Our lips brushed against one another at first, soft and barely perceptible – but I felt it, felt the spark of electricity passing between us. A second brush was firmer, promised more – and the third time our lips met it was a crescendo, our mouths pressed together, something welling up inside of me that I could not name but knew was some kind of primal magic, everything I needed falling into place.
I pulled back a little and looked at him. A thought flushed through me like ice in my veins: that Rowe was a good man, the best man, maybe the best I would ever meet, and in my current state of being, I was nowhere near worthy of him.
But he looked at me with softly hooded eyes and didn’t pull away or push me or try to laugh it off. I opened my mouth to ask him –
“Oh, my god!”
I spun around to look behind me. The hotel worker – what was his name? Jesse? – was standing there with an aghast expression on his face, his hands clapped to either side of his head.
He kind of had a point. I looked at the hallway properly for the first time; I’d registered what had happened but hadn’t stopped to assess the damage. The walls, the thick carpeting on the floor, the doorframes, and even a few spots on the ceiling – everything was utterly drenched in red paint.
“It wasn’t us,” I supplied helpfully.
“I saw her,” Jesse said weakly. “They escorted her out. But… the paint…”
It was everywhere, and it didn’t look like it was going to come out. They would probably have to refit this part of the corridor. New carpet, new wallpaper, everything. It was going to be expensive.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have sympathy for Jesse. But this was his job, and we were missing the best part of the wedding, and besides, I had a feeling he’d just interrupted a moment that could have been something more.
We needed to get somewhere where I could find out what that something more was.
“Sorry,” I said, giving him my best shrug. “Looks like you’d better call your manager.”
“Right,” he said, his voice distant and vague, obviously still lost in processing the shock of what had happened to his beautiful hotel.
“Come on,” I said over my shoulder to Rowe, shaking my head at the sight of both of us. I reached out a hand to take his, to offer him support. “We’d better go and get cleaned up – as much as we can.”
Rowe
We stood by side in the small bathroom of our hotel room, looking at ourselves in the mirror.
My suit was a goner. It was beyond dead. There was no hope for it. Xavi still had paint all over his face.
And so did I – but only around my lips.
We stared at our reflections in silence for a long few seconds, and then Xavi snorted.
I glanced sideways at him in the mirror and chuckled.
Before I knew it, both of us were laughing uproariously, clutching onto each other and the side of the sink and anything that could support us, tears rolling down our cheeks, creasing over with the force of our laughter.
“Oh, god,” I said, struggling to breathe as I wiped tears from under my eyes. “Red paint. It’s so Carrie.”
“Don’t,” Xavi croaked, his hands on his knees as he struggled to get himself under control. He pushed up, shaking his head and gasping for breath. “Oh, man. I’m sorry about your suit. It’s my fault. I’ll pay for a new one.”
I shook my head in return. “You don’t need to do that,” I told him. “It wasn’t your fault, it was hers. And it’s just a suit. I’ll live.”
Xavi looked like he was about to say something, but his lips pursed together for a moment and he shucked off his jacket. “We should get changed,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any way to salvage these clothes.”
I nodded. I had brought something else with me – it just wasn’t as formal as I would have liked. “Do you think jeans and a shirt will be okay? It’s not exactly what I would normally wear to a wedding, but…”
“It’s the reception, anyway,” Xavi shrugged. “And I don’t think Aiden and Cade are the type to care.”
“Right,” I nodded with relief, taking off my jacket and tossing it on top of Xavi’s on the floor, where we were apparently making a pile of trash. It really would be a shame to lose the suit. It was the only one I owned, and I’d liked it. But clothes weren’t as important as people. We’d saved the wedding from ending in disaster, and that was good enough for me, even if most of the people here were strangers to me.
More importantly, we’d talked Tara down without her harming herself, and I hoped she would be able to get help after this.
Anyway, I had enough money to replace the suit out of the two thousand Xavi had given me. The thought made me realize I had almost made a grave mistake, and I dove back into the pile to grab the brown paper envelope full of cash out of my inner pocket.
