“You’ve lost your mind.”
“I’m doing you both a favor.”
"Wait. The guys know?"
"Of course, they know. They were there when I wiped the floor with you at Oakley’s, and you stupidly agreed to that bet.”
Great, thanks for the reminder.
"Luka—"
"Relax. I told them it's for visa renewal purposes. They're being cool about it." He checks his watch. "Now go shower. We're meeting everyone at the tailor in thirty minutes."
"Everyone?"
"JP, Hunter, Trey, Aleksi, Wolf, Olsen—the whole crew."
I stare at him. "You invited the entire team to my wedding fitting."
"Not the entire team. Just the guys who are going to be standing next to you when you say I do."
"Right, no pressure,” I say.
"Shower. Now. Or we’re going to be late, and you know how I feel about being late."
He's already heading for the door, and I'm left standing there in my boxers, wondering how my life got this out of control.
I put on pants, but my brain is still stuck on something else entirely.
My mom.
How the hell am I going to explain this to her?
I can’t invite my family.
I can’t tell them the truth.
I can’t even lie convincingly.
And it hits me—I’m getting married tomorrow, and my parents don’t know.
Shit.
Luka drives like a man on a mission, explaining how the sponsorship visa renewal works, what happens if we have to gothrough immigration and what Coach Haynes told him to look out for since he and his wife Juliet went through this years ago. He dives into his grandmother’s expectations, the Popovich family optics and how he can’t hire a hit on me because the US and Russian governments would both love a reason to put him away for life.
I catch about ten percent of it. The rest of my brain is trying to determine the best way to break the news to my mom without breaking her heart that I didn’t even tell her about it.
Do I send her a fruit basket?
Is there a polite way to say, “Surprise, I got married, please don’t murder me?”
I could send it by dust cropper. Nothing says, “Sorry for being a shit son”, like seeing an apology letter written in the sky about how I didn’t invite you to my wedding.
I stare out the window and try to remain calm. I’m doing this for a reason. Part of the reason is to get my mother off my case about setting me up with someone. Well, job well done. She’ll sure as hell find a new reason to hound me.
“Do you really think this is going to work?” My voice is quiet as I think through the logistics.
Yesterday was a whirlwind of information, and I know I would have agreed to help Katerina if Luka had just asked, but now my head is working through my own family uproar for this. Granted, I’m not pissing off a mob boss father, but my mother is not a force you want to mess with either.
