Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 125213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
The shock had only lasted a moment, and then the team launched into action — and that included my teammates and their significant others.
The season didn’t stop for us, no matter what was happening in our lives. But where there was a will, there was a way. We’d no sooner snuffed out our New Jersey opponents in Friday’s home game before we were all on a plane to Chicago. Maven and Mia’s mom led the charge yesterday, giving each of us our list of to-do’s to make this last-minute wedding come to life. And though we worked hard all day long, Isabella still made sure we had the evening for a rehearsal dinner and speeches — including one given by Jaxson, who roasted me the way only he could.
Now, we were a little over an hour from the ceremony start time for our small, intimate wedding. And tomorrow morning, I, along with the rest of the team, would be on a plane to Philadelphia for our next game.
There was no time for a honeymoon — not now, at least. Hell, there would barely be enough time to enjoy my new wife the way I really wanted to. But she had her own dreams to chase. Where my plane would go to Philadelphia, hers would carry her to New Orleans for the next stop on her tour.
Her still sold-out tour.
We hadn’t even entertained Austin’s “scathing tell all” with Garrett Orange. They may have felt like they won for the first few days while we were silent, while the Internet went feral and some of Mia’s fans turned on her. But the majority of them were waiting for our statement, hoping and praying that the rumors weren’t true.
Ignoring that whole mess was easy to do once we announced we had set a date.
And just a little over a week after that tell all, we were tying the knot.
Sure, there were gossip sites and rabid fans who still questioned the validity of our relationship, who wondered if the whole thing really was fake. But there were more fans and journalists arguing the opposite. They showed photos and videos of us on repeat, the one of my proposal getting especially high circulation as fans shouted how could this possibly be fake?!
And it wasn’t. It never had been.
Austin and Garrett had failed in their mission to dull Mia’s shine. And as long as I was around, I’d protect her like the rare gemstone she was.
No one would ever know for sure that we’d started dating as a ruse — no one but those close to us, anyway. And we knew they’d never tell a soul. Maybe the theories would continue, but after today, I had a feeling all the naysayers wouldn’t have a steady leg to stand on.
One shot of me sobbing like a baby at the sight of my future wife would surely shut them all up.
Wife.
The word made my chest swell, my heart race, my skin prickle with possession and the overwhelming desire to protect her with everything that I was. My nose already tingled with that sensation that comes right before a good cry — and I hadn’t had one of those since my mother passed.
Today, the tears would be of joy.
The house felt smaller than I remembered in that moment, with all the people we loved most filling the space. When I’d arrived from Switzerland, this place had felt too big to wrap my head around. But, slowly, this mansion began to feel normal, natural. As close to home as I could get at that time in my life.
Mia and I had spent countless afternoons here as teenagers, lounging on floats in the pool or sprawled out on the living room floor doing homework. I could still picture her running down the stairs, her laugh echoing through the space, tugging me along by the wrist to hear her new lyrics. I’d pretended not to care about them, pretended to be annoyed — but I loved it.
Back then, she was just a girl with wild dreams and a reckless smile, and I was the boy trying my damndest not to cross the line her father had drawn between us.
And now? Now she was the woman upstairs in the very same room she used to sleep in, slipping into a wedding dress that would no doubt be my undoing once I saw her in it.
A smile found my lips as I glanced at the front window, where a light dusting of snow had begun to fall, the flakes melting against the glass before they could linger. It felt poetic, somehow. The years between us had melted away, too — time and distance and pride keeping us from saying what felt impossible to admit out loud. Now, all the excuses, all the pretending, all the miscommunication dissolved like the snowflakes on that window.