Aligned: Volume 3 (17 page)

“Come join me up on the patio. We can sit up there.”
 

I shake my head. “I’ll join you in a minute.”
 

I knew Ethan would never dare to chance ruining his suit to sit on the grass with me, but right now, I don’t care what he does. I just want to sit on the grass and watch the clouds roll by over the dark blue ocean. I watch a couple walking on the beach swinging a toddler between their hands. I smile trying to imagine Ethan and me doing that with our child one day. I can’t quite imagine it yet, but maybe if we move here, I’ll be able to.
 

This spot makes me happy. Something I haven’t felt in weeks. I want this feeling forever. Nothing else matters right now. I want this ...

***

“I want this,” I repeat to myself as I sip my glass of water and wait for Abby. Last night was great. We picked out a house. To buy. To have kids and a family in. To live happily ever after in. I’m just not sure I’m ready for all of that yet.
 

I lightly trace the tattoo on the inside of my left wrist. A tattoo in memory of my mother. A mother I will never remember. I let my thoughts drift off to last night as I sit at the table waiting for Abby ...
 

“I’ve already contacted a realtor to draw up the papers to put an offer in on the house. We will be homeowners by the end of the week,” Ethan says.
 

I choke on my wine as he says the words. Everything is moving much too fast.
 

“Ethan, I love that house, but I’m not ready to make any decisions yet. I know I said I wanted it, but I’m just not ready.”

“If we don’t make an offer on the house, we could lose it, though. And even if we don’t want to make LA our permanent home, we will want a house here for when we visit Mother. If not, we will have to stay with her every time we visit.”
 

My lips press together in a slight grimace. “I guess you’re right. And I do love that view ...” Although I feel like Ethan would say anything to get us to move here, away from NY. It doesn’t make sense to me. If our entire lives were in NY before, then why would he want to move here? Why does he suddenly want to be close to his mother?
 

“I’ll agree to buy the house on two conditions. The first is you answer a question truthfully.”
 

“I will,” Ethan says, smiling as if he won as he takes a sip of his wine.
 

“Why?”
 

“Why what?” Ethan asks unfazed as he takes a bite of bread.
 

“Why do you want us to move to LA?”
 

His smile grows larger. The glint in his eyes sparkling more confident than ever. “I already answered that. We need to start over. I don’t feel safe in NY anymore. Everything horrible that happened to us happened in NY. It makes sense to move to LA. We can help Mother run the charity. We can start a family here. We can start a new life here.”
 

“But why not any other place? We have plenty of money to start anew anywhere. We could start our own charity if that’s what we decide we want. Why LA?”
 

Ethan narrows his eyes at me trying to read through the question to understand what I really want from him. I gaze back unflinching, hiding any meaning behind my question with it.
 

“I want to be near Mother ...”

“Bullshit.”
 

Ethan’s eyes stay transfixed on mine. His cheeks redden as he lets out a long, slow sigh. “Fine. I want you to be near Mother. I think she is good for you. I think she can help you remember the woman you once were.”
 

The words sting although I don’t think they were meant to. I don’t think Laura is good for me. In fact, I know she will inevitably bring out the worst in me if I spend too much time with her. The only reason I’ve let her boss me around as much as I have is because of Ethan. I felt guilty for not loving his mother when I thought he was dead. She was my only connection to the man I lost and didn’t remember. If I was anything like Laura before the accident, I don’t want to go back to the woman I was before.
 

“What is your second condition?” Ethan asks.
 

“That I will continue to do photography instead of helping your mother run the non-profit ...”
 

The rest of the night did not go well. Ethan argued with me incessantly about how being with his mother day in and out is what was best for me. I disagreed. I think doing the one thing I love, the one thing I truly remember how to do, is what’s best for me. It’s the only thing that connects me to my own mother. It’s the only thing that feels right in my life.
 

“Alexa!” Abby squeals running to engulf me in a hug.
 

“Hey, Abby,” I say squeezing her back. “I’m so glad to see you.”
 

“How have you been? I heard everything that happened with that husband of yours. Wild!”
 

“Yeah, it’s been a wild ride for sure.”
 

“You are so lucky! You got two hot, sexy guys while I can’t even snag one.”
 

“Yeah, I’m really lucky,” I say even though I feel like the most unlucky woman on the planet.
 

“You have to tell me all the details!” Abby leans forward on the table ready to soak in every little detail about these past few weeks.
 

“I will, but first, I was just hoping you had a photography job for me. It looks like Ethan and I will be here for a while and I could really use the distraction.”
 

“Absolutely!”
 

“Good,” I say, smiling. I need just one day when I can feel normal.

Please come back to me, love.
 

But most importantly

Please find your own love.
 

“Morning, sleepyhead. Wake up. Today’s our wedding day,” Alex whispers into my ear.
 

I grin. “I’m not supposed to see you before the wedding. It’s bad luck.”
 

“I already got you covered. Open your eyes,” Alex says seductively into my ear as she bites on the lobe.
 

I open and see nothing but dark fabric covering my eyes.
 

“Good thinking,” I say.
 

Her lips cover mine and her tongue licks over my lips begging for entrance. I oblige and deepen the kiss tasting spearmint on her tongue. Delicious.
 

“No one said anything about sex before the wedding being bad luck, though,” Alex says as she grabs my hard cock in her hand.
 

I groan. “I guess not.” She strokes my cock harder making my desire for her unbearable. I reach out to grab her but come up empty.
 

“Uh-uh,” she says. “No touching. I’m in control today.”
 

I growl. “I need you. Now.”
 

I can feel her smile, though I can’t prove it because of the blindfold covering my eyes.
 

“Patience.”
 

I feel her warm breath as it moves over my body, but her lips don’t make contact anywhere. Instead, they are teasing me. Taunting me with where she is going to touch me next. I do what she asks and don’t touch her despite my hands being free to do so. If she keeps this up much longer, though, I won’t be able to hold my hands back from attacking her soft, smooth skin.
 

Her lips suddenly wrap themselves around my hard length.
 

“Fuck, Alex,” I groan as she bares her teeth into my flesh. Her lips are amazing wrapped around me. She knows just how to move to bring me the highest level of pleasure. To push me over the brink. But I don’t want to come in her mouth, as easy as it would be. Not today. Not on our wedding day. I want to feel as connected to her as possible.
 

I find her body with my hands and rip her from my cock. The loss of her touch immediately makes me empty, but the pleasure that is soon to come will fill the void. I flip her onto her back and thrust inside her. As soon as my cock touches her entrance, I feel at home.
 

“Oh, Alex. You feel amazing, my soon-to-be wife.”
 

I thrust again as she claws on my chest trying to get me closer to her. I rub her clit starting in a slow circle and quickly picking up the pace as I thrust faster inside her. This is going to be fast, much faster than I want. But tonight, we will have all the time in the world to make love over and over.
 

“Landon ... I’m going to ...” Alexa screams. I can’t stand it. Fuck tradition. Fuck not seeing my wife on our wedding day. I take the blindfold off. Instead of Alex lying on the bed, it’s Caroline.
 

Fuck! I sit up in bed before realizing it was a dream. Just a dream. I’m sweating and panting hard as I try to get the image out of my head. I climb out of bed and throw open the window to look out at the beautiful Hawaiian beach that the hotel sits on. That’s when I remember that it wasn’t just a dream. Today, I’m getting married ... to Caroline.
 

I don’t get to dream of Alex any more after today. I don’t get to dream of what we could be. Fuck, why did I write songs about her? Every time I sing them, I will think of her. The songs will make me desperate for her until it drives me mad. This is my life now. A life of madness.

***

I’m dressed in a full tux. The only thing missing is my jacket that is slung over the hotel chair. It’s still an hour until the wedding starts. An hour until the end of my life. An hour until everything changes. An hour is all I have left of me.
 

I don’t know why the fuck Caroline wanted me here an hour early. It’s not like I can do anything but wait. Wait for my life to end. I watch Drew, my only groomsman, talk on his phone in his own tux.
 

“Goddammit, Drew, get off your phone,” I say throwing a pillow from the hotel room at him. He flips me off before walking into the hallway to finish his call. Leaving me to continue sulking on my own. Alcohol. I wish I had alcohol; that might make this easier. But I won’t. I can’t. Alcohol would make everything worse.
 

I peek out the window to look down at the beach where we will have the wedding ceremony. We are waiting until the perfect time of day to get married. Sunset, as per Caroline’s wishes. How she threw this grand of a wedding together in such a short amount of time is beyond me. Chairs line the beach and a beautiful arch of flowers sits near the ocean where a beautiful sunset behind us will give the media we invited the perfect shots of our wedding to plaster all over their magazine covers. For a small fee, of course.
 

I don’t know why so many chairs line the beach. Neither of us has any family left. Except Drew and Caroline’s brother. And her brother won’t come anywhere near me, not that I blame him. And neither of us has many friends. The chairs, I assume, are for media and celebrities she invited who want to say they were at the famous Landon Davis and Caroline Parker wedding. Sure to be the wedding of the year.
 

“Stop sulking,” Drew says as he lets the door fall behind him. He throws the pillow back in my face. “You chose this. You have no one to blame but yourself for making everyone miserable.”
 

“Who am I making miserable other than myself?”
 

Drew shakes his head. “No one.”
 

“You are supposed to be giving me brotherly advice as my best man, not talking business on your phone.”
 

“I wouldn’t have to talk on that fucking phone all the time if you wouldn’t do everything so last minute. Do you know how many people I have to call to make sure this wedding goes off without a hitch?”
 

“Isn’t that Caroline’s job?”

Drew sighs as he collapses into a nearby chair. He looks worse than I do today. He has dark circles under his eyes and his usually perfect hair is a little out of place. He looks like he’s aged ten years overnight. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with him.

“No,” is all he says.
 

“So you have a new girl you’re seeing?” I ask as I flip through my phone, trying not to make him feel pressured.
 

“Why do you say that?”
 

“You look like you haven’t slept in weeks. It’s either you’ve been fucking a girl all night or your heart is broken because of a girl. Which is it?”
 

“Neither. Just trying to get this fucking wedding organized.”
 

“Uh-huh, I’m going with fucking a girl all night long. You haven’t had time to fall for a girl. I expect to be introduced to this broad at the wedding.”

“There is no girl,” Drew says his cheeks flushed a bright shade of red.
 

Sure, there’s not.

***

“It’s time. Let’s go,” Drew says. I walk down the sandy aisle toward the arch at the end of the beach. I hope Caroline didn’t wear heels because there is no way she will be able to walk on this sand in them. Drew stays back. He’s walking Caroline down the aisle since she has no other family to do it.
 

As I walk, I smile, doing my best to seem happy. Flashes from the cameras blind me as I walk toward the arch, where a minister is already standing. I’ve never even met the man who is marrying us. I reach the end and turn to face the aisle. Flashes continue to blind me. I think Caroline hired enough photographers.
 

A woman stands from the front row of chairs and begins singing a beautiful song as Caroline’s bridesmaid walks down the aisle. I smile at the petite woman who looks similar to Caroline except with brown hair. This woman is probably who kept Drew up last night. If not, then maybe she should be the woman who keeps him up, judging from her tight body.