I wore the black dress from Sloan and Brandon’s party, by Josh’s request.
I glanced at him, and he looked up from the paper in his lap and grinned at me, his dimples flashing. We were writing our own vows.
This man was about to be my husband.
He’d been my boyfriend for about three minutes, my fiancé for the last two hours, and he was about to be my husband for the rest of my life.
I was going to be Kristen Copeland.
I don’t know what he was thinking as he watched me from across the wide courthouse corridor, but I’d never seen him look so happy.
“Kristen Peterson and Joshua Copeland?”
Our names being called shook us from our private moment. Josh got up and gave me his hand. Then, just before we went inside, he pulled me into him. “Are you ready?”
God, I was so ready it wasn’t even funny.
“Yes.” I drew my bottom lip into my mouth and smiled.
He caressed my cheek. “You know you’re the best thing to ever happen to me, right?” His eyes blazed with emotion. “I love you, Kristen. You are the one great love of my life.”
His words gripped my heart. “I love you too, Joshua. Forever.”
* * *
The ceremony was in an office. We stood in front of the desk as a gray-haired clerk confirmed our names and checked our IDs. Our witnesses stood against the back wall as the ceremony started. We were a few minutes into it and I was just about to read my vows when the door burst open and Sloan spilled inside.
My jaw dropped.
She looked like a zombie bridesmaid. Her braid was frizzy, and her red lipstick was crooked. She wore the pink bridesmaid’s dress from her mom’s wedding three years ago, and she’d buttoned the dress wrong. Her hands clutched the half-dead flowers from her kitchen that I’d been picking through earlier. She must have taken them out of the trash. She had deep, dark circles under her eyes, and she looked pale, even with the blush.
But she was here.
I threw my arms around her.
“I couldn’t not be here,” she whispered.
I couldn’t even imagine the strength it must have taken for her to pull herself out of the house to be here for me. The emotional anguish she would feel, watching me have the wedding she never got.
But she came.
Josh hugged her, and for the first time, I saw Brandon’s absence etched on his face. He’d been doing a good job trying not to dwell on it, I think. But with Sloan here, Brandon was a void.
This wasn’t the way any of this was supposed to go. Sloan and Brandon would have been long done with their honeymoon by today, at home and settled in. I don’t know where Josh and I would be, but I realized now there was no world in which the two of us didn’t end up together. And Brandon and Sloan would have been in our wedding, supporting us.
Instead, it was just her. And she wasn’t really her anymore. I didn’t know if she ever would be again.
But at least she was here.
Sloan stood next to me and I sniffled, picking up the Taco Bell receipt I’d jotted my vows down on.
I looked up at Josh. His chest rose and fell a little too fast. He had this look on his handsome face—a touch of anxiety, worry, and anticipation around his brow, like he was afraid at any minute all this would be taken from him, like I might suddenly change my mind.
I deserved that.
This was a shotgun wedding. Josh was the one holding the shotgun.
This whole thing was some flash-bang-chaos campaign to hustle me into marriage before I got my bearings. He wanted to lock me down before I freaked out on him and ran. That’s why he’d rushed this. Only, the joke was on him—I wanted to be locked down, and I’d never change my mind. I’d never leave him again. If he wanted this rust bucket of a body so badly, he could have it, and I’d just have to spend the rest of my life making sure he felt secure and loved.
I looked at him, my eyes steady, and I took a deep breath. “Joshua, I vow to text you back.”
Everyone in the room laughed, my fiancé included, and his face relaxed.
I continued. “I will answer every call you make to me for the rest of my life. You’ll never chase me again.”