He bristled. “She was dating my best friend behind my back and now they’re married.”
“True.” While we danced, I felt the telltale squelch of my period arriving. Surely it was just a fluke. I’d had my period a week before. I was on birth control. It simply wasn’t time. Perhaps just a mutant queef combined with sweat?
It was quickly forgotten as Nick shimmied over to us, doing some silly dance poking his fingers out from his hips. He held out his hand. “Dance with me, maid of honor?”
The song shifted to a slow dance. I wound my arms around Nick’s neck, adopting the sway we had at the wedding the night before.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, then gnawed his lip.
“At a wedding, no less,” I added.
“Maybe we should find a Sunday wedding for tomorrow.”
We looked over at Guy and Kitty. They, however, paid no attention to us, completely heart-eyed and absorbed in each other.
“They’re so good together,” I cooed.
“They really are.” Nick swallowed. “I saw you tearing up during their vows.”
I nodded. “They’ve had a rough road getting there, but the way they love each other is really the goal.”
Nick took a moment to just . . . gaze into my eyes? No major plans. No sense of urgency. Just studying me. A soft smirk curled his lips. “Do you know what you want your dream vows to say? What you’d want your partner to say someday?”
I blew out a breath, raising my eyebrows.That’swhat was going through his head while he looked at me? “Do you have an answer for that?”
Nick stared off somewhere over my head for a moment. “I’d want to hear that I was the only one for them. That I make their life magical. That they trust me and love me. That being near me is comforting. That they want me beside them for the hard things, and the good things. That they’ll hold my hand if I die first, and want me to hold theirs if they die first. That they want babies with me. That no matter what, they’ll work to figure it out with me, because what we have is special and worthwhile. That I’m worth the effort.”
This gorgeous, sweet man. It really was a shame that he was in L.A. and I was in Nashville, because what a wonderful person he was. Either he was being sincere and was truly the sweetest human alive, or he had really good game and this was all some ploy. Though seemingly from the crotch-biting incident, he wasn’t that experienced and was just being sincere.
“That’s beautiful, Nick.”
He shrugged. “It’s how I feel. Your turn. What do you want to hear, Annie?”
“That,” I said. “You hit the nail on the head. No notes.”
He shook his head. “I want to hear your version.”
I sucked in a deep breath. “I want to be first choice. The only choice. I want to hear that I’m enough even on my worst days. That they’d always want to hear how I feel, and they’d tell me how they feel. That they want me to be the mother of their children. I’d tell them that they were the center of my world, and I’m just a hopeless planet circling around their sun. That I won’t accept any less than them being completely, stupidly in love with me and I with them because we owe that to each other.”
Nick raised his arm, where his dress shirt was cuffed to the elbow, showing his arm hair raised. “Look what you did,” he said with a chuckle.
“Well, same,” I said. “I think I’m going to sit. These heels are killing me.”
“Want some company?”
“Sure.”
Nick led me to the head table to sit. My low back throbbed as I sat. I’m not the athlete I once was, and even though I wore heels at work, I wasn’t usually on my feet so much.
“Come on. Feet up,” Nick said, stooping to reach for my feet and pulling them into his lap. “Jesus, Markham, these things are cutting into your toes.”
“I know,” I groaned. “Flats just don’t look as good.”
Nick messed with the strap at my ankle, his long fingers fumbling over the tiny bit of leather.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking them off,” he said. “I want to dance with you and you won’t dance if your feet hurt.”
