Page 77 of Resisting the Running Back

Or, you know…even the next eighteen days.

I escort Jess down the aisle just after Cassie’s two kids, Luca and Lily, who are playing the parts of ring bearer and flower girl, and we take our places. I seek out Sophie in the crowd, and I grin at her when our eyes connect.

My brother walks down the aisle next, and then the music changes, and Cassie appears on the arm of her father.

Twenty-three minutes later, my brother is married. He kisses his new wife with the officiant’s permission, and everyone laughs at the “Ew!” from Cassie’s eight-year-old that forces the bride and groom to break apart.

“Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Tanner and Cassie Banks!”

It’s official. They walk hand-in-hand back up the aisle, and Jess and I follow with Cassie’s parents ushering the kids behind us toward the conservatory at the Bellagio, which I guess means something to Cassie and Tanner since they wanted the wedding photos done in there.

A million pictures later, we head for the reception, where we eat, drink, and dance the night away.

And the more we drink, the closer we dance. When the parents start to leave a little after ten, the close dancing turns into downright grinding, which eventually we take upstairs to do naked.

When morning dawns, my head is pounding, and we have to get up to get ready for brunch at ten at Lincoln’s house.

I need to have a serious talk with whoever planned brunch the morning after the wedding. None of us should be forced to get up this early.

Okay, fine. Ten isn’t that early. But I’m thirty now, and I can’t party like I did when I was in my twenties. It’s like something happened overnight that changed everything, and I’m sure I don’t like it.

But waking up with Sophie by my side…nowthatI like.

CHAPTER 35: Sophie Summers

Something’s About to Go Wrong

The wedding was beautiful. Life itself is beautiful.

I have no complaints as I wake up to a bright and beautiful morning in Miller’s arms.

Tanner is married, Miller and I are getting married, and my entire life has been flipped upside down. They say things always work out how they’re supposed to, and it feels like this right here is how it was supposed to happen.

Which gives me that weird, ominous feeling like something’s about to go wrong.

It can’t be this great, can it? Someone’s going to get sick, or something will cause problems for Miller and me, or the cruise ship will get swallowed up in a hurricane.

Okay, it’s all worst-case scenarios, but I have to allow them to play out in my mind, or else they’ll chew at me.

And once they play out in my mind, I need to voice them. Usually I voice it by writing it into a book, but this time I don’t have that luxury since we need to get to brunch. So instead, I push it off the plate of my conscience and onto good ol’ Miller’s.

It’s after I get out of the shower and he’s standing at the sink next to me brushing his teeth while I’m applying some makeup that I say, “Hey, so you know how when things are goingtoowell, you sort of just expect it to all come crashing down?”

He glances over at me in the mirror, and I can see the haze of sleepiness still surrounding him that tells me it’s too early for this conversation.

“Huh?” he asks, his voice muffled by the toothpaste in his mouth.

I plow ahead anyway. “Like, oh, I don’t know. Like something bad will happen on the cruise. Someone will get a tummy bug, and it’ll pass through all thirty of us, or a hurricane will hit the boat. I don’t know.”

He spits and rinses his mouth before he glances up at me in the mirror. He wipes his mouth with a towel and tilts his head a little. “Babe, I don’t think it’s hurricane season.”

I lift a shoulder. “Well, what if one just forms out of the blue? They can hit when it’s not in season, can’t they?”

“I think that’s only ever happened, like, twice.”

“What if the third is while we’re on the boat?”

“Have you been on a cruise before?” he asks.

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