Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68509 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68509 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“It eats birds?” Gracie asked, eyes round.
“Hummingbirds,” I confirmed.
“Okay. That snake was kind of creepy, all dangling from the tree,” Layna said. “But I think you were right about trying to sacrifice Wick to those things. Why is it looking at me all… attacky?”
This little bridal party excursion wasn’t my first trip back to the rainforest since we’d just barely made it out with our lives a year before.
Actually, I’d grown pretty familiar with the place, thanks to several visits with Wick. Because, well, he wanted to build more beans.
Once the whole truth came out—with no small amount of publicity that Wick had to face—there was a lot more awareness brought to the idea of eco resorts.
Ever since, Wick had been raising money from investors—as well as sinking a fair amount of his own cash—into the idea.
He wanted to build them in a bunch of lovely places on Earth he believed more people should see—with as little a footprint as possible—but since the first bean was actually already built in the rainforest, he thought it might be a good place to start.
To date, there were four beans built and ready for occupation.
Hence the little girls’ trip before the actual wedding.
Everyone else was staying in an actual resort—large footprints included since not all of our people were open to the idea of compost toilets and no air conditioning. But the girls had been willing to stay in the beans and take a little day trip into the rainforest.
Only, this time, I was not only more experienced—and slightly less terrified of the creepy crawlers—but we had put some eco-friendly markers to follow to lead back to safety, if we needed it, and Wick knew where to find us if something went wrong. And I had noise makers and such to lead him right to us.
And, well, there was no one chasing and trying to murder us.
Always a win.
“Can I just say how weird it is that you wanted to take a rainforest hike the morning of your wedding?” Hope said, slapping the side of her neck, though I was pretty sure she was imagining an insect landing there.
“I had a lot of nervous energy,” I admitted. “I wanted to walk it off.”
“Nervous why?” Gracie asked. “You couldn’t be more in love with Wick.”
“The man picked out the perfect engagement ring for you,” Layna agreed.
He had.
It was a simple, unfussy white gold band with a black diamond. On the inside, he had it engraved.
In love and tacos.
There wasn’t a drop of doubt in me that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Wick.
I was more antsy about the ceremony itself. The rainforest walk had managed to ground me, remind me of how I’d first fallen for him in the first place.
For him, I would dive into any jungle with assassins nipping at our heels and gross bugs scheming our demise. I would endure a total lack of plumbing, baths in questionably clean water, storms, crushing, bug bites, and whatever else the world might throw at us.
I would even stand up in front of everyone I knew in a dress and declare my love for the world to hear.
“There he is!” Gracie said, waving a hand at Marco as we exited the forest to find him waiting with the Jeep.
“You’re totally most upset about the dress, aren’t you?” Hope asked, hanging back with me as the others rushed to the car.
Hope, a fellow practical girlie who’d maybe only ever worn a dress twice in her life, understood my reluctance.
“Yeah.” Even though I’d picked out the least… girly dress I could find.
“Well, I found it helped to imagine my husband peeling it off of me as soon as we were alone again.”
That mental image was enough to get me through all the bathing, primping, and dressing that followed.
We hadn’t gone for a fancy black-tie wedding. Given the backdrop of the actual rainforest, we’d opted for casual and tropical.
Sure, my dress was white. But it was a flowy number with spaghetti straps and a hem embroidered with several of the creatures I’d grown so fond of—Hank the boob-resting lizard, the mustached monkey, a baby capybara, a scarlet macaw, and my little grumpy cave frog friend.
My bouquet was small, featuring orchids that grew in their lovely wild glory in the rainforest as well.
My bridal party was in similarly simple dresses in tropical colors of their choosing.
The groomsmen were in matching cream linen shorts and button-up shirts.
And Wick himself was in the same sort of outfit, but in all white.
There was no need for decorations, not with the rainforest lending the most gorgeous backdrop imaginable.
My legs felt unexpectedly wobbly as my father led me toward my fiancé.
“Was worried you would never slow down and enjoy life outside of work,” my father said, giving my arm a squeeze. “Really glad to see that’s changed. And that you found someone to put up with your arse,” he said, shooting a smirk and a wink at me before passing me off to Wick. “She’s all yours. But don’t break her heart. Or the beetles really will be eating your intestines,” he said, clamping a hand on Wick’s shoulder before turning around to join my mom and the rest of his club brothers and their wives.