A Love Song for Always - Piper Lawson Page 0,48

If you want to see it through or not, you have my money and my confidence. I’m out for my honeymoon and until the tour.”

Annie’s drinking wine and laughing with Elle and Pen. Beck is trying to shoot a video of them.

I head toward Harry at the pop-up bar. “It means a lot to have you here.”

“I don’t do weddings. But the two of you make it look like something worth aspiring to.” A ghost flickers through Harry’s dark eyes, so fast most people wouldn’t notice.

“Harry, I know—”

“Don’t mention it. I have an entertainment empire to distract me. Being a billionaire playboy without a care in the world is a lot of work.” The English accent makes the words drier. He lifts a glass in a smirking toast, and I clink mine to his.

My friend’s attention drifts past me, lingers. “Ah. You’re in trouble.”

I turn to see Annie and Rae watching us, Annie’s smile waning and Rae not smiling at all.

“Or you are,” I joke.

“Impossible. I only piss off women I know.”

Shaking my head, I excuse myself and go back to my wife. “I need to borrow this one,” I tell Rae, who seems content to yield my bride to me.

“Where are we going?”

“Dancing,” I murmur.

“You don’t dance.”

“I do with you.”

I take her in my arms and tug her across the sand toward the water, stopping short of where the sea laps at the shoreline.

“Do you remember the first time we danced?” she murmurs as she steps closer, her dress brushing my suit.

I press a finger to the necklace she’s wearing, the one I busted my ass to fix, before sneaking a guilty look at her face. “You’d better remind me.”

“It was a wedding. Dad and Haley’s, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yes. After the reception,” she prods, drawing out each syllable as if it might jog my memory.

“I see.” I nod slowly, pretending to catch on. My hands lift to her face, stroking her skin lightly. “The band was playing jazz. I took off to the gazebo, buzzed on champagne I didn’t like, and there you were. Barefoot and looking like a fallen angel. One I’d promised I wouldn’t touch.”

Annie’s eyes brim with emotion. “I wished you’d kissed me that night. It would’ve lasted me the entire summer away from you.”

“If I’d kissed you that night, I wouldn’t have left for the summer.”

Her trembling breath is enough for me to live off. But in case it’s not, I brush my lips over hers. She’s sweet and edgy, familiar and new, and I thread my hands into her hair to tug her even closer.

We’re surrounded by friends and family, dancing on the edge of the earth, and my heart is pounding. Not for them, not for where we are. For the woman in my arms. The one who completes me.

“You’re here now,” she whispers against my lips.

“We both are. No more excuses, no more takebacks.” I can’t swallow my grin as I thread her fingers through mine so our rings lie against one another. “It’s you and me, Six. Then. Now. Always.”

Her lips curve, and I kiss her again.

Epilogue

One week later

“You ready for this?” I ask Annie.

She bends toward the sand next to me, her flowing skirt getting tugged by the breeze as she inspects the cage. “Yes.”

The hotel attendants surround us on this important day.

Important, it seems, to my wife, and I guess to the bird.

Annie opens the door, tugs it wide.

Hugo peeps from his cage a couple of times before hopping toward the outside. He twitches his wings a few times before lifting off and sailing into the sky.

“It’s a big world,” I say solemnly. “Make good choices.”

My wife laughs. “You think he’ll be okay? He’ll find his mate?”

“Let’s fucking hope so. Otherwise, he’s a goner.”

She shoots me a look at my teasing, and I drag her against my side, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

In the week we’ve been here since the wedding, we’ve been unwinding a few degrees at a time. Annie’s better at it than I am.

One of the attendants’ phones go off.

“It’s been nonstop since the concert,” he says.

Concert is using the term loosely, but Finn and the others’ little acoustic session on the beach led to a viral internet presence.

“You’re going to be inundated with tourists,” I say.

“We tried so hard to hide it.”

“Some people still recognized it.”

“We’ve been telling them it wasn’t us,” the attendant says, smiling.

“It’s suspicious given your new merch,” Annie deadpans.

One of the women is wearing a tour T-shirt.

Zeke sent way too much, so