“Pooh Poo,” Jules called toward the door. “Come on, we’re taking you home. You do not need to see what’s about to happen here with your sweet innocent puppy eyes.”
Pooh rocketed out the door, churned through the snow like a determined little snowplow, and launched herself into Jules’ arms.
Jules headed down the trail, triumphant.
“Don’t worry,” Flynn called back over his shoulder. “We won’t tell anyone you cried.”
“I set a camera in the flowers by the door to capture the big moment,” Isak yelled from somewhere in the darkness, “so you might want to turn that off before you?—”
“Do NOT finish that sentence,” I shouted back.
Kelsey laughed.
“Chaos gremlins,” I muttered, turning back to her. “I’m so sorry. They’re going to be your family now.”
“Don’t apologize.” She wrapped her arms around my neck. “This is the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Me too, sweetheart.”
I kissed her once more and we headed back inside to properly celebrate our engagement.
After I found that camera and turned it off.
THIS IS NOT A REHEARSAL
KELSEY
The last time Penelope and I had a real stretch of downtime on tour, we bingewatched the entire run of The Monarch, a FlixNChill drama about the British royal family that we had absolutely no business being as obsessed with as we were. We watched the whole thing in hotel rooms and green rooms and the back of tour buses, sharing a single set of earbuds like a couple of college roommates, gasping at the same moments.
There was one scene I kept coming back to.
The young princess, the morning of her wedding. Dressed, done, crown on. The whole world outside those palace windows waiting with bated breath. And her face, just absolutely wrecked with the quiet knowledge that this was no longer her day. It had grown so far past her that she couldn’t see the edges of it anymore. She was going to walk out those doors and perform the biggest show of her life, and she couldn’t stop it, and she couldn’t want to, because stopping it would break too many things.
I understood her in a way I really hadn’t when I first watched it.
I turned from the window and its view of the Aspen streets below, already lined with fans even at this hour, and tried to locate something to do with my hands.
The thing was, I had absolutely no regrets about marrying Declan. Zero. None. He was the most important person in my life and I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of it with him. A year ago I didn’t even know his name and now the thought of him not being in my life was something I couldn’t even finish forming.
But this wedding.
From the second our engagement leaked, it had been nothing but a full frontal assault. Publicity deals, brand sponsorships, magazines in a bidding war for exclusive rights, venues throwing themselves at us, and approximately eleven thousand stories printed about our most intimate moments that had been made up entirely from scratch by people who had never met either of us. Somewhere between the save the dates and the seating chart, today had stopped being my wedding and started being a production. The Wedding of Kelsey Best and Declan Kingman. Opening night. Sold out.
I was the girl who had performed on stages in front of a hundred thousand people and felt completely at home up there. I loved performing. I loved my fans. I had worked my whole life to get to exactly this level of visibility and I was grateful for every last bit of it.
But I was also, underneath all of that, just a girl who wanted to marry the man who had carried her off a stage in Aspen and sat with her all night in a hospital room holding her hand.
I wanted that guy. Not the show.
“Kelsey Best.” Penny’s voice came from somewhere behind me. “Get away from that window before somebody sees you.”
I turned and smiled at her.
My Lucky Penny. The second most important person in my life, which was saying something considering the competition.I was so glad she’d come back to me after everything that had happened with Skeeter and Big Marine last year. She was not only my right hand and my best friend, she was about to officially become my sister, since she and Everett had gotten engaged and she hadn’t let any of us forget it for a single day since.
She looked stunning. Her red hair was pinned up in an elaborate updo and she was wearing a satin robe with “Maid of Honor” embroidered across the back in the same script as my own “Bride.” We’d already been through hair and makeup, the teams set up in a separate suite at Penny’s insistence so we could have at least a few hours of quiet before the chaos. I’d opted out of a veil and worn my hair in an elaborate crystal-decorated braid instead, a nod to how I’d worn it the day Declan and I first met. It felt right. Like bringing the beginning with me to the happy ever after.
Penny and Jules, along with our wedding planner Ciara Mosely Willingham, had formed what they called the Legion of Groom. A triumvirate of terrifying organizational energy that had handled every detail of this wedding with military precision. I was grateful for all three of them. I was also overwhelmed in a way I couldn’t quite explain to any of them, because they had worked so hard and I loved them and I didn’t want to be ungrateful.
