“You sure about this?” Gavin asks for like the millionth time.

“Quit busting my ass, man,” I growl, not needing this shit. I look down at my watch. Thirty minutes until show time. With every minute that passes, I’m more and more convinced I’m making the wrong decision. Having Gavin here poking at me is not helping.

“I’m just saying marriage is a big fucking step,” he says—proof he’s not going to zip it up.

“Seems to be working out well for you,” I respond.

“I love Casey. I’ve always loved her.”

“What-fucking-ever,” I growl. I’ve got a migraine working its way through me and I don’t need more of this crap.

“Faith asked Hope about you the other day.” This comes from Aden.

“She did?” I ask, doing my best to sound uninterested.

“Yeah. When Hope told her she was glad you two finally got your divorce, Faith hung up on her.”

“It wasn’t a divorce, it was an annulment,” I answer, refusing to look at him. I don’t know why the end of my marriage is a bitter pill to swallow, but it is. I don’t like when Aden and Gavin talk about it being a divorce too. That implies that Faith and I were truly together and couldn’t wait to get rid of each other. That’s not what went down—not really. We weren’t ever truly married, not in the real sense of the word. A wedding implies vows in front of a preacher, a big church full of your friends and family.

A day like today.

Except I don’t want to give Jacey my vows. I don’t want to get married. Before, I had a plan. I would get married, Jacey would get her trust fund, and I’d get my job. We’d live separately but together for a year and then file for a quiet divorce. By then the trust fund would solely be Jacey’s even if she ran off with her girlfriend. It wouldn’t matter if Daddy Dearest disowned her. And I’d have my job. I wouldn’t make my father-in-law pissed either, because how could it be my fault that Jacey preferred a woman to my dick?

It was a simple plan. Besides, even if the last part didn’t pan out—after a year I would have proven myself as a general manager. I would have had other offers. I could have left the Turnpikes behind and not blinked.

The only problem is that the closer it gets to acting on this plan, the more I want to just say forget it. What does it matter if I’m coming into the game older than most other coaches? I’m not over the hill yet. I can get a small coaching job and work my way up. I have the ability and the knowledge. I can do it on my own and I can do it… without selling my soul. Jacey deserves better and she needs to just lay shit out to her father.

All of these realizations would have been better days before the wedding… not as the piano music begins to play outside while guests find their seats.

“Ida Sue says Faith has been sick,” Aden says quietly, dropping yet another bomb.

My body jerks as I fight my reaction to that. Of course she’s sick. She practically stayed naked the entire time she lived in Colorado and they keep talking about the flu season on the damn news. The girl needs a keeper. There was a time I thought about volunteering for the job, but then she walked out on me again. Hell, there’s only so many fucking times a man can stand that.

“That’s too bad. She should go to a doctor,” I answer, trying to sound unconcerned. I glance at my watch again and my hand tightens into a fist.

Time’s running out.

Am I really going to go through with this?

“You don’t care?” Aden asks. “You have no feelings about Faith at all?”

“I barely know the bitch.” I hide the flinch I make when I call Faith a bitch. She’s not. She’s funny as fuck, she’s smart, sweet and she… God, she’s fucking beautiful.

I miss her. I miss her so much I ache and it doesn’t make sense. In fact, it probably makes me the stupidest fuck in the history of the world, but it’s true.

I don’t want to do this.

Things with Faith might be over, but I can’t make life decisions like I’m making. It’s time to man up.

“Just wanted to clear that up, because she’s in California.”

“She’s what?” I ask, Aden’s words stopping me from opening the door to the main chapel.

“She’s coming in with her cousin Black today. At least that’s what Ida Sue told Hope.”

“Why?”

“No idea. Maybe she wanted to see her ex-husband get married,” Aden says and my gut twists at the thought of Faith being out in the crowd when I give vows to another woman.

Fuck.

“Hey, where you going? We don’t go outside until they start the pre-march music,” Gavin yells as I open the door. I planned on going to talk to Jacey in private, but the moment I open up the door the music begins.

My time has run out. The only chance I’m going to get to see Jacey is at the altar.

Fucking hell.