“Why?”
“Yes, Tyler. Why me? You could have anyone here, Helen, half the bridesmaids, probably Peacock if you asked nicely, so why me?”
He turns fully towards me now, elbows braced on his knees, like he can’t quite sit still under the question.
“Because you changed everything, Hayley.”
His voice is quiet, but it thuds through me like a drum.
“The night I met you, the one you don’t even remember, you looked at me and saw me. Really saw me. You made me laugh, you made me think, and your eyes…” He shakes his head, like even now he can’t quite believe it. “Your eyes locked on mine, and I just knew nothing was going to be the same after that.”
He exhales, steady and low.
“I had to see you again. I left Helen because she never made me feel even one percent of what I felt with you that night. And this weekend…” A huff of a laugh escapes him. “This weekend has been chaos. A full-onFawlty Towerssketch. But even with the disasters, the costumes, the hedges, even sleeping with you at night, albeit with a wall between us…” His voice softens until it’s almost fragile.“Being near you has been the only thing that’s felt real. I had to know if that night was something. And now I do.”
The words hit like a punch and a balm all at once.
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Justfeel.
“You don’t get to say things like that and expect me not to…”
He reaches out, brushing a stray leaf from my hair. His fingers linger just long enough to fry my already overloaded brain.
“Not to what?” he asks, quiet now, like he already knows the answer.
I swallow hard. “Not to…”
I shift closer, heart hammering.
“Don’t move,” he murmurs, not as an order, but as a plea. Like the universe might shatter if I do.
“This feels like the part in the movie where everything changes.”
His smile curves, slow and unguarded, something raw flickering in his eyes. “Then let’s change everything.”
His mouth is on mine before I can think.
This time, it’s not sweet.
It’s not polite.
It’s hungry.
His lips crash onto mine, all urgency and demand, and I give back just as hard, gripping his lapels and yanking him closer until we’re a tangle of teeth and breath and need.
We do, in fact, topple over, graceless, gasping, landing in a tangle of limbs on the gravel. He laughs against my mouth, low and shocked, before kissing me harder, deeper this time, devouring like he can’t decide whether to worship me or ruin me.
Gravel digs into my spine, my skirt is bunched indecently high up my back, and I don’t even care.
He drags his mouth down my jaw, teeth scraping just enough to make my pulse stutter, before finding my mouth again like he can’t stay away.
I hook a leg over his hip without thinking, pulling him flush against me, the world narrowing to nothing but heat and breath and the sound he makes, low and rough, like I’m undoing him completely.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I swear Derek the Hedge is blushing.
I forget the castle. The wedding. My own name.
There’s just him, everywhere, and me, clinging on like I have no intention of letting go.
