Chapter 1 #2
I shouldn’t want anything to do with her.
I’m still tight with Alex.
She’s still the woman who ruined his wedding.
“One day my baby will be a grandma,” Freida sobs on my shoulder while I once again pull her hand off my ass.
“Come back down here if you want to smash a sand blob,” Pip says. “Look. I got one right here.” She shakes her fist in the air like she’s beating something.
And yes, I do mean that kind of beating and that kind of something.
“I know your brother,” I tell Ginny as I finally manage to make Freida sit down again. “I’ll go get him.”
“Noooo, don’t leave me,” Freida sobs. “Everyone leaves me. My baby is leaving me.”
“Ginny’s your baby,” I correct.
“But she embarrasses me.”
Fuck this. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Caro’s pretty. I’m pretty. Not Ginny. Ginny has pimples and ugly teeth.”
I swat her hand away from my ass for a third time as she reaches up for it, then take a step back. “What kind of a dick parent says something like that?”
Ginny’s head whips toward me.
“Everyone says it.” Freida goes onto her hands and knees and crawls after me.
“You’re her fucking mother. Do better. And sit down. You’re being a goddamn nuisance.”
“You’re getting on an Ottoman cruise ship?” Pip says.
Ginny’s staring at me with wide, wary eyes as her mother sobs harder.
“Everyone judges me,” Freida wails. “After all I’ve been through.”
“Sit. Down,” I order as the damn woman chases me on her hands and knees. “Stay.”
“I’m a widow,” she moans.
“That’s no excuse to be a dick to one of your kids.”
“I’m a widow, and you’re calling me names.”
Ginny drops her head, shoulders hunching in as she hugs herself. “I’ll go get my brother.”
And there it is again.
That overwhelming urge to pull her into my arms and hold her tight and assure her that she deserves so much better.
“Where’s she staying?” I ask Ginny, angling my head toward her mother.
Fuck getting help.
I’m removing Freida Rhodes from this wedding myself.
Ginny shrinks smaller, like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like she’s waiting for me to make a snarky comment about her not being able to manage her mother and about it ruining my night at this wedding.
The wedding I didn’t even want to come to.
I wanted to get here tomorrow or Monday. Not today.
But my producer insisted I come for the networking opportunities, and so here I am, unsuccessfully avoiding Ginny and unsuccessfully attempting to help when I’m the last person in the world she has any reason to trust.
My heart twists in my chest.
Who the fuck am I to lecture her mother about being nice to Ginny when I was an absolute ass to her for four years too?
“I’ll take her there,” I say. “So you can stay and enjoy the wedding.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I can’t leave my baaaaaby,” Freida bawls. I’ve backed against the pole that I was hiding behind, and Freida’s wrapping herself around my legs.
“Then you shouldn’t have gotten high.” I look at Ginny again. “Hotel somewhere?”
A thousand needles prick at my chest as she makes eye contact with me again.
All of her distrust—I deserve that.
“My brother and I will handle this,” she says stiffly.
“I don’t mind.”
“It’s a family matter.”
And I’m not family.
Never was. Never will be.
Because I handled my crush on her in the worst way possible for all of those years.
I pinch Freida’s elbow at a pressure point and get her to the floor again. “Stay,” I order again.
But as I say it, something else registers.
A new smell.
Burning.
Not marijuana smoke.
Burning-burning.
“Woo, did someone open the gates of Hell?” Pip asks. She’s still on the ground, staring up at the ceiling.
“Are you fucking serious?” Ginny shrieks.
A shimmery green formal hat with a wide brim—the hat Freida wore to the wedding as if she were British royalty—has lit up on fire beside the tractor’s front tire.
Ginny rushes the hat. “Get them out! Get my brother!”
Fuck.
I pick Freida back up and toss her over one shoulder, then rush to Pip and toss her over the other. “Get out,” I yell at Ginny as I race toward the door. “Not worth it. Get out.”
“Go get my brother,” she screeches back at me.
I burst into the open air, drop the women, and dart back into the barn, where—
Where my heart stops entirely.
The ballerina fabric.
The ballerina fabric on Ginny’s dress is on fire, lit by the flaming hat.
This time, I don’t hesitate to rush her.
Rush her and grip the fabric and rip it off the rest of her dress, throwing it on the ground and stomping on it.
“What are you doing?” she cries as she leaps on the hat again, marching on it in her stilettos.
“Putting you out,” I snap back. “Get out. You’re gonna burn your feet.”
The hat’s still burning.
Ginny’s still jumping on it with her barely there shoes.
Need to get the hat outside. The hat and the bottom half of Ginny’s dress.
“Get my husband,” Pip yells from the doorway. “If anyone’s lighting up his ashes, it’s me!”
“What the fuck?” a guy says.
Ten.
Tennessee.
“Fuck, Ginny, get out.” Her brother shoves me out of the way, grabs her as she’s still dancing skirtless on the flaming hat, and he does what I did for his mother and for Pip—tosses her over his shoulder and disappears out of the barn with her.
I need to get out too.
Get out before this gets worse.
Ginny Rhodes isn’t just hell on my heart.
She’s hell on weddings too.
Even when she doesn’t try to be.