American Queen

One side, still red and healthy, pulses with joy. The other side, black and frozen, feels nothing but icy despair.

It’s really happening.

It’s really happening.

The one thing I want most in the world—to marry Ash—and the one thing I want least in the world—to be separated from Embry.

I can’t cry—I spent too many long hours in the makeup chair for that—so instead I smooth my hands along the expensive fabric of the dress and turn away, the huge skirt of my wedding dress turning with me.

Don’t look in the mirror, I tell myself. You’ll only want to cry again.

Most women wouldn’t cry to see themselves as I look right now. Custom gown embroidered with Swarovski crystals and silver thread. My white-gold hair coiled into a sleek ballet knot at the nape of my neck. Diamonds glittering at my ears and throat. There is a princess in that mirror…and I can’t bear to look at her.

I walk over to the window and press my hands to the glass. The hotel room looks out on an unfamiliar skyline, a healthy and contained cluster of skyscrapers, old brick warehouses and architectural oddities. Kansas City’s skyline. Ash’s skyline.

Ash.

Has any woman loved a man like I love my Ash? If he ceased to love me or I ceased to love him, my entire world would shrink to a singularity and then explode. I need him like I need air, like I need the sun or like I need God.

I can’t not marry him. Every cell in my body cries out for his presence, pines for the slightest brush of his hands or words or eyes; I am as destined to marry Ash as much as I am destined to have my gray eyes or my blond hair.

So why the tears, Greer?

But of course I know why. Ash would know why too if he could see me right now. Because I can’t help loving Embry, because neither can Ash, because the three of us have some sort of twisted, fucked-up love that no church would agree to sanctify, much less the American electorate.

I’ll marry Ash as Embry watches, as Embry hands Ash the ring that will seal our vows, and the three of us will quietly ache together, quietly die together, even as Ash and I are quietly born anew as man and wife.

There’s no way around this, nothing that can be done, at least nothing that I can see. I can’t not marry Ash. I can’t stop craving Embry. Both of them love me, and both of them love each other. Whichever way we move, there will be heartbreak, and Embry knows—has always known maybe—that if he forces me to choose, if he drags my choice into the open air and says me or him, then it would be Ash.

It would always be Ash.

And maybe that’s why I want to cry, because my heart is breaking for Embry just as much as it’s breaking for me.

A knock sounds at the door, and I shake off my thoughts, expecting Abilene and the veil. “Come in,” I call, blinking a few times to rid myself of the lingering tears.

I hear a keycard snick in the lock, and the heavy door opens. I step away from the window, prepared to fake a smile and a laugh for Abi, prepared to take the veil from her and pin it to the delicate tiara set in my hair.

But it isn’t Abilene who walks through the door.

It’s the best man.

“Embry,” I whisper. I breathe his name like it’s the last breath I’ll ever take.

He walks in and turns to close the door behind him, shutting it and carefully swinging the deadbolt closed. My heart pounds—even with his back to me, he can do this. Set my pulse racing, send heat flaring to the deepest part of me. But then he does turn, and the heat kindles to flame. Burning, roaring flames.

We haven’t been alone together for so long, weeks and weeks and months and months, but now here we are, alone at last. But I’m dolled up to be the American Bride of the Century and he’s in his tuxedo, and so the wedding hovers in the air like its own entity, a third presence in the room.

I train my eyes on the floor, not trusting myself to look in his face, not wanting to see the torment I know will be written there. Not wanting him to see the torment written on my own face. Isn’t this hard enough as it is? Why is he here? Why come and force this moment between us when we could have simply gone on as we always did—ignoring, denying, avoiding? Silently dying?

Embry steps deliberately toward me—so unlike him, so unlike the turbulent, impulsive man he is. He stops just out of reach, his dress shoes black and gleaming against the carpet.

“Greer,” he says quietly.

I force my eyes up to his, trailing up his long legs, up that perfectly-fitted tuxedo jacket which highlights the lean, hard lines of his waist and shoulders, and then finally up to his face, where pain is stamped onto every handsome feature.

The moment my eyes lock with his, I know it doesn’t matter that we aren’t touching. The electric heat in his eyes is desperate, and I know he can see the same in mine, and in that instant, in my mind, we share a thousand scorching kisses, he trails caresses over every inch of my skin, I come a thousand times under his slender, muscled body.

Those ice-blue eyes blaze with heat and I shiver. “What are you doing here?” I ask in a whisper.

“I wanted to see you. You know…before…” he trails off.

He steps closer, lifting a hand. I shouldn’t let him touch me, not on my wedding day, not in my wedding dress, but my chest is filled with that tight ache, and so I close my eyes and hold my breath as he reaches forward.

The backs of his knuckles graze against my cheek, sending shivers chasing down my back, and every brush of his fingers over my skin makes me want to scream, makes me want to cry.