Chapter Thirty-Nine
For Better or Worse (But Mostly Better)
Poppy
One Year Later
George is eating my veil.
“George. No. Bad goat. Drop the—GEORGE!”
He looks me dead in the eye and takes another bite. Two thousand dollars of French lace, and this asshole’s treating it like an appetizer.
“I’m going to turn you into kebabs,” I tell him.
He bleats. Victorious. A piece of tulle hanging from his mouth like a trophy.
“Everything okay in here?” CeCe pokes her head into the bridal suite, takes in the scene—me in my wedding dress wrestling a goat, George looking smug—and starts filming. “This is content gold.”
“Help me!”
“Absolutely not. This is going viral.” She zooms in on George. “Work it, baby. Give me drama.”
“I hate you both.”
The door flies open. Dean stands there in his tux, looking like every dirty dream I’ve ever had, and freezes.
“You’re not supposed to see me before—”
“Is that goat eating our wedding?”
“Just the veil.”
“Just the—” He crosses the room in three strides, grabs George by the collar. “Listen, you terrorist. We had a deal. You behave, you get to be ring bearer. You act up, you become dinner.”
George bleats. Drops the veil.
“Thank you,” I breathe.
Dean hands George off to CeCe. “Take him. Now. Before I change my mind about the whole farm-to-table menu.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me,” he growls. Protective Dean is hot.
CeCe disappears with George. Dean turns back to me, and his face does that thing. That soft, stupid thing that still makes my stomach flip after a year.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“You look…”
“Like I just wrestled livestock?”
“Beautiful.” He steps closer. “Completely devastating, actually.”
“You can’t be here. It’s bad luck.”
“Poppy.” His hands find my waist. “We’ve had a goat destroy three separate events, a wedding where the groom fainted into the cake, and that incident with the flamingos. I think we’ve maxed out our bad luck quota.”
“The flamingos weren’t my fault.”
“You specifically requested ambitious bird options.”
“I meant doves!”
“You got ambitious.” He tucks an escaped curl behind my ear. “Twenty minutes?”
“Nineteen.”
“You’re really going to make me wait nineteen more minutes?”
“Dean Michael Whitaker.” I poke his chest. “We’ve waited a year. You can handle nineteen minutes.”
“Fine.” He kisses me anyway. Quick. Possessive. Full of promise. “But I’m going on record that this is cruel and unusual.”
“Noted for the court.”
He grins. That real one that only I get. “See you at the altar, wife.”
“Not wife yet.”
“Semantics.” He backs toward the door. “Don’t let George eat anything else.”
“Don’t let Mason give a speech.”
“He’s my best man. He has to give a speech.”
“Tell him to keep it PG.”
“I told him to keep it legal. Best I could do.”
He disappears. I turn back to the mirror, assess the damage. The veil’s toast, but honestly?
Kind of perfect.
Nothing about us has ever been pristine. Why start now?