand.
Jasper stared at the ring.
For perhaps the first time since everyone arrived, he had absolutely nothing to say.
Granny took his hand and placed the ring in his palm, then folded his fingers carefully around it.
“When you put this on my girl’s hand,” she said quietly, “you remember what it means.”