“I’m trying to keep you humble, Lachlan. An impossible job, quite honestly,” she says, her smile only widening when I mutter a weak protest. “But in all seriousness, don’t forget what I said.”
A groan works its way up my throat. I remember.
Don’t be a dick. Dance with the maid of honor.
I take a breath to ask why it matters or to make another attempt to get out of it, but Sloane cuts me off.
“Bride’s orders,” Sloane whispers as though she’s crawled right into my brain. “Or I’ll take an eye.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“What did I say about threatening me with a good time?” When Sloane looks up, a little tremor quivers in her lip and the grumbles I want to shoot back at her evaporate. Her teasing bravado falters and she knows I can see it, the nerves beneath the mask, the glassy sheen at her lash line.
“Hey,” I say, patting her hand. “You remember when you came into the restaurant that first time and I was there?”
Sloane nods as she keeps her gaze trained away from me.
“I whispered something to my brother. Want to know what I said?”
She pauses, then nods again.
“I said, ‘That girl is too good for you, asshat, but she loves you anyway. Don’t fuck it up.’ And he won’t. One thing I know for sure, Spider Lady. You and Rowan are meant for each other.”
Sloane’s face crinkles as she fights her hardest to hold back tears. With a few deep breaths and a pass of a tissue beneath her lashes, she composes herself. “Thank you.”
“Sure. Just keep my brother out of the whiskey. He’ll start singing ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’ and it’s bad. It’s so feckin’ bad. He’s got a voice that’ll make Satan weep.”
“Give Rowan all the whiskey. Got it.”
“Christ Jesus.”
An anxious giggle bubbles from Sloane. By the time we reach the open door she’s vibrating, her arm unsteady against mine.
And then we pass the threshold.
I can feel the exact moment when she sees my brother waiting at the end of the long aisle beneath an arch of flowers, the sea a shimmering backdrop lit with the morning sun. Sloane’s talon grip on my arm relaxes. The tremors fade. Her smile grows bright.
And as for Rowan?
He’s a feckin’ blubbering mess.
Rowan presses a handkerchief to his eyes, but it doesn’t stop more tears from replacing the ones he catches. He shifts his weight from one foot to another until Fionn claps a hand on his shoulder and whispers something in his ear. Whatever it is earns Fionn a backhanded smack to the side of his head, but Rowan never takes his eyes off Sloane.
“Do you boys ever leave one another alone?” Sloane whispers to me as Fionn grins and Rowan returns to his state of crumbling disarray.
“Not usually. No.”
“Of course you don’t.”
We fall into silence as we draw close to the limited seating. There are only a handful of guests, mostly Rowan’s friends and a few of Sloane’s closest work colleagues and Lark’s elderly aunt, all of whom stand to watch our progress with warm and encouraging smiles. They block our view of the musicians seated somewhere to the left near the flower arch, but even without seeing them, I recognize the singer’s voice.
My eyes narrow. My smile feels more like a grimace.
I try to resist the urge to glance in the direction of the guitarist and pianist, nodding to the few guests I recognize as we near the archway. But it’s futile.
My gaze slices to the musicians. To the source of the voice that crawls into my chest and twists like barbed wire beneath my bones.
To Lark Montague.
Her sparkling blue eyes connect with mine for only an instant, just long enough for us to glare at each other and look away. An electric charge surges through my heart. I want a thousand things. To leave. To stay. To pick up where we left off on that balcony. But which moment would I choose? The one where I pressed my lips to Lark’s, her hair gripped tight in my fist? Or the argument that still feels unfinished, one I want to reopen like a festering wound, a cut across my memories that refuses to heal? No matter how many times I try to ignore it, that conversation still bleeds into my thoughts. My stomach twists when I remember that brief moment where my sharp words struck a mark. I can still see the flash of hurt in her eyes.
You have no fucking idea who I am or what I know about consequences, she’d said as she submerged her pain beneath fury.
Her words echo through my mind as Sloane and I slow to a halt and stand before my disintegrating younger brother. The music fades into the final bars of the song.
“You okay, pretty boy?” Sloane whispers to Rowan as he replaces his damp handkerchief with a fresh one.
“You look …” Rowan trails off and clears his throat to try again. It’s an admirable attempt, but his voice remains little more than a gravelly whisper when he says, “You look so beautiful, Blackbird.”
“You kind of cleaned up okay yourself. Though I’m a bit disappointed you’re not in a velveteen dragon onesie.”
“It could use a wash,” he squeaks out.
Rose cackles off to the side and buries her grin in her bouquet. Fionn grumbles something unintelligible about sports as a blush creeps from beneath his collar. Lark joins the bridal party now that the song has finished. She’s beaming. Tears dampen her cheeks as she takes Sloane’s flowers alongside her own. And by Christ it takes me a long moment to realize that Conor just asked who was giving the bride away and it’s up to me to respond. Sloane catches the delay, of course. Her pinch on my arm is what pulls me away from trying to decode Lark, a woman who can ram some poor bloke into a lake with zero remorse, yet cries so hard at her best friend’s wedding that one of her fake lash clusters falls off. Seriously. That fucker slides right down her cheek and she swipes it into her hand, not giving two shits about anything but Sloane and Rowan.
I set Sloane’s hand in Rowan’s and try to keep my attention on my brother as he sniffles his way through his vows. Maybe there’s a sting in my nose when Conor declares them legally wed by the laws of Massachusetts. Maybe it burns a little in my throat when Rowan frames Sloane’s face between his palms and just stares at her, making sure she knows this is the most monumental event in his life.
“You’d better kiss me, pretty boy. You’re not my husband until you do,” Sloane whispers as a single tear breaches her lashes and slides toward her lips.
Rowan does kiss her, of course. He slides an arm across her back and dips her as the small audience cheers. Lark is the loudest of all.
We have a few drinks at Leytonstone Inn, where Lark’s aunt Ethel has arranged for canapés and cases of champagne, far more food and alcohol than could ever be consumed by such a small group of people, even with three rowdy Irish brothers in the mix. When everyone is sufficiently buzzed, we file into chauffeured vans and head to town. We wind up at a tavern down the road, an unfussy place filled with seaside knickknacks and wood paneling and jovial locals. A dinner of barbecue ribs and fries and beer is served with napkins printed with a logo of a melting ice cream cone and the words BUTCHER & BLACKBIRD ANNUAL AUGUST SHOWDOWN. The surprise detail makes Sloane first laugh and then cry as Rowan presses a kiss to her cheek. When the DJ starts the music and declares it’s time for a first dance, we surround my brother and his wife, and though I try not to let it show, I marvel at how far he’s come from the reckless kid who was always on my heels or making trouble for me to fix. Somehow, watching Rowan now, with his life right where it needs to be, mine feels a little empty, even though I couldn’t be happier for him. And though I mull that over as I watch, I can’t settle on a reason why.
“Asshat,” Fionn says, interrupting my thoughts as he stops next to me at the edge of the dance floor, which is filled with a combination of our little wedding party and locals who have been swept along in our celebrations.
