Save the Date (36 page)

Out climbed his sister.

“I’m gonna kill that kid.” Alex reached for the handle. “I’m going to rip him apart. And then I’m going to feed my sister bean sprouts until she breaks out in zits all over that lying face.” His door bounced on its hinges as he swung it wide. “Finley!” he yelled. The rain pelted his skin, but he didn’t even notice through the red haze of anger.

She turned, holding an umbrella over her head. “What are you doing here?”

He closed in on the sneaking couple. “I thought you might need help with your cheer routine.” He took in the boy beside her. “You must be Rebecca.”

“Leave him alone,” Finley said.

“Dude, we weren’t doing anything wrong.”

Alex looked at Kyle like he was standing in the way of him and the end zone. “
Dude
, your breathing right now is all wrong to me. I suggest you take your little Abercrombie-wearing self into your house and lock your door. Because after I get through talking to my sister, I’m liable to come after you. And I’ll be all done with talking.”

Kyle leaned toward Finley.

“Kiss her.” Alex said. “I dare you.”

Looking at a force he couldn’t contend with, Kyle mumbled an apology to Finley, then ran into his house.

“You are
such
a jerk.”

“Call me whatever you want.” The rain seeped into Alex’s clothes, but he hardly felt it. “You lied to me.”

“Who cares!” she cried.

“I do!” he shouted back. “You’re my baby sister.”

“Don’t stand there and pretend like you give a crap. You haven’t said five words to me in the last year.”

“We talk all the time.”

“Yeah, a text here. An e-mail there. You didn’t even show up for my birthday last month.”

“I was busy.” He raised his voice over the growing wind. “I sent you a big gift card to the mall.”

She tossed her hands in the air. “I don’t want your money. I want my brother back!”

That stopped him. “Get in the car, Finley. We’ll talk about this at home.”

“No.”

He groaned as he saw her lips tremble. A woman’s tears were going to be the death of him. “Get in the car.”

“No!” The wind howled over them, knocking the umbrella right out of her hand. She spun on her brother. “I hate you! Do you get that? I despise you.”

“Don’t say that.” Rain dripped in his eyes, and he dug in the pocket of his jacket for a tissue. Anything. His hands closed over something, and he pulled it out.

The pieces of paper he had scribbled on during Chuck’s sermon.

Failure.

Guilty.

He felt all of those things tonight. While Lucy had nailed hers to the cross, Alex had stuffed his in his coat like the weak man he was. “I’m sorry, Finley,” he said. “For whatever I’ve done.”

“You don’t even know, do you?”

This was pretty much how his life went anymore. “Tell me.” So they could get out of the rain. So he could just fix it. And fix whatever Lucy’s problem was. He wanted to see his sister look at him like he was her hero again. And not her biggest disappointment.

“Will died.”

The words ripped into his flesh and bone. “I know.”

“He died, and you didn’t even care.”

“Of course I did.” He was eaten up with it. It was a consuming plague on his spirit. “I loved him too.”

“I needed you.” Her hair clung to her face. “One of us is gone, and you couldn’t be bothered with it. I was all by myself. I lost two brothers.”

“That’s not true.”

“You were too busy with football. Then when you quit, you just went on to something else. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Nobody to share Will stories with. He’s gone.” Her body shook with sobs as she sunk to the pavement, her hands covering her face. “Will is gone.”

“Hey.” Alex dropped down beside her. He peeled the hair from her eyes and pulled her to his drenched chest. Lucy still sat in his passenger seat, and he wondered what she would tell Finley right now.
God, give me the words. I’m a desperate man
.

“You left me.” She curled into him, jerking with the force of her tears. “How could you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

Failure
.

Guilty
.

Lies he hadn’t been strong enough to leave behind.

God, just take them. I can’t live under this anymore. I’m giving them to you
.

“I was hurting too.” The truth peeled from his lips, stinging like a scab ripped away. “I felt guilty, okay?” How could he possibly make this seventeen-year-old girl understand? “Like I should’ve been the one taken. Instead of Will.”

“Neither one of you should have been.”

“I know. And it’s not fair. And the worst thing is that I bailed when you needed me most.” Money had been the cruelest of tormenters. He’d never been more useless in his entire life. “I just wanted to fix it for you, and there was nothing I could do.”

Eyes so much like his stared back at him. “I wanted my family around me. Someone to listen to me—who understood what I’d lost.”

He had been such an idiot. His family had never done anything but love him. And he had pushed them away, pouring salt on their gaping wounds. “I want to be your brother again.” His fingers held tight to her arms. “A real one. It’s not too late.”

“Are you going to visit more?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll come over for Sunday dinner?”

He hated his mother’s meatloaf. “I’ll make it a priority.”

The rain couldn’t wash away the hope on her face. “I’ve missed you, big brother.”

He crushed her to him. “I’m not going anywhere again. I promise.” He was leaving the guilt there in the driveway. It was time he rejoined the family. People who would take him just as he was—if he would only let them.

“Are you still going to beat up Kyle?”

There was only so much giving a man could do. “No, of course not.” With his arm wrapped around her, Alex led Finley to the car. “I wouldn’t dream of taking away Dad’s fun.”

Chapter Forty

T
he harpist played “Yoda’s Theme” from
Empire Strikes Back
.

From the changing room in the chapel, Lucy could hear the rumble of wedding guests, the three-string band, and her friend Sanjay ordering guests to sign the book.

“Can you just go check on Chuck?” Morgan said. “I know he’s nervous, and I need to see if he’s okay.”

“He loves you.” Lucy smiled at her friend. Chuck wasn’t the only one nervous. “He’s fine.”

The bride planted a fist on her hip and pointed to the door. “I’m about three seconds away from going Bridezilla on you.”

“On my way.”

Lucy crossed the hall, knocked, and slipped into the small room where Chuck waited.

“I’m here to make sure you’re not crawling out the window and making your escape.”

Chuck glanced to the tiny porthole in the wall behind him. “Not much chance of that.”

“You look quite dapper.” Lucy reached out and brushed some lint from his jacket.

He smiled. “You look all right yourself.”

Lucy looked more than all right. She was radiant in a red chiffon dress with a ruched bodice and a skirt that grazed the bottom of her knee. Clare would be proud of Lucy’s updo, though the twin roses pinned at the side gave it the sass that was all her own.

Concealer hid the dark circles under her eyes. She had lain awake all night. Thinking. Praying. And eating Julian’s mocha chocolate cheesecake. Today was the day she saw her best friends get married. And a day of decisions for her.

“Those people are totally going rogue on the guest book,” Sanjay said as he stepped inside. “Their failure to comply with protocol makes me question the fate of our world.”

Chuck checked himself out in the mirror. “Just like it warns in Revelation.”

Lucy watched Sanjay pull out his iPhone.

“What are you doing?” Chuck asked. “Did you just get footage of me smelling my pits? Cause if you post that, I will take that feathered pen outside and stick it so far up your nose—”

Lucy laughed and stepped between them. “You’re not nervous, are you, Chuck?”

“About the wedding? Yes,” Chuck said. “About the next fifty years? No. It was like my sermon last week was for me as much as it was for anybody else. I hadn’t realized how much I had let all those negative thoughts take over. I was dreading today, wondering if I had what it takes to make Morgan happy. I’m glad I can go through this ceremony with a clear conscience.” He watched her in the mirror as he checked his hair. “When it’s right, it’s right. You know?”

“Yeah.” How about when it was semi-right? Or had potential to be something eventually? She hadn’t lingered at Alex’s place last night.

She had given Alex and Finley their time, but today, there was no escaping the conversation she needed to finish with her fiancé.

“Well, I guess my work is done here,” Lucy said. “I’ll see you at the altar.”

“Hey, Luce?”

She stopped at the door and turned.

“The real deal is worth waiting for. Anything else just looks good, but won’t keep you going for the long haul. Kind of like that banana split I had for lunch.” His hands rested on her shoulders. “I’m proud of you. You have your girls’ home. You’re changing lives. And you’ve finally let the old hang-ups die and given Alex a chance.” He glanced at her sparkling engagement ring and smiled. “And just look where it’s gotten you.”

Lucy stood behind her friend at the altar. Holding hands with Chuck, Morgan could’ve been a model for a bride magazine in her strapless white dress and her delicate tulle veil. Wearing a silly grin, Chuck couldn’t take his eyes off her. That’s what it was supposed to look like. And feel like. Not the miserable sensation of a derailed roller coaster.

At the pastor’s prompting, the couple faced one another to recite their vows. They had written their promises themselves, and when it was Chuck’s turn, he stood before his bride, a man confident in who he was.

“Morgan, the day I met you, my life changed.”

Lucy let her eyes skim over the church pews and found Alex’s steady gaze on her. He smiled and sent her a slow wink. He was easily the most handsome man in the church in his dark suit, with the lights through the stained glass bringing out the auburn highlights in his hair.

“ . . . and I stopped settling. It didn’t matter that you’re hot and I’m bigger than Chewbacca.” Chuck never took his eyes off of Morgan, even as the audience laughed. “It didn’t matter that you’re all refined, and I typically eat dinner with a spork. Because you loved me. For who I am. And I promise you, Morgan Cramer, that I will always put your needs before mine. Always make you feel like you are more than enough for me.”

Sweat broke out along Lucy’s hairline, yet her skin felt like winter had just swept through the room.

God was talking to her.

Again.

She knew what she needed to do. She just hadn’t. Clare was right, she was good enough. She wasn’t second-rate, and it was time she started living like it.

There Alex sat. On the fifth row. Waiting for her. Because he knew she would come to him after the service. They simply existed in this twisted holding pattern. Well, Lucy Wiltshire wasn’t going to let the game clock keep running. It was time to reclaim her backbone. She was through not being enough—to herself and everyone else.

“You may kiss your bride.”

The wedding guests clapped and hooted. Some teens stood and high-fived. There was nothing elegant about Morgan’s Chuck. Or the people he hung out with. Herself included.

Guests made their way to the reception hall while the wedding party took pictures. Lucy struggled to focus on the camera as the church emptied out and Alex sat alone in his pew.

The last picture snapped, and the remaining group answered the siren’s call of cake and watered-down punch. Except Lucy.

Her peep-toe heels clicked on the floor as she walked to where Alex sat, hands folded over the seat in front of him, looking like a fallen angel just stopping by.

He took her hand, kissed her fingers, and pulled her closer. “I can’t stop looking at you.”

“Thanks.”

Head angled, he leaned toward her.

She halted him with a hand.

“Afraid I’ll mess up your lipstick?”

She simply looked at him. The pull to him was so tangible she wondered that there weren’t cords tethered between them. “Did I ever tell you about my senior year?”

His eyes studied her, and she knew he was trying to figure out her play. “No.”

“My mom and I had moved to Florida to live with her fiancé, Robert,” she said. “I had this whole life in front of me. A new school. College.” Even after all these years, the memories still had the power to suffocate. “Then the car wreck, and . . . she was gone. And my dream of a home and family died with her.” Lucy inhaled and pushed through, because if she didn’t, she’d falter and hand Alex her soul. “Suddenly Robert was a single parent, and he couldn’t handle it. I went to a few foster homes, but nothing worked out. By the time I left the last one, I still had months to go before I could move to my dorm at the university. So . . . I lived in my car.”

“Babe—” He reached for her, but she shrugged his hand away.

“I know what Marinell’s life is like. I know what it’s like to love your family so much it doesn’t matter if you eat or have a place to sleep. And I know what it’s like to be so utterly alone you don’t know how you’re going to get through the day. How you’re going to survive in a world that suddenly considers you an adult. I was lucky—many of these kids
don’t
survive it.”