9. Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Vic
W hen Tanner arrives at my apartment before the family dinner, I’m a nervous wreck. We’re telling my family we’re engaged tonight, and I’ve been pacing for the last half hour, waiting for Tanner to get here.
He takes one look at me when I open the door and raises an eyebrow. “Nervous?”
“What if he questions how quickly this is happening?”
“Then we tell him all the things we’ve practiced. We were friends in school, we met up again and everything clicked. We don’t want to wait for two years, but you also insist we get married at Blue Vista in the summer.”
He lists all the things we’ve discussed over the past couple weeks in such a calm, rational way, he almost has me convinced that these are exactly the reasons we’re getting married immediately and not because we’re trying to stage a coup on my father.
“You want something to take your mind off it?” he asks, pulling a small black box out of his pocket and turning it in his hand.
I stare at the box, intensely curious to see what’s inside. I take a breath and try to conceal my reaction. “Sure.”
He snorts and I know I haven’t fooled him. “Should I get down on one knee?” he asks.
I fold my arms over my chest. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You already asked me to marry you. I already said yes. Just give me the ring.”
He smirks. “I knew it. You’re not patient at all, are you?”
“Not right now, I’m not.”
He opens the box, facing toward himself, not letting me see. He chuckles at my sound of frustration and holds out his hand. I place my left one in it, and he slides the ring onto my finger.
As soon as I see it, I gasp.
“Tanner. It’s gorgeous.”
It’s a rose gold ring with an oval diamond. On either side of the diamond are three smaller ones of different sizes in a line along the band, the biggest next to the main stone, getting smaller the further away they are.
“You like it?” he asks.
“I love it. It’s perfect.”
I look up at him and catch the relief that crosses his features before he smiles. “Good. It has a matching wedding band. I bought that, too. So we just need to find one for me.”
“The man’s wedding band often matches the woman’s. You don’t mind that it’ll be rose gold?”
He huffs a laugh. “No. That won’t bother me at all.” He takes another box out of his pocket and opens it, showing me the ring that accompanies this one. It’s also rose gold, but is two slim bands twisted together. On some of the twists is a line of tiny diamonds. “They weren’t terribly expensive.”
The words come out stilted and I catch his hand, stopping him. “I don’t care how much they cost. They’re beautiful.” I reach up and kiss his cheek. “Thank you.” Then I step back. “And thank you for the distraction from my nerves. Ready to brave the lion’s den?”
He nods and takes my hand as we leave the apartment, his thumb swiping across my finger, as though checking to make sure the ring is there. He puts the wedding band into his pocket again as we ride the elevator down to the parking garage.
“I want to buy you your ring,” I say.
He looks at me, head tilted to one side. “Sure. If you want to.”
I nod. “Now that I see what you got, I’ll get something that will match, but that I think will suit you.”
His smile spreads slowly. “Yeah? Am I going to have to wait until the wedding to see it?”
“Yes.”
“So I have to be patient, but you don’t?”
I raise my eyebrows. “That’s right. Do you have a problem with that?”
His mouth quirks up in half a smile. “None at all.”
We walk to my car and it isn’t until we reach it and are forced to let go that I realize we’ve been holding hands the whole time.
At the restaurant, Mom and Dad are already there with my brother Liam. Tanner and I walk up together, our hands linked. I notice it the second Mom sees us, the way her brow tightens in confusion for a moment before relaxing into a smile. She touches Dad’s arm and gestures to us.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” I whisper to Tanner, but he doesn’t slow down.
“It’ll be okay,” he says. “I’m right next to you. We’re in this together.”
I pause, drawing him to a stop a few feet from the table. I meet his eyes, coming to the startling realization that I trust him. It feels almost like when I have Spencer with me, that same sense of someone having my back, no matter what. We nod at the same time, like we’re a team. Completely in sync.
“Hi,” I say as we reach the table.
Tanner lets go of my hand to pull my chair out for me. I sit, and he sits next to me.
“Tanner and I have some news,” I say next. We’d discussed how this would go and that I would take the lead, since this is my family. He’s going to tell his family this weekend and I’ll be with him, but for now, this is my show. “We went on a date a couple weeks ago and have been talking a lot over the last little while. We’d actually been friends at UBC and it turns out, we’ve had feelings for each other for a long time. So we’re dating now. But then, this morning before work, Tanner asked me to marry him.” I hold up my hand. “I said yes.”
Mom gasps, Liam looks confused. Dad narrows his eyes at Tanner.
“This is awfully fast, don’t you think?” Dad asks.
“When you know, you know,” I say, turning to smile at Tanner. His eyes are full of adoration. He makes it easy for me to look at him the same way. I turn back to my family. “As I said, we were really close in university, but with all the craziness of him starting at Sterling, and me starting Blue Vista, we kind of lost touch right after. We decided we’ve already wasted so much time. We don’t want to waste any more.”
Mom takes my hand to examine the ring. “It’s not what I would have chosen for you. Rose gold isn’t as elegant as white gold. And the diamond is a little on the small side.”
I take my hand back, placing it over Tanner’s on the table. “I love it.”
And that statement is one hundred per cent true. I wouldn’t ask for anything to change about it. The rest of what we say tonight might be lies and stretched truths, but that one thing is not.
“Congratulations, then,” Liam says. “I guess if you’re happy with this, great.”
I smile at my brother. We’ve never really been close. He’s six years younger than me and by the time he was born, I’d already become friends with Spencer. As we grew, we never became close. He was always interested in doing what he wanted while I did what I was told, searching for my parents’ approval that never came.
“When’s the big day?” Dad asks.
I turn to him with a smile. “Actually, we decided to have the wedding really soon. Ours will be the first wedding at the new Blue Vista location at Crescent Beach.” I smile at Tanner and he smiles back, turning his hand under mine so our fingers link. “We thought it would be special to be the first wedding there. We know it’s really soon, but what’s the difference between three weeks and three years other than how long you need to plan?”
“Three weeks?” Dad says, bringing my attention back to him. “You’re getting married in three weeks?”
“Yes,” I confirm. “Three weeks and two days, but who’s counting, right, honey?”
Tanner lifts a brow at my use of the endearment. It sounded weird when I said it, but we can work on that.
“I’d prefer it was tomorrow,” he responds, lifting my hand to kiss the back of it.
The way his eyes never leave mine as he presses his lips to my skin makes me flush. I want to kick him under the table for being a little too over the top, but he definitely puts on a good show.
“August first?” Liam asks, sounding politely interested, unlike our parents, who seem downright shocked.
“Yes. Invitations will be going out on Monday.” I turn to Mom. “I’m also going dress shopping on Monday. I have to get on that quickly or else I’ll be walking down the aisle naked.”
Tanner snorts. I look at him and he shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. “I just don’t think I’d mind that.”
This time, I do kick him under the table.
“With something that soon, I’m not sure who all will be able to make it,” Mom says, wringing her hands together.
“Will you three be able to make it?” I ask.
“Of course, darling,” Mom says. “But what about your father’s associates? And the members at the club? And of course we’ll need to invite Beckett Cole, even though we haven’t spoken to him much over the last fifteen years or so. He should be invited anyway, given your friendship with Spencer and how close we used to be.”
“I’m not concerned about if any of them can make it,” I say. “We’re not inviting them. Especially not Spencer’s dad. He’s lucky he got an invitation to Spencer’s wedding.”
Mom’s mouth drops open while Dad’s flattens into a line. After a second to recover from that bombshell, Dad says, “If you don’t invite them, you won’t be getting a dime to host the wedding.”
I shrug. “I didn’t want your money, anyway. Tanner and I are paying for it ourselves.”
Tanner slips his arm around the back of my chair, and it feels like we are a united front. Which is something I hadn’t known I needed.