Ready to make my excuses and leave, I’m stopped by the shadow that falls over the table.
I gradually raise my gaze, afraid to meet the light-blue eyes of the woman I have spent most of the afternoon pining for. Such a stupid connotation for how I felt listening to her recite vows of forever to Tristan, Constantine, and Hendrix.
“Hope I’m not interrupting,” Syn says, a smile in place as she pointedly directs her statement at Dierdre before turning toward me. “If I remember correctly, you owe me a dance.”
“Do I?” I manage to utter, my voice belying how uneven my heartbeat is pounding.
Syn holds out her hand. “Yes.”
I stare at it like it is made of the hottest flame. It will burn, but I take it anyway.
Syn walks us to the middle of the yard to a patch of trampled clover beneath strands of fairy lights surrounded by the fragrance of late-blooming jasmine.
“Were you rescuing me from your mother?”
Turning into me, she steps closer. “Maybe. And it’s weird to call your sister my mother. You look very handsome, by the way,” she comments, smoothing a hand down the lapel of my charcoal gray dinner jacket.
“And you’re the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”
Fuck, Aleks, laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?
A blush tints her cheeks. “And how many other weddings have you attended to make that comparison?”
“None, but I stand by my observation.”
Her goddamn smile makes me weak in the knees. “Then I’ll happily accept the compliment.”
Syn brings our linked hand up between us and places her other hand flat against my chest. Her touch lights a spark that grows into a wildfire, and my fingers convulse with need as they curve around her hip. Her dress is already smudged at the hem with grass stains, her long, wavy hair wild from the breeze. She is radiant.And not mine.But maybe, just for a little while, I can pretend that she is.
And just like that, everything around us falls away as the violin music fades out and changes to something in D minor, the notes quietly dancing over the evening air like fireflies as we dance.
“Was Alana being nosy?” she asks.
Dierdre will always be Alana to Syn. The woman who saved her and became her surrogate mother when Syn lost her memories. I understand Tristan’s anger with his sister for faking her death and keeping Syn a secret for all these years. But I also understand Dierdre’s point of view. The fear she lived in for bothherself and for Aoife. In order to live, they both had to stay dead and become new people, away from Francesco’s reach.
“She was actually offering an olive branch.”
Syn’s smile turns up its wattage. “Are you going to take it?”
I slowly spin us in a circle. I’m not the best dancer and can only hope I don’t step on her feet. “Eventually. I’m just not ready yet.”
“I can understand that. Accepting love can be hard for people like us.” Her bluebonnet eyes lift, and I swear, I drown in them. “But I promise you that it will be worth it. I know we…I mean, you and the me that is Syn, not you and the me that was Aoife…started out as adversaries, but I’m so thankful we ended up as friends.AndI’m shutting up now because that sounded even weirder than that sister-mother thing.”
The dreadedfriends. But it’s a label I wholeheartedly accept and will cherish because it means that I get to be in her life.
I feel the ominous tension before I notice Tristan, Hendrix, and Constantine leaning against the patio deck railing, beer bottles dangling from their fingers as they closely watch me dance with Syn.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I ask.
“Go for it.”
“Was it hard to fall in love with them again when you couldn’t remember them?”
Syn makes a hum as she contemplates my question. “It’s difficult to explain. Instinctively, I felt a connection the second I laid eyes on them, even with Hendrix when he was being a royal pain in my ass.”
“Wasbeing? The guy is still a huge asshole.”
She admonishes me by poking me in the shoulder. “That’s just a mask he wears. I think the two of you could be good friends. You’d balance each other out. Your calm to his chaos.”
