by Jess Bryant
No matter how much time they’d wasted. No matter how many times he told himself that it should’ve been the two of them together over the last few years, he knew that now it was them. Together. Forever. This was only the beginning of their love story.
Chapter Thirteen
Lulu sighed as she slapped another sticker with Derek and Aubrey’s initials and the wedding date onto a plain, old water bottle. It was number sixty-seven and she’d long since lost her focus. It wasn’t like the task needed even a fraction of her attention and the only thought she was giving to it at this point was just how many of these bottles Aubrey expected her to label.
All around the room the other bridesmaids were doing similar tasks. Sierra was handling phase one of the project. She was putting similar labels on small gift bags. Next to her, Amber and Nikki were adding in the equally emblazoned chocolates, bath bombs, chapsticks and beer coozies. Lulu was labeling the aforementioned water bottles and adding them to the sacks and then handing them off to Aubrey herself. The bride was busily writing out thank you cards, dropping them in the sacks and then finally passing them on to Anna to tie pretty bows on the handles.
They’d been at the task for over an hour and after a long day of other wedding related activities, Lulu was over it. She wanted to go back to her room so she could be alone. Only, that wasn’t true and she knew it. She wanted to go back to her room and see if Connor was there, find out if he was done helping the other men clean up the beach from where they’d had the rehearsal earlier in the afternoon and then a big picnic dinner afterwards. She wanted alone time but she wanted it with him.
Damn her heart to hell, but she missed him.
She could practically hear the clock in the back of her head counting down the time they had left together in this magical, Mexican paradise. The past few days had flown by with activities and long nights of lovemaking. They’d had the rehearsal today and the wedding was tomorrow. The day after that they’d be back on a plane headed home to Fate, Texas and no matter how many times Connor told her that he didn’t want anything between them to change she knew that it would when they got back to reality.
It would have to.
They wouldn’t be able to spend all day together anymore. They’d have their jobs and responsibilities. They’d have their friends and their families. Once they were back in Fate, she’d have to admit to herself and to him that they were more than a week-long fling and that was scary as hell for a girl that just six short days ago had thought herself in love with someone else.
She hadn’t been. She knew that now. Maybe she’d known it all along.
Once upon a time, she had loved Derek. She’d loved him with her whole heart and he’d shattered it. He’d broken it time and time again and somewhere along the way that had simply become the pattern for them. She’d clung to what she thought they should have been but in reality, she hadn’t been in love with Derek in a long time so much as she’d been in love with the idea of the life she could have with him.
Her parents were still happily married after forty plus years. They’d been high school sweethearts. Best friends turned lovers turned partners who still looked at each other with stars in their eyes. And she’d wanted that. She’d wanted it so badly that she’d focused all of her attention on her own best friend, hell-bent on making them into the couple she wanted to be, but the truth was, she’d known for a long time now that she was wrong to try to make them into something they weren’t.
Facing that truth had been hard. It had been rough. It had been a bitter pill to swallow, but she had finally come to terms with it and she supposed she shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was to find it was the man that had always given her the truth, even when she didn’t want it, that had helped her past it.
It was Connor.
They fought like cats and dogs. They argued like an old married couple. But at the heart of all of their interactions, the truth was that Connor had been there for her every time she’d needed him.
He’d been the one to help her pick up the pieces of her bruised and broken heart time and again when Derek dropped it carelessly. She supposed at some point, without her even noticing, he’d started to hold onto some of those pieces himself instead of giving them back to her. Without conscious thought, she’d started giving him pieces of her heart and after the night they’d spent in his bed, talking about their pasts, about his mother, she knew there was no more lying to herself.
He had her whole heart and if he broke it, there would be no taping it back together the way she’d done with Derek for years. Because this wasn’t some silly girlhood crush. It wasn’t a one-night-stand or a fling or anything that could be so easily dismissed.
She was falling in love with him.
She loved the way he knew how she took her coffee without even asking. She loved the way he kissed her so sweetly and so gently sometimes. Just as she loved the way that other times he seemed too desperate for her to go slow. She loved it when he took control of her and she loved it when he was so needy for what only she could give him that he lost his carefully tethered control.
She loved the demanding lover he’d become. The sexy, dominant man that pinned her down and fucked her hard while he growled about making her feel empty without him inside her. She loved the sweet, gentle man that woke her with light, teasing kisses and took her slowly, whispering nothings in her ear about how he was the one that didn’t feel whole unless he was inside her.
She loved fighting with him. She loved making up with him. She loved laughing with him and talking to him and just… being with him.
She hadn’t seen it coming. She’d laughed at the very idea of them together. But they worked. In bed and out. During the day and throughout the nights. They spent every moment they could together and it still didn’t feel like enough. She wasn’t sure it would ever be enough after all of the years she’d wasted not seeing what was right in front of her.
She felt scared and relieved and hopeful and terrified and so many other emotions that she couldn’t begin to get a handle on when it came to Connor. She felt like she needed to talk to someone but who was there for her to talk to about this crazy, intense need for him that had taken root inside of her?
As much as Sierra had prodded her to dish up the dirty details of what she’d known was going on between them, the perky blonde hadn’t known them separately. She wouldn’t understand. Not really. And the other girls? Amber was an obvious no-go and Anna was too innocent to be much help. Aubrey was just… Aubrey. They didn’t have that kind of relationship. And she certainly couldn’t talk to Derek about it. That would just be too weird.
So she’d spent the past few days getting lost in her head, worrying and thinking and worrying some more, and then letting Connor pull her out of her head with his soft touch and reverent demands only to retreat back inside her head as soon as he was out of arms reach.
She wanted to go back to their bungalow and see him. Now. He was the only one that understood what she needed when she got like this. He always had. And she thought that maybe if she saw him, her thoughts would quiet and simply let her heart take the lead and push away all of the doubts and fears about what came next for them for just a little while.
“Lulu!”
She jerked, knocking over the water bottle she’d been holding, at the sound of her name, “Huh? What?”
“You put the label on upside down.” Aubrey cried out in anguish, “Good grief girl, you’re as distracted as a deer in rut I swear.”
“I… uh, sorry.” She frowned at the label that was indeed upside down, just like the bride had said and focused on trying to peel it off and stick it on properly. “I’m… just tired I guess. I haven’t been getting much sleep.”
“Hell yeah you haven’t.” Sierra wagged her eyebrows playfully and Lulu realized what she’d admitted as a warm flush rose up her cheeks.
“Oh, I…” She shook her head, trying to correct herself but Anna came to her defense.
“Leave
the poor girl alone would you? You’re embarrassing her.”
“What’s to be embarrassed about?” Sierra only snorted, “Getting it good and regular from the kind of man that knows the true meaning of the word pleasure? No shame in that, honey.”
“Oh my God.” Amber all but hissed, “Can we not talk about Lulu’s sex life?”
“Just because you’re not getting any doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have fun.” Sierra rolled her eyes before turning back to Lulu, “You’ve been in la-la land again. Thinking about your man and the dirty, delicious things he’s no doubt promised to do to you when you get back to the bungalow?”
“I… no.” Lulu felt the heat rise all the way to the tops of her ears.
“Liar.” Aubrey teased good-naturedly, “But that’s okay. I totally get it. We’re almost done here and then we can all go back to what we’d rather be doing.”
“Our men.” Sierra announced and everyone laughed.
Lulu dropped her head, ignoring the other women as they chatted easily around her. As it turned out, Aubrey had been telling the truth. They’d only done up 100 gift bags for guests and it wasn’t long before they were cleaning up their trash and boxing up the bags for the next day. Lulu fidgeted until a small hand landed on her shoulder and she turned to see Nikki smiling at her.
“Go on. We can handle the rest.”
“Are you sure?” Lulu could hear the relief in her voice even before the younger girl nodded.
“Go.”
“Thank you. I owe you one.”
Lulu headed back to her cabana after saying quick goodbyes. She walked fast, her heart racing with the thought of seeing Connor. Had it really only been a couple of hours ago that he’d kissed her goodbye as she went off with the girls to do gift bags? It felt like an eternity, which was ridiculous.
What was she going to do when they got back to the real world and they had to spend the entire day apart at work? What about when work kept him late and she didn’t see him at all? How many sleepless nights were in her future as she lay awake, alone, worrying about him out there doing something dangerous in the line of duty?
She burst into the bungalow, “Connor?”
When no reply came, her heart sank. She headed for the door between their two rooms, the one that hadn’t been closed in days, but just as she’d expected his room was empty. She pouted a little that he wasn’t here waiting for her to return but she knew that was as ridiculous as all the rest of her thoughts were lately.
He’d been with the other guys cleaning up. She was certain Derek had him doing some sort of best man duty or another as they prepared for tomorrow. At the very least, she couldn’t complain if they’d gone to one of the bars for drinks to celebrate Derek’s last night of bachelorhood.
But without his big, strong, confident presence, the bungalow felt strangely empty and she felt wholly alone.
Lulu glanced at the clock. It was still early despite the long day she’d put in helping Aubrey and the others with wedding prep. She chewed her bottom lip, contemplating whether she should just take a shower and call it a night or give into the urge she had to talk to someone. It only took her another half second to decide.
She’d have loved to talk to Krysten. She wished for the hundredth time the girl was here with them on this trip. Despite being a few years younger than her, she and Krys had formed a strong bond over the years. It had been nice having someone that understood what it was like to love a Harper man that only saw her as a buddy. Krys had been getting the same treatment from Dean since they were children. But despite the fact Krys was her closest female friend, she wasn’t the one Lulu wanted to talk to right now.
Krys would be nice. She would be supportive. But it didn’t feel fair to call and tell the girl all about how she’d finally realized she was over Derek. Krys had enough of her own problems when it came to her Harper best friend. She didn’t need Lulu reminding her that years of friendship didn’t mean they were soulmates right now.
Instead of calling Krys, Lulu grabbed her iPad out of her bag for the first time since arriving in Mexico. She’d brought it thinking she’d be spending a lot of time alone and could read or play games but she hadn’t touched it once until now.
Carefully, she set it up on the equally unused desk in the corner of her room and then hit the button for FaceTime. She could have just called. She knew that. But she needed to see a familiar face right now and so she hit the autodial button for her first contact and waited as it rang through on the other end all the way back in Fate, Texas.
It only took two rings before the screen switched from black to a shaky, unfocused but familiar room and she heard the equally familiar voice saying, “Lu? Hold on a sec. Lu? Ok. You there?”
“Hey big brother.” She smiled as Lance’s face came into focus and she felt a rush of calming energy settle the worst of her nerves just as it always did when she talked to her brother.
Lance was the most levelheaded person she knew. He was rational and logical. He was laid-back in a way that she had never mastered with all of her nervous energy and she wondered sometimes if he’d gotten all of the serene genes and she’d been left with nothing but nerves as the younger sibling.
“Hey!” His bright grin lit up the screen when he saw her, “We weren’t expecting you to call tonight. Sorry it took a sec for me to figure out what was ringing and find this damn thing.”
“We?” Her own smile grew, “Is Trent there too?”
“Hey baby girl.” Another familiar Texas drawl came through her speaker a moment before a gorgeous, blond haired man poked his head in behind her brother, wrapping his arms around Lance and flashing a megawatt smile, “It’s good to hear from you. Your brother has been freaking out since we’ve gotten nothing but texts since you left. How’s Mexico?”
“I was not freaking out.” Lance scoffed but the knowing look Trent shot her told her all she needed to know and she found herself smiling.
“Mexico is beautiful. Derek and Aubrey chose an incredible resort. The beaches are white and the water is so blue it’s practically clear. It’s amazing.”
Lance’s dark eyebrows winged up, “Aubrey? You’re calling she who shan’t be named by her real name now?” He whistled quick and low, “How many margaritas have you downed today sis?”
“Oh shut up.” She shot back good-naturedly, “I know it seems crazy but… a lot has changed since the last time I saw you.”
“Seven days ago you mean?”
“Hush.” Trent bit at his boyfriend’s shoulder and grinned, “Clearly she has something to tell us. Just look at her, baby. She’s practically glowing.”
Lulu felt herself blush at Trent’s words, which she knew did nothing but confirm them. Glowing? Wasn’t that something that happened to pregnant women? There wasn’t a chance in hell she was pregnant even if she and Connor hadn’t been using condoms. But she supposed, maybe, she was glowing because for the first time in a long time, in longer than she cared to admit really, she was happy.
She was so damn happy and she was so damn scared to tell her brother why.
“Lu?” Lance’s dark brows had furrowed and his face was serious now, “What’s going on?”
“Well… something happened and I’m not entirely sure how it happened and I don’t really have anyone I can talk to about it so I thought… maybe… I could tell you but you have to promise me that you won’t freak out.”
“You’re making it sound like it is definitely something I’m going to freak out about.” Lance grunted, “Spill it Lulu. Now. What’s going on with you? Did you steal Derek away? Ruin the wedding? Do you need an escape?”
“God no. Nothing like that.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s actually kinda the opposite I… well, I realized I’m not in love with Derek.”
“Finally.” Trent all but groaned and Lance smirked at his boyfriend.
“I think I’ve known for a while now I just… didn’t want to let him go.” She shrugged.
“Jesus Lu, you had me
seriously worried there for a second.” Lance chastised her seriously, “You’re over Derek? You’re letting him go and going to be in the wedding and everything is fine?”
“Yeah. For the first time in a long time, everything is fine.”
“So how exactly did you come to this magical realization?” Trent grinned at her and there was a knowing sparkle to his bright blue eyes that made her wonder if he already knew the answer. That was impossible though. Wasn’t it?
She swallowed hard and took a deep breath for courage, “I met someone or rather… I mean, I knew him already but I didn’t know him, know him, if that makes sense. I just…. I kind of saw him for the first time through clear eyes while we’ve been down here and… We’re together now.”
“Together?” Lance’s eyes practically popped out of his head, “With who?”
“Connor.” She admitted softly and waited for the explosion she knew was coming.
Instead, Lance simply stared at her. Silent. Slack-jawed. A look of shock and horror on his features that resembled her own so much. Her brother stared at her across the distance of thousands of miles, through two computer screens and somehow she could still feel the ice of his cold reaction to her admission chill her to the bone.
“Lance?” She finally said when he remained quiet. “Say something.”
“Trust me. You don’t want me to say something right now, Lu.” He grit his teeth and she winced.
Trent whispered something in his boyfriends ear that she couldn’t make out and then turned back to face her with a soft look of understanding on his handsome face, “Your brother is just in shock. Ignore him. Talk to me. Tell me how this happened. You and Connor? Connor Shaw?”
“Yeah. Connor Shaw.” She bit her lip, her gaze darting from her brother’s stony expression to his boyfriend who looked intrigued if not slightly confused, “He… He makes me happy.”
“Well of course he does.” Trent grinned, “Anyone could see that just from looking at you. You’re all bright cheeks and sunny smiles. It’s good to see. Happy looks good on you baby girl.”
