Chapter Twenty-Seven
On the best of days, Everly wasn’t a fan of weddings—especially not fancy, five-hundred-guest weddings at the most sought-after church in Harbor City—but today was even worse. She hated love. Love sucked donkey balls dipped in rancid mayo. Love was a lie. Yeah, the timing of her moving through the heartbreak stages from sad but numb to hurt and pissed had coincided with showing up to the chapel to watch Carlo say “I do” for business purposes only to that evil hag Irena. Wasn’t she just the luckiest? Even worse, she had to pretend to be happy about being there. The irony of having to act like a member of Harbor City’s elite wishing the couple well after what had gone down with Tyler wasn’t lost on her.
And speak of the devil, he was heading straight toward where she and Nonna were waiting in the vestibule before they walked down to their assigned seats in the front row. The man looked like hell. His tie was askew. His shirt wrinkled. His scruffy beard had moved straight into the lost-in-the-wilderness stage. And the jerk was still hot enough to make her girlie parts sit up and say, “Hello hottie.” God, she hated him.
“What is he doing here?” she mumbled to herself as he made a beeline over to them.
“Lui è molto carino,” Nonna said, patting Everly’s forearm.
Cute? Yeah, despite the fact that his black tux seemed to hang on him a little more than it had before, it still made his blue eyes stand out. Of course, that wasn’t what she needed to be thinking about right now. Wishing there were more people than just her, Nonna, Alberto, and Carlo in the vestibule to add cover, Everly turned her attention to the closed door leading to the chapel because watching him wasn’t doing a damn thing to make the swirling emotions inside her subside.
It was a mistake. Diverting her focus just meant she didn’t see his final approach until it was too late.
“Everly,” Tyler said, tucking an errant hair behind her ear. “We need to talk.”
Hating how her body instantly responded to him with a yes-please shiver, she refused to look at him. “I’m busy.”
“Everly.” His voice deepened. “I want you. I promise I can make it fun again, just like it was before.”
She whirled on him. “What did you say to me?”
He just stood there, so close she could literally lean over and brush her lips across his jaw, looking like a man who’d been through the wringer and still managed to be the hottest person she’d ever seen in her life. It wasn’t fair. And now he told her he wanted her? Not needed her. Not loved her. But wanted her. After radio silence for weeks? After he’d watched her walk away at the gala without even trying to go after her. After his lame attempt to apologize last night? The spark of anger in her belly grew into a flame, and she held onto it with both hands, not caring if she got burned. Really, it was too late for that anyway.
“I want it to be like it was before,” he repeated. “Fun.”
Alberto, Carlo, and Nonna all stared at the live show of Everly’s humiliation, their mouths agape. Scratch that. Carlo’s mouth was agape. Nonna smiled placidly and Alberto had the smug expression of a man who had all the answers.
When she didn’t say anything—she couldn’t—he kept talking. “I know I was slow on the uptake. Turns out I’m good at reading other people’s motives and shit when it comes to knowing my own. And my motive, from the first moment you almost killed me with your boxes but spared me when I put my foot in my mouth, was to be with you. I’m miserable without you. You look miserable without me.”
She raised an eyebrow in an oh-really reaction because she’d seen herself in the mirror today but couldn’t promise the same of him. “So you want me and that means that I should just fall to the ground overwhelmed with joy? Do you know how many times my dad told my mom he wanted her? Do you know how many times she believed him? Every time right up until she put that rope around her neck. I deserve more than someone who wants me. I deserve someone who loves me. Can you say that? Can you say those words?”
Tyler didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The panic in his eyes round with shock said it all.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even close. Emotion turned into a lump in her throat, and no matter how many times she swallowed, she couldn’t get past it. And worst of all, she wanted to believe him because those were the only words she’d been wanting to hear from him since that night she’d come home to find him on a lounge chair in the parking garage. Giving in would be easy…and beyond a risk she was willing to take. Just having fun was one thing, but she wanted more than that from him. She wanted love.
“Everly,” he finally managed to get out—but it was too late.
She held up her hand, silencing him because she couldn’t stand to hear the words. How often had her mother made herself believe only to end up broken because of a man? Taking a deep breath, she glanced at the others in the vestibule with them. None of them bothered to hide their curiosity because they didn’t need to. They knew who they were and what they wanted. Unlike Tyler, they weren’t pretending. Using up her very last bit of control to keep herself from falling apart, she turned back to Tyler and did what she had to do, what her mother should have done.
“Please.” He reached out, but she evaded his touch. “We can go back to what it was.”
Yeah. That wasn’t going to happen.
“It’s too late for that. I want someone who knows that I’m worth fighting for, not someone who is fighting to forget who I am…” She leveled a glare at Tyler that should have fried him right down to his toes. “Or who he is. I want someone who loves me as much as I love him.” As much as I love you…
Before she could say anything else, the chapel doors opened and an entire church full of wedding guests turned in their direction. She slammed her mouth shut and slipped her arm through Nonna’s. The older woman looked at her, then over to Tyler, and then back again.
“L’amore ti fa matto,” she said, and held out her free hand to Tyler.
Nonna couldn’t be more wrong in her assessment of the situation. Love may make some people crazy, but it just fucked up Everly’s world.
Together, she, Nonna, Alberto, and Carlo walked down the aisle into the church, leaving Tyler behind, just like she needed her heart to do.
…
Tyler stood dumbfounded in the vestibule as the minister began explaining to the wedding guests seated that the bride would be reading from her favorite sonnet behind the closed vestibule door before walking down the aisle.
L’amore? Love? Why did people keep saying that? It wasn’t love. Love was crazy and out of control and overwhelming to the point where a person could lose themselves completely. He scrubbed his palm against the nearly three-week growth of beard that he hadn’t meant to grow and caught a glimpse of himself in the glass case of church mementos. It was impossible to miss the meals he’d skipped with how his tux hung on him or the more than a hint of wild desperation in his tired eyes. Crazy? Yeah, he looked a little bit that way. Out of control? He was going with yes. Overwhelmed? That was affirmative.
“Fucking A,” he said, too shocked to care that he was talking to himself. “I love her.”
“Do not even think about it, Tyler Jacobson.” Irena’s snotty tone was like taking a dull knife to the eye.
He turned to see her flanked by attendants as she marched from the waiting lounge straight toward him. She was in a poofy, overdesigned monstrosity of a wedding dress, a mic in one hand and a piece of paper crumpled in the other. There was an unhinged fury in her eyes that at any other time would have made him head for cover. Right now, though, he was still too stunned about the fact that he’d fallen in love with Everly to give a shit.
“You and that low-rent tramp had better not even be considering stealing my thunder. This is my day. Mine.” Irena raised the hand holding the mic and pointed it at him, her thumb brushing the power button. “I am the bride and you shouldn’t even be here. Neither should that social-climbing gutter rat. Why Alberto insisted, I have no clue beyond the nearly unbearable Pollyanna attitude of that man, but I swear to God if either of you do a single thing to mess up my day, I will make it my life’s mission to put you two back in the slums where you belong.”
His gaze slid from the little red light on the mic to the closed doors between them and a church full of wedding guests. In half a heartbeat he knew exactly what he needed to do. It was time to let his Waterbury hang out.
“You could try,” he said, making sure his voice was loud enough to be heard clearly through the speakers in the church. “You might even be able to do it, but I’ll tell you something, Irena, a single broke Everly in a run-down tenement is still worth more than three hundred of you.” He took a step closer to his ex-fiancée, determined that the only person he cared about on the other side of the doors would catch every word. “Do you want to know why? Because she knows who she is. She’s earned what she has. She doesn’t fight to keep other people down, she fights to protect them. You’re deluded if you think you could ever take anything away from Everly.”
Irena rolled her eyes. “Thank God I’m not actually in love with Carlo because that sentimental bullshit was almost enough to make me puke.”
“For once you’re right about something,” he said, all but dipping his head to be close to the mic. “I love Everly. I can’t imagine life without her.”
“Yep.” Irena made a gagging face. “I definitely just threw up in my mouth a little.”
After everything the woman had put Everly through, he should draw out the moment more, but all he cared about was getting to the woman he loved as soon as possible. “You want to know something that will really send you over the edge?”
“What, you want her to have your babies?”
“Someday, but that’s not what I was going to say.” Of course, the image of mini Everlys filled his head. “I was going to tell you that your mic is live and everyone inside that church heard every bitchy little word you just said. After the pain in the ass you’ve been over the years and all the shit you’ve pulled, that should be the best thing about this whole exchange, but you know what?” He grabbed the mic from her hand while she stood there blinking rapidly, her mouth hanging open. “The only thing I care about anyone hearing is this: I don’t just want you, Everly Ribinski. I love you. So much so that I’d tell all these big-money assholes exactly what they can do with their hotel deal if they don’t want to give the consulting position to a scholarship kid like me. Because even a lifetime of being accepted by them doesn’t mean anything compared to spending just five minutes with you.”
And with that, he dropped the mic, yanked open the doors leading to the church, and marched inside, determined to find his woman.
That wasn’t going to happen right away, though, because the place was total chaos, with football-offensive-lineman-size ushers plugging up the aisle, not letting anyone through—with one exception.
Carlo rushed past him out into the vestibule. No doubt he had something to say to Irena regarding the catty line about his dad that had gone out on the hot mic, but Tyler didn’t care. She didn’t matter. Most of the people in the church didn’t matter. The only one who really did was sitting with Nonna near the front. She was the only person there who wasn’t transfixed by the Irena and Carlo show going on behind him. He had to get past the ushers and get to her.
“What do you mean, you can’t go through with it?” Irena yelled loud enough that they must have heard her across the harbor in Waterbury and pulled Tyler’s attention behind him. “That you were wrong to think it could work? There is an entire church full of people waiting for us to get married.”
Carlo shrugged. “We both know this whole marriage was just a business arrangement, and with that performance piped in over the speakers, you know it’s not going to work out anymore.”
“So you are leaving me at the altar?” Irena asked, all pretense of the Harbor City sweetheart part she played to a T gone and the actual harpy she was on full display.
Carlo glanced back at the chapel, relief apparent on his face even from where Tyler was standing.
“Technically,” Carlo said, “you’re in the vestibule.”
“And you think that matters?” She grabbed her voluminous skirt with both hands. “You…you…Italian asshole.”
With that, she stormed off, her attendants scurrying after her. Everyone in the church sat watching as Carlo made his way back up the aisle to the halfway point where Alberto was waiting, a huge smile on his face. The two men conferred for a minute before Carlo strode up to the front of the church and the minister waiting there, his hand on his Bible, and turned to address the crowd.
“I’m sorry to tell you that the wedding is off,” Carlo said, his voice sounding happier than Tyler had ever heard it before. “Thank you all for coming.”
The church erupted with chatter. Irena’s family marched out, their chins high and their gazes locked straight forward. Everly and Nonna marched up to Alberto and Carlo in the front, offering their support and solidarity. Tyler remained standing near the back, desperate for a plan to appear in his mind fully formed as to how he was going to get Everly to listen to him plead his case. The place was deafening with everyone talking at once. No doubt those with friends who weren’t there were busily texting them to let them know what had just happened at what was supposed to be the society wedding of the year. It was exactly the kind of gleeful reaction at someone else’s expense that he’d dreaded being at the center of for as long as he’d been around these people. It almost made him feel bad for Irena. Almost. And it reminded him that in Waterbury, this wouldn’t be happening. Oh, people would be having a shit fit, but there’d be a lot more sympathetic faces than those he saw in the church.
Damn, he’d been lucky to find the Carlyles. He never would have made it in this piranha pit without them. And he couldn’t make it—anywhere—without Everly.
There was no way either of them was leaving this church without settling things between them. Life without Everly wasn’t one he wanted to lead and he didn’t care what kind of public fool he had to make of himself to get her to understand that.
“Hey, 3B,” he hollered over the buzz of the crowd, loud enough to silence them. “You still interested in that parking spot?”
Everly turned in slow motion, hands on her hips, a queen-of-not-putting-up-with-your-shit look on her face. “What are you talking about?”
A Harbor City man would have run from her don’t-fuck-with-me attitude, but he was from Waterbury and he had stones the size of watermelons. He pushed through the ushers and started to make his way up front. “The closest to Mrs. MacIntosh’s Chevy—even though I’m sure no one can afford that ding insurance.”
She cocked her head. “I don’t live there anymore, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right.” He halved the distance between them. “Guess I need to sweeten the deal. How about you get the whole building? It was my first, you know. The one I love more than any other, so it’s only right that the woman I love should have it.” Taking advantage of her shocked silence, he grabbed his wallet from inside his tux jacket and pulled out the grubby quarter that he’d had since he was twelve. The one he’d used to take the emotion out of decision-making, the one he’d let guide his life for way too long. “Flip for it?”
Oblivious—or more likely not giving a shit—to their rapt audience, she strutted over to him, all badass woman from the tips of her black heels to her ebony hair pulled back in some kind of fancy bun. “Are you trying to buy your way back into my pants with a building?”
“No.” He wanted more. He wanted all of her.
“Thank God,” she said, the hard upward curl of her lips looking nothing like the smile she’d given him the first time he made her pasta. “I thought you’d—”
“I’m trying,” he said, cutting her off, “to worm my way into your heart by making a complete and utter ass of myself in front of the most powerful people in Harbor City, the ones I’ve spent my life trying to get to see me as something other than I was.”
She blinked in surprise, and there was no missing the nervous way she razed her bottom lip with her teeth. “Oh yeah, and what’s that?”
“A fool.” Yeah, that about summed it up.
She let out a shaky breath, and there was just enough interest in her gaze to give him hope.
“Keep talking,” she said.
“You were right.”
“About what?”
The only answer he could give was the real one, the one that cost him everything. “It all.”
She didn’t say anything. She just stared at him without blinking. His hands turned clammy and a line of sweat slid down his back. Then something changed. Her face softened. Her chin trembled. And her mouth—that lush red mouth that did such dirty, dirty things—curled up on one side.
“You’re so infuriating,” she said, her voice trembling just the slightest bit. “And you can’t cook.”
“Not true. I can make pasta,” he said, pulling her in close. “You drive me nuts, too, with your loud clomping shoes and love of German painters when I like paintings of dogs playing poker.”
“Your taste in art is atrocious,” she said, relaxing against him. “How could I have ever fallen for a guy like you?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out how I fell in love so hard with the most stubborn hard-ass woman in the world. I had to rethink everything about my life until I realized that the only thing I could do was admit to myself that I loved you—the woman you were, the woman you are, and the woman you’re going to be. I love all of you. Forever. So let’s do it; let’s get married.” And now he meant to be hers as much as she was going to be his. He adjusted his stance so that his hand with the quarter was free and angled his thumb for the best odds just like he’d practiced for years, not realizing that it was all for this moment. “So let’s flip for it. Heads you say yes.”
The coin went flying into the air and he held his breath because everything was riding on the outcome. Everly snatched it out of midair.
She handed it back to him without looking. “Heads.”
Cupping her face, the one he wanted to be the first one he saw every morning and the last one every night, he moved in to kiss her, stopping just short of heaven. “You told me once that you don’t believe in happy endings. I didn’t, either, until I met you. I love you, Everly Ribinski from Riverside.”
There was no missing the emotion in her eyes. “I love you, too.”
Kissing her like it was the beginning of forever—because it was—he lost himself in the woman who’d sent every plan and plot he’d ever made on its ear. By the time they broke apart, everyone in the church was clapping.
“I guess there’s only one thing left for us to do,” he said, unable to take his gaze from Everly’s beautiful face.
“Get married,” Carlo said. “You have the minister here.”
Everly threw back her head and laughed before giving Tyler some prime, grade-A Riverside smack talk. “No way—you’re gonna have to work to get me in white.”
That was his girl, never one to take the easy route without offering a challenge of her own. “Oh, believe me, I’ll come up with the perfect scheme to make that happen.”
“Well, bellissima,” Alberto said from somewhere behind them. “It seems it’s up to us to take advantage of having a church full of family and friends.”
…
Dumbfounded, Helene turned to Alberto. This was not what they’d discussed. A quiet courthouse wedding and then waiting for the right time to break it to Hudson and Sawyer.
“We can’t just get married now,” she said, looking around at everyone watching them, her gaze stopping on Hudson and Sawyer standing in the fourth pew with Felicia and Clover, all four of them looking completely and utterly shocked.
“Why not, bellissima?” Alberto asked, picking up her hand and kissing it. “I know we were planning on having your judge friend do the ceremony and then breaking it to your boys when the time was right, but the minister is here. We have a license. And I love you.”
Torn, Helene looked around at the church filled with the people she’d spent most of her life with, those who helped her with fund-raisers, those who’d seen her through Michael’s funeral, those who made her grit her teeth and remind herself that it wasn’t polite to tell them to go shove off, and—most importantly—her boys, who didn’t look angry or offended at the idea. They looked…hurt.
“Mom,” Sawyer said, striding forward to where she stood holding Alberto’s hand. “You were going to get married without us?”
Mommy guilt—it never went away no matter how old her children got—twisted her stomach into knots. Her job was to protect them. To keep them safe. To see them into adulthood and help them become the men she knew they could be. Did that job end? Shouldn’t that be her first and only priority? And they both had loved their father so much, she hadn’t wanted to make them think they had to divide their loyalties.
“I was waiting for the right time to tell you,” she said in a rush, for once floundering for the right words to say. “I know it will be hard, and your father, what would he say?”
Hudson walked over, a soft smile, so much like his father’s, on his face. “That he’s so happy you found love again.”
“Exactly what we would say,” Sawyer added.
And for once when the tears spilled down her cheeks she let them flow, unashamed and owning them fully.
“Bellissima.” Alberto wiped away her tears. “Say yes.”
The three-letter word was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t say it without making certain. She looked over at Hudson and Sawyer. “Are you sure you’ll be okay with this?”
“On one condition,” Hudson said, his face turning serious. “We get to stand up with you. I’ll be your maid of honor, of course, since I’m prettier than Sawyer.”
Her eldest snorted. “And so much more of a pain in the ass.”
“Boys,” she said, her tone the sharp one of rebuke that every mother used on occasion. Then she smiled. “That would make it perfect.”
After that, it happened quickly. She stood up at the front of the church saying “I do” to a man whom she loved with all her heart and who had taught her one of the most valuable lessons of all. A new love didn’t mean forgetting who came before, it only meant remembering that there was always more to come.
…
Everly loved weddings. Loved them. How could she not after that? Walking toward the church doors with Tyler, their hands intertwined, behind the newly married couple, her heart fluttered in her chest.
“I can’t believe all of that just happened,” she said.
Tyler chuckled. “People are going to be talking about it for years.”
Her steps faltered. “And you’re okay with that?”
He jerked to a stop and turned to her, his face serious. “I couldn’t care less about what they say. You’re the only one who matters to me, and I promise to spend the rest of my life showing you that.”
What could she say to that? Nothing. So she kissed him, a soft brush of her lips across his that promised so much more—an eternity of more. She broke the kiss and they started down the aisle again. Just as they were about to walk out, though, Tyler pulled them to a stop. He took his wallet out and plucked the quarter from the little pocket inside where he always kept it. Then, without the slightest hesitation, he dropped it into the poor box by the door.
“But that was your favorite quarter,” she said, trying to figure out what in the world he was up to.
“That’s what I thought. But it wasn’t really. It was just a quarter I filched off my dad’s dresser the day I decided I’d never be like him, and I kept it as a reminder. I used it to take the emotion out of decisions—at least that’s what I told myself—but it turns out it was more than that. It brought me to you.” He looked sheepish as he turned to face her, his gaze not quite meeting hers. “I have a confession to make. Now, I know that what I’m about to say might end in my physical pain, but all I ask is that you keep an open mind…and remember, I never used my power for personal gain.”
She narrowed her expression as she tried to pull the truth from him. If he ruined their perfect reunion with another idiotic stunt… “Then what did you use this power for?”
“Funny you should ask. Umm… It’s entirely possible that I know how to finagle a coin toss to put the odds in my favor.” She is going to kill me. “But let’s think of all the good I did with each coin toss. I carried your bags in the rain, I cooked you oatmeal, I even saved your car from Mrs. MacIntosh’s ding jobs by leaving you only the one spot. Hell, I even bought a Harley I can’t ride for you. All of it for you—even when I didn’t realize it yet.”
She shook her head. The man was demented. He’d been tricking her all along with a cheat coin toss. It was bad, of course, but then why did the fact that this man, who was all about appearances, completely risked looking bad just to win more time with her make her want to grin ear to ear? They were both totally demented.
“So let me get this straight. You bought a bike—which apparently you don’t know how to ride—just so I wouldn’t park my Helga next to Mrs. MacIntosh?” She raised one eyebrow at him, daring him to deny it.
When he nodded while side-eyeing the exits, she knew she would love this man forever. This impossible, ridiculous, foolishly head over heels in love man from Waterbury. “Well, you know now there’s only one thing you can do to make it up to me, right?”
He brushed a stray strand of hair from her face and looked down at her with such love it took her breath away. “Anything.”
“You know, I’ve always had a thing for hot guys on Harleys…with tattoos,” she said, her eyes twinkling.
His eyes widened. “Oh hell no.”
She tsked. “But you said ‘anything’…”
Well, he’d said “anything” and he’d meant it. Today. Tomorrow. Forever. Whatever it took to keep that smile on the face of the woman he loved.