I smack his cheek so hard that my whole hand turns bright red and throbs. I hit him again anyway.
Clive struggles to keep his balance, panting slightly. “You bitch,” he curses, grabbing his face.
“Shut your disgusting mouth,” Nick snaps, finally loosening his grip on himself a bit. “The pathetic thing is, if you’d hung in there until we were all a bit older, a bit further along, who knows what might’ve happened. But you couldn’t wait. And so you blew your own cover.”
Then Nick raises my hand to his mouth and kisses it. “Fifty years from now, Bex and I will still be married, and you will be nothing more than a sad footnote in history,” he says. “So run whatever tawdry story you like. I really don’t give a damn.”
Clive looks gobsmacked.
“Now, would you like to walk out, or shall I call Stout and Twiggy for an escort?” Nick asks, with such tremendous Advanced Pleasantness that I will never look at that expression the same way again. “They are not getting married tomorrow, to my knowledge, and I think they’re in the mood for a bit of a scuffle.”
Clive blots at his mouth with his sleeve; his teeth cut his lip when I cracked him.
“Right, then,” he says. “I guess all that’s left to decide is when to publish. Perhaps just before the bride leaves for the Abbey. All those cheers turning to boos. It’ll be poetic.”
“Oh, piss off, you miserable…” Nick turns to me. “What was the word?”
“Asswad,” I supply.
Clive is openly astonished that we’re standing our ground, and his bottom teeth are smeared with red. “Fine, dig your own graves,” he says. “I look forward to throwing you in them.”
And he storms out and slams the door.
“Is it inappropriate if I say that you were really—”
Suddenly Nick’s hands are in my hair, and he is kissing me firmly, like an exorcism.
“—hot just now,” I say, when he pulls away. “I guess not.”
“That bastard,” Nick fumes. “It’s a good job you slapped him or I’d have thrown him out the window.”
He sits down on the arm of the sofa, rubbing his tensed hand, as if he can feel the effects of the punch he didn’t let himself throw.
“Nick,” I say, taking his hands. “Thank you for defending me, but I won’t hold you to it. We don’t have to get married just to stick it to him.”
Nick looks down at our entwined fingers. My ring sparkles up at us.
“I heard you,” he says. “With Mum, and at the Abbey. I heard Freddie in his speech.” He lets out a laugh. “In an odd way, Clive argued your case, too. He was trying to insult you. But if the guy who hates us most in the world points out how at sea you were, it must have been true.”
I do not speak. I don’t want to interrupt what seems to be him coming back to me.
“I was so hurt, Bex. I still am hurt. I’m still sad. I don’t know what to do about it. But I do know the answer isn’t losing you,” he says. “Freddie is right. Whatever this is…it doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime. I’d rather work at this with you than settle for less with anyone else.”
He stands up and draws me close. “You know what you said to me at the Abbey today?” he murmurs. “That you’re mine for life?”
I nod, mutely.
“Thank you for that,” he says. “Because I’m yours, too.”
He pulls me in and kisses me, less of a passionate outburst and more of a rebirth, and it feels as if something heavy that had been sitting on my heart finally falls away.
“I’m sorry,” I begin when we part, and he holds up his hand.
“No more apologies,” he says. “I don’t want you to think I’m holding something over you. I’m not. This isn’t a favor. This is just love.”
“I love you, too,” I say, fervently, my eyes filling with tears. “Which is why I hate to bring this up, but…”
“The wedding,” Nick says, leaning back against the couch.
“The PR disaster.”
“Reality sets in.” He sighs. “I’m too wrung out from all this to think clearly right now.”
“Listen,” I say, “if I’ve learned one thing from this entire nightmare, it’s that we need to tell our friends when we need their help.” I link my hands behind his neck, then kiss him one more time, mostly to revel in being able to do it again. “Time to call in