Maybe that’s what I needed to feel in my heart to find the conviction to tell them before. Or maybe I needed the conviction that this is who she was to me to learn that she was my mate this whole time. I don’t know. There’s no way to really be certain that the universe decides someone is your person like that. But I know I want that to be who she is to me; and to me, that is more than enough proof.
It’s going to be different this time, because my mom’s trying to change.
“Are we going to include the fact that we’ve already been married before?”
I can’t contain the grimace that question inspires. Elise makes a similar face as she watches mine. I shrug and hedge, “Maybe not? It might not be totally necessary.”
She rolls her eyes and gives me a playful shrug. “So, we’re not taking any lessons from this.”
“Hell no. I don’t care for parables or whatever.”
“Oh, ok. Maybe we won’t even bother explaining, then. We’ll just stop in for a shower and change of clothes.” She snorts. God, I love how she does that. It makes me smile instantly.
“And...after we shower, and all that. What do you want to do?”
“Then I’ll invite you over to the cottage. You can help me unpack some of the things I started boxing up.”
I don’t even try to hold back the way that makes me grin wider. That’s something to look forward to. No matter how telling my family goes, this is what I wanted, and it’s going to be worth it.
She holds my hand while we walk back toward the house, her pair of heels in my other hand.
“I gotta go back to Boston, water my plants and stuff.” I sigh, already dreading it.
“You have plants?”
“My neighbor has plants. I don’t know when they became my responsibility.”
I bite down against a joke about just abandoning them and staying here forever. I want to be mindful about how we move forward, deliberate about how we both take up space, and make room for each other in our lives. As much as I would love to dive into the unknown with her, I don’t want to trample what she’s built for herself.
“So I’m thinking, we can ease into this. I’ll rent an apartment up here, so you can invite me over or kick me out whenever youfeel like. It’s probably going to take a few weeks to get everything squared away.”
“I like that plan.”
“Cool. Very cool.”
“We’re doing this with like, a little more thinking than we did the first time, right?”
“Mm. Marginally. But I’m excited for it all, all over again.”
She squeezes my hand a little tighter as the house comes into view and the trees part to let us out of the woods.
The grounds of the Hayes House feel haunted by yesterday’s disaster, a feeling that lingers heavy and urgent in the air like the smell of something burning.
Everything we set up for the wedding is in shambles. Some of the guest seating and tables are flipped over, there’s torn white bunting and battered bunches of flowers everywhere. The dance floor set up on the patio is scattered with clumps of grass and dirt. The big flower arch at the end of the aisle is laying on the ground.
I’ve done my share of walks of shame, leaving a hookup’s apartment the morning after and sneaking home in yesterday’s clothes to the teasing of old roommates. I’ve never actually felt all that embarrassed about it before, but then again, I’ve never had a whole crowd of spectators.
All the Carrington pack members are gone, from what I can tell. It’s just my family.
Some of my extended family that I haven’t seen in a decade or more are still here, attempting to help my mom clean up thetorn-up backyard. Of course, my mom’s too much of a polite host to ask them to leave after things became a disaster.
Well, that’s lovely. They all stop what they’re doing and look up when Elise and I walk out of the woods together. I try to smile and awkwardly wave.
There isn’t really hiding what just happened, I guess. It’s clear we’ve both taken a tumble in the dirt.
Somewhere along the way back I recovered the jacket of my ensemble but I’m still missing my shirt, part of a pant leg and both shoes. I’m carrying Elise’s muddy heels, and while she’s tied the torn part of her skirt together, her pantyhose is so shredded one side has become a loose sock around her ankle.
Everyone here is a werewolf, and, I have to assume, has either the same or greater amount of knowledge about what being mated means, but maybe they don’t necessarily know that I ripped her underwear off her body, or that I donated my shirt to the cleanup effort when it came to all that mess I knotted in her.
