4. Plot Twist in a Blue Dress
PLOT TWIST IN A BLUE DRESS
Dawson
Iwas used to weddings on the ranch. I’d witnessed hundreds over the years.
When your family runs the sole luxury dude ranch and vineyard in the county, you get accustomed to seeing strangers in tulle, drunk on rosé and joy, doing the Chicken Dance at two in the afternoon.
But this was the first time one of my siblings had been the groom.
It wasn’t subtle, but my mom’s firstborn was raised by billionaires and had made billions of his own, so Deacon spared no expense for his bride.
For the reception, the staff had transformed the barn into something you’d see on a reality show—industrial string lights zigzagged across the rafters, wood farm tables set end to end under extravagant chandeliers decorated with antique rose garlands and fairy lights, and enough bouquets of wildflowers to make it look like the blooms had followed us from the meadow and multiplied.
Even the weather showed up for the occasion, a perfect seventy-two degrees with a breeze strong enough to keep the bugs down but not so strong as to upend the centerpieces.
There were at least two hundred people, but I only recognized about thirty, mostly staff and family, the rest of the guests Deacon had flown in from Hope Falls, where he and Jenna lived.
I’d come stag to every previous wedding I’d ever attended. It was easy, peasy. No pressure, nobody ever expected the grumpy Lockhart brother to step onto the dance floor. But this time, I had a date, and the novelty of it put me on edge.
I sipped my beer and watched her on the dance floor.
I still wasn’t sure why I’d gone along with it when she invited herself.
I hadn’t even finished the sentence—“I have to go to my brother’s wed—” before she’d exclaimed, “I love weddings!” and started shopping for a dress.
I’d been racking my brain trying to figure out how and why I’d let this happen.
The only thing I could figure out was that it had something to do with the fact that lately I’d been wanting more than just casual hookups, not with Angie, just with a life partner.
Who was I kidding? I wanted it with the-who-shall-not-be-named because our relationship ended twelve years ago, and it was pathetic that I hadn’t gotten over it.
The silver lining of the day was that my mom had been so busy with the event, my “date” and I had slid under her radar. No introductions had been made, which was a huge relief to me.
In fairness, having Angie on my arm hadn’t been all bad.
During the ceremony, she laughed at the right times, awed at the correct moments, and she was a hit at the reception.
She was eating up ranch gossip with the staff and even made my dad blush with a story about her first day in the ER.
Now, she was on the dance floor with some of the Hope Falls guests doing TikToks.
That left me at the edge of the barn, nursing a beer and wishing there was a polite way to Irish exit my own brother’s wedding.
My brother Damon found me by the pie table where the strawberry rhubarb was already whittled down to a single, glossy wedge sweating under the string lights.
Damon nudged past me with the practiced elbows of a man who’d spent his entire adolescence fighting for the last slice of pie and attention.
As the third in line, he had major middle child syndrome.
He also had the easy confidence of a younger sibling who’d never known a day of not getting what he wanted.
It didn’t hurt that he could charm his way out of anything and had deep dimples that made the opposite sex swoon from the time he was old enough to flirt, which for him was in preschool.
“She’s cute,” he said, already using his fork as a pie retrieval tool, eyes locked on the orange flash of Angie spinning on the floor. “I’m honestly surprised this one lasted. Never thought I’d see you with someone who wore heels taller than a fence post.”
I wanted to ignore his commentary, but Damon’s whole personality was persistence. He’d always been the brother who never stopped talking just because you didn’t answer. If anything, that only made him more determined.
“We’re not serious,” I relayed, hoping to cut off the conversation before it got traction.
Damon made a ceremony of licking strawberry goo from his thumb with a carnivorous flourish, then pointed at me with the fork, using the tines to punctuate the air. “You brought sand that wasn’t serious to the beach? No wonder you look miserable.”
I knew I shouldn’t bite, yet, “I’m not miserable,” slipped out anyway.
Oldest child habit: always defend, never admit.
Deacon showing up on my mom’s doorstep technically stripped me of my position as the eldest of her sons, but I still considered myself the oldest of my brothers. I was the oldest Lockhart. It had been such a huge part of my identity my entire life.
Damon’s brows sailed up, and he forked an entire quarter of pie into his mouth, then talked around the bite. “Tell that to your face.”
He was right, of course. Weddings were always shit days for me.
Each time I watched a couple stand before God and their family to declare their love and commitment to one another, it was a blinding reminder of the future I’d lost. Every bouquet toss and first dance reminded me of all the things I’d planned on having by now and didn’t.
I tried to reset my mood with a long drag from the bottle.
The microbrew was so cold it burned straight through my teeth and throat, settling in my stomach like a dare.
I kept my eyes on the dance floor, where Angie and several other guests were flossing (the dance, not the dental routine), and tried to tune out the anxiousness in my chest.
Damon finished his pie, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and nudged me with his elbow. “C’mon, man. At least pretend you’re having fun. It’s a party. Not a funeral.”
He meant well. But Damon was the kind of guy who could talk himself out of any bad mood, and into any girl’s pants, in under five minutes. I’d never understood how we could share genetic material and be such polar opposites.
I scanned the crowd again, wondering if maybe I’d have a better time if I ducked out to the stables to check on the newborn foals.
But then I saw my mom. She was standing at the far end of the barn, framed by a pyramid of champagne glasses and enough wildflowers to camouflage a small animal.
She wore her signature look: a vintage tea-length dress, her hair falling around her face in soft waves, she looked like a cross between a ’50s wife and a Disney princess.
She caught my gaze and began to stride straight towards me.
I braced myself, certain she was about to drag me into a receiving line or—worse—ask me to make a toast.
But then I sensed a disturbance, like a subtle ripple in the air. It was the way a few heads turned at once, the kind of micro-climate shift that only happened when Dr. Giovanni Russo walked into a room.
Gio, my best friend since Little League, the devil on my shoulder, my forever wingman.
He was wearing a three-piece suit like he’d been sewn into it, stubble that looked intentionally careless, and sunglasses that he slid off as he crossed the barn.
He looked like he’d just walked off a magazine spread, and every woman in a ten-yard radius took notice.
But Gio’s eyes weren’t scanning for women.
He was locked onto me, moving with a kind of single-minded purpose usually reserved for ER trauma code or last-minute airport sprints.
He cut through a cluster of guests, sidestepped a toddler with a confetti cannon, and stopped right before the dessert table.
I didn’t want to ask the obvious, so I kept it light: “If you’re here to stop the wedding, you’re about an hour too late.”
He didn’t answer, just glanced past me, eyes flicking behind me. I turned and saw my mom, a few feet away, her tiny frame vibrating like a chihuahua with a secret. And then, she approached and said, “Dawson, I need to talk to you. Now.”
Beside me, Damon who never took anything seriously, smiled, his expression was pure glee as he sing-songed, “Somebody’s in trouble.” He loaded another chunk of pie onto his plate, then motioned to Gio. “Did someone forget to RSVP?”
“I’m not here for the wedding,” Gio confirmed what I’d already suspected, that there was another reason he was there.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, looking between him and my mom, noting the tension radiating off both of them.
It’s not that I cared he crashed my half-brother’s wedding.
Originally, I’d planned on him coming as my plus-one, but he ended up having to work, and Angie inserted herself into that role. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, who died?” Damon asked, picking up on the weird vibes.
Speaking of weird vibes, as I stood there, goosebumps rose on my arm and the tiny hairs stood at attention.
I felt myself being drawn to something, or someone, who caught my eye on the back porch.
It was a woman, rather, the silhouette of a woman.
Before any of the rest of my senses caught up with telling my brain who I was looking at, my body knew.
The hairs on the back of my head and my arm stood straight up.
My chest grew so tight I couldn’t breathe.
My pulse raced wildly. All I could focus on was that blue dress moving in the breeze, the way the barn floodlights made the fabric glow, giving her an angelic aura.
Every step the figure took made my pulse spike.
For a second, I doubted myself. It couldn’t be.
But my body remembered even if my brain didn’t.
Even from a hundred yards away, in the shadow, I knew it was her.
I felt it in the cold sweat that prickled the back of my neck, the way my left hand went numb, the way my heart started rabbit-punching my ribs like it was trying to escape.