Seven Sins: Durham Boys, Book 2

by Lennox, Piper

  “It’s better than I expected,” she says, after a beat. “But I still think it’s strange.”

  “Glad I’m not the only one.” Sterling sidles up to steal a look for himself, freeing Van’s sister’s hand when she squirms. Annabelle watches the needle carefully, then asks me if it hurts.

  At least, I assume that’s what she asks. It’s hard enough to understand a three-year-old in the best of conditions. Add pulsing music and a hundred people talking at once, and it’s almost impossible.

  “It does hurt,” I tell her, smiling at the chocolate fondue stains already on her flower girl dress, “but...the way tattoos hurt. Painful. But not real pain.”

  “Wow,” Van says, when the artist politely asks our audience to disperse because they keep blocking his light, “who needs a sweetheart table? All we gotta do is stay here and keep getting tattoos. The entire reception will line up to give us shit over it.”

  “Told you we should’ve just gone to a parlor yesterday.” My idea—to remove bandages at the altar and reveal our rings—still seems miles above this.

  But Van was insistent that we hire an artist to do the whole thing live, so I caved. He’s had so few preferences on this wedding, it felt good to give him one thing he wanted. And God knows it was easier. His anger may be a thing of the past, but not his stubbornness.

  When the artist is finished, he swipes on some ointment and wraps my finger, reminding us to keep them covered for a minimum of two hours, preferably longer.

  “Not a minute past eleven p.m.,” Van says, slapping a tip into his palm before whisking me to the dance floor in the middle of the ballroom.

  “What’s at eleven p.m.?” I ask.

  He loops his arms around my waist and sways us off-beat to the song. “The exact second I’m undressing my new bride. Every last stitch of clothing on you, gone. Including bandages.”

  He gives me a kiss so passionate, I know he intends for it to be a preview.

  When he pulls back, sweeping his gaze up and down my body, he adds, “Though I will say, this dress is really doing it for me.”

  “You’d say that if I was wearing a bathrobe.”

  “And I’d still mean it.”

  The deejay announces our parent dances. I spend the first half of the song dancing with my mom while Van dances with Megan, until Annabelle cries and her brother scoops her up. The crowd hums with laughter and a few good-natured head shakes: that little girl is sweeter than sugar, but a tad spoiled—and just as determined as the rest of the Durhams. When she wants something, there’s a decent chance she’ll get it.

  I dance with Van’s father for the second half of the song. He hugs me when the music fades and tells me, “Welcome to the family, Juni. Sure you’re ready to be a Durham?”

  Smiling, I point to my forever ring. “Pretty dang sure.”

  * * *

  When Van proposed nearly two years ago, we were in California, watching the sunrise and doing our morning yoga. He kept making fun of my new mats, now emblazoned with my blog’s logo: JS in flowing script, and my name spelled in clean block letters underneath.

  “You’re just jealous Frey won’t let you slap ‘Van Andreas’ over everything.”

  He reached out to lightly chop his hand into the back of my knee, trying to make me topple. I caught myself and threw some grass at him, both of us laughing in the rosy light.

  “You know what sounds better than ‘Juniper Summers?’”

  “Let me guess: Caraway Winters? Anise Autumns? You need new material.”

  “You love it.”

  “False.” The only time I’d ever truly laughed at one of his name jokes, hard enough to bring tears to my eyes, was when he held up a candle called “Coriander Solstice” in a store and announced, with a completely straight face, “Look at this. Those bastards stole the name I was saving for our first kid.”

  “Anyway,” he said now, “that’s not what I was going to say.”

  Sighing, I lowered myself into a hero pose and shut my eyes, breathing deep before asking, “Fine: what sounds better than ‘Juniper Summers?’”

  “Juniper Summers-Durham-Andresco. Or pretty much any variation along those lines, given how much of a damn mouthful it is. I won’t be picky.”

  I looked at him, then scrambled to my feet out of shock. Maybe even a little fear, but the good kind.

  He was no longer struggling with the side plank he’d been attempting for at least ten minutes. Instead, he was down on one knee, smile glowing in the rising sun. In his hands was a plastic bubble from a quarter machine.

  “Ring’s not real,” he said, popping it open and dumping it into his palm, “but the proposal is.”

  My vision blurred with tears as I laughed and inspected the plastic circle, about as sturdy as the pull-tab on a carton of orange juice. “I told you I didn’t need a ring at all, whenever you proposed.”

  “I know, I know: the whole tattoo thing. But proposing empty-handed felt wrong.” He lifted my left hand and kissed it, looking up at me from under his brow.

  “I didn’t practice a speech,” he confessed. I think he almost blushed. Surely, it was just a trick of the light. “There’s nothing I can say that I haven’t told you a million times before.”

  “A million and one, then.”

  He laughed, then swallowed as he found the words. “Every day I wake up next to you, I want to make myself better than I was the day before. I want to prove to this universe that I deserve the gift it gave me.

  “And that’s exactly what you are, Juni. What you’ve always been. I knew it from the very first moment I saw you.

  “But I wasn’t ready for it yet. I treated you like a cure. And when I didn’t get one…I blamed you.

  “It took losing you twice to realize I didn’t need someone to fix me. I needed someone who could make me finally want to fix myself.”

  I felt my own blush starting. “Making me sound a little too perfect, there.”

  “Oh, you are far from perfect,” he laughed, squeezing my hand tighter when I pretended to yank it away. “And that’s exactly how you roped me in, the second time. I wasn’t drawn to you because I thought you were some fallen angel, anymore. It was because I saw you were more like me than I thought.”

  He grew serious again. The sunrise swam in the blue of his eyes.

  “Messed up,” he said, “and broken…but here you were, making it on your own. Finding the bright side of damn near everything. Seeing beautiful things where no one else would.

  “It made me hopeful. Because clearly, you saw something in me I couldn’t. Something worth saving. And that made me want to find it, too.”

  He looked at the ring in his palm again, bouncing it into the air and catching it between his fingers—gracefully, and with a confident smirk to match.

  “I used to think you were magic,” he said. “Now I know you are.”

  Automatically, I shook my head, ready to tell him all the ways his word choice couldn’t be more wrong. He reached up and covered my mouth before I could.

  “That’s what I believe in, Juni. That all those incredible things about you, even the imperfect parts, add up to something magical. Disagree all you want. It won’t change my mind.”

  My teeth gave his palm a gentle bite. He pulled his hand back.

  “You see magic. All I see is me. What if what you’re calling blue,” I said quietly, “is really green?”

  “Then I’ll spend the rest of my life convincing you to see things my way.”

  Van put the ring on my finger. As always, he was so sure of himself: so convinced I was going to give him what he wanted, he assumed my answer before he’d even asked.

  “Juniper Summers, will you marry me?”

  He was right to assume.

  My legs weakened. I sank back to the mat in front of him and whispered yes.

  I wore that fake ring for weeks, until the silver paint flaked away and the plastic gemstone broke clean off. Van bought me another at the first grocery store we
found. This one was alloy metal, and turned my finger green within a week.

  He did it for all two years of our engagement: sliding fifty-cent rings on my finger every month or so, whenever the last one grew too worn or cracked.

  “Here,” I told Clara, when we lined up outside the event room this afternoon. I pressed the ring—painted silver band, plastic pink stone—into her hand. I’d forgotten I was wearing it until the music started.

  She pretended to fawn over it, as she always did with my rings, and slipped it onto her pinky for safekeeping. Even though I wouldn’t need it anymore, she knew I’d want to keep it. I kept them all.

  Each one sits in a little box on our equipment shelf in the Transit. It rattles when we drive, a toneless and clunky song I adore. An entire box of promises.

  I love them all just as much as the ink pressed into my skin now, and the solid black line stained into his.

  “Fuck, my back is killing me.” Wes stretches against the pillar by the bar and makes a face. “Two months on a tour bus has been hell. I don’t know how you and Juni sleep in that Transit all year.”

  “Yoga,” I answer, and he and Theo snort like I’m joking. I guess it is easier to believe all those photos on Juni’s Instagram of me doing tree poses and shoulderstands were staged against my will, instead of me slowly (and, God, so reluctantly) growing to like it.

  They tap my beer with theirs, then wander off to find their women like they’re on retractable leashes. Not that I can talk.

  Because the second I spot Juni in the crowd, laughing with Allison and Aunt Billie, I practically levitate back to her.

  “Stealing my wife,” I announce. The table boos me all the way to the dance floor.

  “We just danced, like, five minutes ago,” Juni reminds me.

  “So I like dancing. Sue me.”

  She quirks an eyebrow. Okay, I’m lying. Not only do I hate dancing, I’m awful at it. The fact I step on her dress and feet every thirty seconds proves that.

  “It’s a suitable excuse to get my hands on you,” I confess.

  “There it is.” She grins and straightens my tie. “Knew I’d get the truth out of you, sooner or later.”

  Sam, one of my friends through Frey, slinks by and asks to cut in.

  I pull Juniper closer than close. “Not a chance in hell.”

  Subtly, he flips me off and laughs his way off the floor. Delaney blushes like a fire truck when he passes her table.

  Damn, she’s got it bad. I guess it makes sense: Laney grew up sheltered, surrounded by rules, always taught she was too fragile. Like most skaters, Sam lives to break rules.

  Hell, sometimes we break ourselves, just so somebody else can’t get the chance. Definitely not the smartest breed.

  Example: he doesn’t even notice her, or the heart-eyes she’s shooting at him like a spotlight, and walks right by without a glance. She bites her lip before shrinking back into her seat.

  I make a mental note to warn my cousin that Sam Peregrine definitely isn’t worth it.

  But maybe I shouldn’t. History proves I’m not the best judge on that sort of thing.

  “Sam didn’t really want to dance with me, you know.” Juni fixes my tie again and squints at me, then holds up her ring finger like she’s flipping me off. “Are you still jealous? Even after this?”

  “Not jealous. Just protective.” I draw her head against my shoulder…mostly so I can check my watch behind her back. Christ, will this reception never end?

  Reading my mind, as she often does, Juni tells me to stop wishing the time away. “We only get one reception. Savor it.”

  “You know exactly what I want to savor, and an overhyped party isn’t it.”

  She shushes me with a laugh. “Ninety percent of our guests are your family and friends, remember?”

  I look around. She’s got me there. The Andrescos alone fill half this ballroom, while Juni’s guests could barely fill two tables.

  “Do you wish Rebecca was here?” I ask. That “Regretfully Declines” reply card hit Juni harder than the others.

  “A little.” The song changes to something faster. She nudges my hips until I’m dancing on-beat. “Maybe it’s for the best that she couldn’t make it, though.”

  I shrug. “Maybe.”

  Secretly, I agree one-hundred percent. Rebecca and Juni haven’t seen each other in over a decade: reuniting at a wedding seems like a bit much, compared to a booth in Starbucks or happy hour in some dive.

  Three years ago, Juni emailed her to tell her about Barton being their dad. Rebecca already knew he was her father; apparently her mom came clean shortly after his death, when the new compound was auctioned off and turned into commercial farmland. But the news he was also Juni’s dad floored her.

  For a while, they gushed over the idea of being sisters, but it soon became obvious they’d grown too far apart since Crown Plains. That was all they had in common, anymore. The place their shared story ended.

  Juni spent years in therapy finding some kind of peace about the cult, and never plans to publicly reveal she was a member.

  Rebecca makes a living off reliving it. Not exactly compatible for friendship.

  Still, I bit my tongue when that invite went out. It wasn’t my call to make. Only Juniper can decide how to handle her past.

  My job? Making her future as incredible as I can.

  “Look,” she giggles, pointing to Wes and Clara across the dance floor. He’s cradling Hal against his chest, facing him outward so Clara can hold his chubby little fists in her hands and dance with him.

  Wistfully, Juni sighs, “I want one.”

  “Then I’ll give you one.”

  This earns me a “yeah, right” look. “I was joking.”

  “I wasn’t.” When she tries to fix my hair, I snap at her fingers.

  She spins away laughing, so I take her hand and spin her right back. My arms snake around her waist from behind. Good thing her skirt has about fifty fucking layers. I’m not sure I could handle the friction of her ass right against me without some kind of buffer.

  “If you want one of those,” I whisper against her ear, “I’ll give you one tonight.”

  Our hips slow when the song changes. We don’t take our eyes off the baby.

  Well, she doesn’t. I’m watching her, a sport I could do all night.

  “We couldn’t travel with a baby in the Transit.”

  “Sure, we could. Stick it in a drawer.” I dodge the hand she reaches back to swat me with. “I’m thinking we get rid of the hammock chair, knock out a cabinet, and build some kind of custom crib. Or just sell the whole damn thing and get an RV.”

  “We are not selling Eloise,” she says firmly, and might even stomp her foot to finalize it. Too hard to tell, with this dress in the way. “The engine replacement is only two years old. She’s practically new all over again.”

  “Fine, fine. But seriously—lots of skaters travel with their kids. If they can do it, so can we.” I pause. “If I can keep doing it at all, of course.”

  I test my weight against the knee I injured earlier this year. Even with the soreness gone, I still vividly remember how it felt when I ate shit on a trail in Aurora and knew I’d torn a ligament.

  “No retirement talk,” she scolds, turning to face me again. “The doctor said your knee will be fine after physical therapy. Your injury isn’t permanent. It can’t limit you.”

  Her finger pokes my forehead, right in the center. “This, however, can.”

  While she leads me off the dance floor to where the wedding planner is beckoning us, I sigh, “Why do you always have to ruin my pessimism with that bright-side crap?”

  “Because even the moon,” she smiles, walking backward to pull me along, “needs a little sunshine.”

  * * *

  “Bad. Ass.”

  Juniper balls up our bandages and tosses them in the bathroom trash. Together, we inspect our ring tattoos under the vanity lights.

  “My mom,” she sighs as we clean
them up, “really didn’t like these.”

  “She’ll forgive us when we give her a grandchild.” I go to slap her ass, but all that fucking tulle blocks me.

  “Are you still on that?”

  “I’m about to be on you.”

  Juniper squeals with laughter when I scoop her up and carry her into the suite’s bedroom, halfway tossing her onto the mattress.

  “So what, exactly,” I ask, while she gets up and starts to undress me, “should I shout when I come? Mrs. Durham? Durham-Andresco? Summers-Durham?”

  “I still like Durham-Summers best, actually.”

  “God, you would pick the punniest name in the bunch.” It feels incredible when she shoves my shirt and jacket to the floor, throwing the tie somewhere behind us; I can’t stand dressing up.

  Her hands on my belt buckle feel even better—until I realize they’re shaking.

  “Hold up,” I laugh, taking both in mine, “are you seriously nervous? We’ve had sex a thousand times, Juni.”

  She hits my bare chest and gets back to work undressing me, then turns so I can unzip her. “I’m not nervous. Just...scared-excited.”

  I pause, my fingers dwelling in the small of her back. “We don’t have to have a baby if you’re not ready.”

  Slowly, she peeks at me over her shoulder. “Are you?”

  “No.” I bite her ear when she laughs. “But I’d get ready. That’s how it is. You prepare as much as you can, then...jump. Figure out the rest on the way down.”

  Juniper considers this with a thoughtful look, which my mouth quickly erases as I lick the length of her bare spine, shoving the dress and some weird corset bra thing to the floor. So much extra wrapping, when all I want is what’s inside.

  Even so, it feels wrong to cast the dress aside like it’s worthless. Juni, her mom, the twins, and Megan all went to at least three bridal shops to find it.

  While I drape it over an armchair, Juniper asks if I’m upset she didn’t want to do a garter toss.

  “No,” I chuckle. Sure, it might’ve been good for a laugh or two—everyone watching me get lost in the blizzard of her skirt, while she blushed herself to death—but I was happy to forfeit that and spare her the embarrassment.