“That’s a kiss!” Dom said with a laugh. “I want to introduce to you all Mr. and Mrs. Branson Tate.” Cheers resounded as Branson and I started down the aisle, a funky tune blasting from the speakers.
I had a microphone in my hand, and so did Branson.
“Love rescued me, your love came into my heart and set me free,” Branson sang.
“Love rescued me, your love came into my heart and delivered me,” I sang and grinned.
Branson twirled me as we made our way past the rows of people and out of the sanctuary our voices ringing. I’d finally found my happy ending.
Epilogue
I stared at the cover of my book in awe. I had done it. I had given her a happy ending. I turned the book over as I looked up at Branson with the biggest grin I’d ever had in my life. A squeal of pure joy came out my lips as I held up my book.
“I did it. I can’t believe this.” I flipped through the pages of my romance novel. It had taken so much work, but I had finally accomplished one of my life’s goals.
“It looks great,” he said, his brown eyes sparkling with life.
“I have a book signing next month.” I was still in shock that I’d finally published the novel that I’d been writing forever. Branson pulled me up off the floor and gave me a passionate kiss. I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him back.
“I knew you’d be the next J.K Rowling, Zoe,” he whispered.
“Branson, her books are about wizards.”
“Yours is about love’s redeeming grace. Much, much better.” He ran his fingers through my hair as his mouth enclosed mine again.
“No more talking, little Miss Author pants.” He picked me up into his arms and carried me away.
Grace Unbroken
Natasha House
Chapter 1
I carefully applied my eyeliner for the fifth time in a row tonight. I was going to do it this time. I was almost there. Just a little bit more.
“Hi, lil’ sis, how’s it going?”
I jumped, and there went my perfect line. A black streak went down the side of my eye.
“Urgh!”
“Oh, sorry, that’s a bummer,” my older brother Cam said with an apologetic shrug.
“It’s okay; it was a hopeless cause anyways.” I glared at the streak going down my face and heaved a sigh. “What’s up, Cam?” I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice. Cam gave me a ‘sorry’ smile again.
“Mom wanted me to tell you that we’re leaving in 10 minutes. You almost ready?” I could tell he was staring at the black streak that was going down my face. I forced a grim look and nodded, then broke out into a fit of giggles.
“Do you think I could pull off the ‘I did my makeup blindfolded’ look?” I asked.
“Sis, you could pull off any look and make other girls jealous.” Cam reached over and kissed my dark hair. “Just a warning, Benny has gas. Bad.” Benny is our six-year-old brother.
“Thanks for the heads up. I’ll practice holding my breath right now. Tell Mom I’m almost ready. It’ll be just a—few more minutes.” I made a face at myself in the mirror, which made Cam chuckle.
“Okay, but, Clare, you might want to fix that.” He pointed at my tribal makeup. I went to go slap his arm, but he darted out of my reach and shut the door with a grin. I made quick work of my face and decided that I’d attempt this eyeliner battle one more time.
After the sixth time, I finally looked halfway put together. 10 minutes. I had 10 minutes. I grabbed my curling iron and did a fast curl job on my mid-length black hair. My hair drives me nuts most days. It’s got this ‘fly-away’ syndrome. I try my best to make it look halfway decent and then it just decides to do whatever it wants.
After hair spraying the crap out of it, I gave a satisfied nod and looked at the tornado I’d created in my room.
I’m a rummager. When I can’t find the perfect outfit, or I’m in a hurry, every piece of clothing I own ends up on the floor or thrown on my bed. I looked down at my tiger shirt accented by silver gems, my black skinny jeans, and a pair of red boots that went up to my knees. I’d put on my favorite necklace which was a tiny tiger’s paw. I love tigers. They are my fav!
“Clare bear! Time to go!” my mother called from the living room. I heard the front door open and close and knew Mom was heading toward the van. I have to say, having a name that rhymes with everything can get annoying. Clare bear. Clare hair. Clare pear. I mean think about that for a bit. Annoying.
“Coming!” I ran out of my bedroom, glancing once more at my full length mirror. Good enough.
“Pull my finger, Clare!” Benny shoved his finger in my face as I tried to get out the door. I ignored him as I bumped him lightly to get by. I got into our mini-van that I just loved to be seen in and shut the door behind me. Ben and Cam climbed in the other door, my mom and dad were already in the van.
My mom was applying her own eyeliner like a pro. I swear we could be swerving and hitting mailboxes and my mom will have the most perfect makeup. It makes me so jealous. She calls it experience. She is a mom of three. She used to put makeup on while driving us to school. Yikes. It’s lucky I didn’t die when I was a kid.
“New shirt, Clare?” my dad asked as he started up the engine. I looked down at my tiger shirt.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s nice.” He gave me a smile as he backed the van out of the driveway. Since when did my dad notice my shirts? Weird. My mom and dad have been trying to connect more, it was really freaky. My dad is awesome, but he’s not much for talking. I think in their small group at church they’d been discussing relationships with their children. I zoned out for a few minutes by reading my Kindle. Suddenly, a deadly smell wafted into my nostrils.
“Benny!” I waved my hand back and forth. Cam gave me a look that said I told you. I had been warned. We arrived at church not soon enough. I opened the door and gasped dramatically for air. It made Benny laugh really hard. It really stunk in there!
Cam gave me a glance, and I knew he wanted to know if his hair was still looking good. Cam looks like my dad; tall, skinny, light brown hair, with brown eyes. I look more like my mom with dark hair and blue eyes. Benny looks like some sort of combo. Cam likes this girl at church named Chelsea. I personally think she’s a stuck up snob, but he can’t seem to take his googly eyes off her. I have to admit she’s pretty, but seriously, the girl takes selfies every five minutes. I nodded to him. It didn’t matter how perfect his hair was, Chelsea was into blonds. She’d even told me that. I think she knew that my brother had the hots for her but was trying to subtly tell me that she was not interested. I didn’t really have the heart to tell Cam that it was a hopeless cause.
He walked away with a confident smile, and we stepped into the foyer. People walked into the sanctuary, some sipped at coffee, not quite awake. My church isn’t huge, but it’s not dinky either. I think we run about 200 on a normal Sunday.
“Hi, Clare!” My best friend Paige waved wildly at me. I smiled at her as I shouldered my purse. Her light brown hair was hanging down her shoulders in crimpy waves, her hazel eyes smiling.
“Hi, Paige!” We embraced, and I could smell the faint hint of vanilla. Paige loves vanilla body spray. It smelt so good.
“I saved you a seat next to Lucy and me.”
“Are the twins here?” I looked around the room to see if I could spot two of my other best friends. They are identical opposites. While Raina was spunky and outgoing, Willow was super shy. I spotted their brown curls as I went to put my stuff down in my chair.
“Hi girls!” I said. Raina ran over to me and threw her arms dramatically around my shoulders.
“Clare! Oh my gosh, I have so much to tell you!” Her brunette curls bobbed. “Willow and I both bought new outfits!” She pulled back from our embrace and squealed in my ear. Ouch. Loud.
“That’s awesome!” I matched her grin as she clapped her hands and stomped her feet like a little kid on Christmas morning. Willow came over and
shyly lifted her eyes to mine.
“Hi, Clare.” She gave me a sweet smile, and I pulled her into a gentle hug. Willow was never loud. Ever.
“We should probably sit down,” I said. Lucy arrived a few minutes later with the largest Bible on the planet. Lucy is like 110% Christian. Everything she does shouts, I’m amazing. Sometimes her perfectness gets on all our nerves. She tells us how much she prays every time we see her, and she’s the youth pastor’s favorite. We all know it, but we still love her, or most the time anyways. The service began, and we quieted our chatter. Well, Raina’s chatter to be precise. I chuckled under my breath as our worship leader, Mallory, began to play the keyboard. Her soprano voice filled the sanctuary and brought me to my feet.
“Good evening, everyone! I want you to stand to your feet tonight and greet someone.” Mallory’s warm smile stretched across her face. I turned around in my seat and nearly choked. A cute blond boy met my eyes. I took an involuntary leap backward and nearly hit the chair behind me. He looked startled by my reaction but then laughed.
“I’m Dillon.” He flashed a boyish grin at me that made my knees weak. Geesh, I was being such a girl.
“Hi, I’m Clare.” I reached out my sweaty hand and shook his. He looked at me through thick eyelashes and tipped his head to the side.
“I love your shirt.”
“Thanks,” I said. Mallory was beginning to sing, and the band was revving up.
“Nice to meet you!” I waved to him as I turned back around, my heart thudding like a drummer gone wild. Good God. Literally. God had to be good for a guy that good looking to be at our church. I caught Raina’s slacked jaw, and she mouthed ‘Oh my gosh!’ to me. I laughed as I tried to pay attention to what was happening. I could feel Dillon’s eyes on the back of my head, and it made me squirmy. What did the back of my head even look like? I curled my hair like super speedy tonight; it probably was flat by now. After worship ended, our pastor dismissed us to youth group.
Us girls formed a blob as we made our way into the other building. We had to go outside to get there, and we were chatting the whole way. I eyed Dillon as he lingered behind us several feet. I really wanted to find out more about him, or at least find out where he came from. It was pretty abnormal for some random teenage guy to just show up at our church. We were nearing the door to the youth building when Raina, God love her, asked, “Where you from?”
“My parents and I just moved here two weeks ago. I’m from Detroit. That’s my brother Dex.” He pointed to a dark-haired guy that was lagging behind everyone. He looked a little bit older than Dillon, maybe 18 or 19? Raina’s eyebrows went up.
“Big city boy,” Raina said. Her nose scrunched. “Why on earth did you move here? We don’t even have a decent Starbucks.”
He laughed and scuffed his feet against the gravel. “God called us here. My dad’s a minister. He got hired on staff as the new assistant pastor.”
“Oh wow!” Raina said. We headed into the building as rain lightly splattered my curls. Man. There went my curl job. Feeling like a wet dog, I weaved my way through the crowd of rowdy teens. Our youth pastor, Pastor Carl, was not equipped for the amount of teens that came every Wednesday. He always looked harried and annoyed.
“Alright, alright! Let’s find our seats!” He waved some teens to their chairs, running his bulky fingers through his thinning hair. He wasn’t really that old. Maybe thirtyish, but I think we were aging him and fast. I sat next to Paige. Raina pulled out some lipstick, put it on, smacked her lips, and handed me the tube.
“Put this on, girl. You need it.”
I stared at the bright pink lipstick and shuddered. Ungh-ugh. I was not wearing that. It would probably make me look like my 80-year-old grandma. It was bad enough that I had gained five pounds this month; I was not adding fuel to the fire.
“Nah.” I shook my head.
“Put. It. On. Now. Or so help me.” Raina gave me her most fierce look. Good lord. I grabbed the lipstick, pulled out a tiny mirror in my purse, and applied it before she threw a tantrum. Actually, it didn’t look half bad on me. Wow. My makeup was rough today. Stupid eyeliner. Satisfied, Raina took the lipstick back, pulled out another color, and shoved it in her sister’s hand. Willow gave me a helpless look as I handed her my mirror.
After every girl in our row was wearing some of Raina’s lipstick, Pastor Carl cleared his throat. As if that would get anyone’s attention in this place. He grabbed his microphone, which was never ever loud enough. He opened up his Bible onto a wooden pulpit that was just a tad too high for his short frame.
“Open your Bibles up today to 1 Corinthians 6:18-20. Jim, go ahead and read that out loud for everyone.”
Jim, a super shy guy, with too much height, and pimples accenting his cheeks, stood up.
“‘Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.’” Jim turned all shades of red after he read the verse. My eyes widened. Were we seriously talking about sex? Oh God. This was bad. I felt my face turning beet red at the thought of Dillon sitting behind me. Of course the day that this super cute guy shows up, and Pastor Carl has to talk about sex!
“Can anyone tell me what this scripture means?” Pastor Carl’s eyes swept the room. Please don’t pick me. Please don’t pick me.
“Clare?”
No! I melted into my chair, but Pastor Carl motioned me to stand to my feet.
“Can you tell everyone what this scripture means?”
Sweat broke out over my entire body. Why the heck was this happening to me? I heard snickers as I twisted my lips in thought. I tended to bite my lower lip when I was nervous.
“Um, I think, um…” Spit it out, girl! Why didn’t he call on Raina? She never ceased to have something to say. Just make something up! “Because Jesus died for me and loves me?” I wanted to slap my forehead. What just spewed from my mouth? That scripture wasn’t about the love of God! Laughter erupted from all four corners of the room, and heat spread throughout my entire body.
“Pastor Carl, I think what Clare meant to say was, the scripture is talking about remaining pure and holy before God. He wants us to remain chaste for our future husband or wife. We’re not allowed pleasure before our covenant is made,” Lucy said, rescuing me from my torment. Thank God she was a know-it-all! I sat down in my chair and prayed that I would become invisible. Pastor Carl smiled at Lucy.
“Excellent! This scripture is about keeping ourselves pure! In today’s society we see impurity spread across everything. T.V, Facebook, the internet, you name it. It becomes difficult to follow God’s instruction for our lives to remain pure.” Pastor Carl continued to preach, but I really didn’t hear much after that point. How could I have said that? What was I, a complete idiot? My face remained flushed the entire time as I relived my stupid words over and over in my head.
“We are going to play a game,” Pastor Carl said. He grabbed a stack of papers and pens and had this kid pass them out. After I got my paper, I stared at it. It was one of those games where you have to ask people if they’ve done one of the things on the list. Such as: Have you ridden a horse? Or something dumb like that. I was terrible at games like this. They were icebreakers, but besides my friends, I didn’t really talk to a lot of people in youth group.
“Okay! You have five minutes. Whoever wins will get a gift card to Walmart.”
I could use some new makeup. I wanted to win that card. Teens scattered all over the place. A girl I barely knew came up to me with a scowl.
“Have you ever met a celebrity?” she asked in the dullest voice possible. Someone was excited.
“No,” I said and scrunched my face slightly. She turned from me without a second question. Alright. I tapped my pen against my paper.
“Do you own your own car?” I asked this kid I didn’t know at all.
“I wish!” He laughed and pushed past me. Annoyed, I went to another person. I painfully and slowly began to fill out my sheet until I had only three questions left. I’d asked a lot of people the last three questions, but no one had done them. I spotted Dillon. No. I didn’t want to ask him. It was dumb, but my stupid answer earlier made me feel awkward. Raina caught my attention and pulled me aside.
“What’s wrong with you? Go talk to that guy. He’s hot!”
“I don’t know, Raina, he’s too hot. That’s the problem. I feel like an idiot.”
“Here, I’ll go with you.” She tugged me along until we were close to Dillon. “Clare wants to ask you a question.” Raina smiled smugly and turned to me. My throat seized up, and I was going to vomit. Right. Now. Puke gushed out of my mouth, all over the front of my tiger shirt, and onto the floor. Raina screamed and let go of me like I was a poisonous snake. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I just puked in front of the cute guy. Willow was instantly at my side rubbing my back.
“Pastor Carl, I’m going to take Clare to the bathroom.”
Pastor Carl was staring at the pile of puke in utter horror and nodded his head numbly. “Go, go…”
Willow wrapped her arms around my shoulder and walked with me all the way to the bathroom, soothingly rubbing my arm in the process.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” I kept saying over and over to myself.
“Shhh…its fine, Clare, you’re fine. Are you sick?”
“Uh huh,” I said. Yuck, my throat burned, and my mouth tasted like garbage. I just puked in front of Dillon. Sometimes when my nerves were wound tight, and I had eaten greasy food, I’d puke. What had I eaten for dinner? Tacos. Oh dang it. That was what it was! I usually avoided stuff like that, just because it would make my stomach upset. We finally got to the bathroom, and Willow turned on the sink. See why I love her? Suddenly, Paige burst into the bathroom behind us.
Grace Alive: a Christian Romance Page 18
