Page 92 of Accidentally Wedded To A Werewolf

The old Luna would’ve pulled up a smile. Would’ve saidsure, I’ll play some volleyball.Then she would’vegotten a drink and made a game out of keeping it in her hand while she played until she inevitably dropped it or had it smacked out of her hand, and she would have made itfun. Even if she wasn’t having fun when she started, she would’ve kept at it until it was. Fake it ‘til you make it, right?

“I don’t know those girls,” she admitted. “I know a chocolate seller in Alaska more than I know any of them. I never asked about their lives, you know? All through college, even after college, I was just… fun times. Any hard topic was solved with a subject change and a Jell-O shot. Then with a margarita and—I don’t know—flotation therapy or a seaweed mask.”

She pointed at the girls piling on each other after too many dove for the ball at once. They were laughing, clinging to each other.

“They’reclose. I’m just the friend you heart-react to but never talk to. They only came here for a fun party with the fun party girl.”

“And you paid for their flights,” Clancy added.

Luna smacked him in the arm.

“Ow,” Clancy said. “Um, wow. We were kinda hoping you’d go back to normal before the wedding.”

“And what if I don’t want to?”

“Uh…” Clancy twisted to look behind them. Their parents were sitting under a sun umbrella with Hector, who was holding up a strangely shaped olive for them to examine. Dad was nodding, scratching his shirt. He was still in his sleepshirt, a too-big T-shirt with the Stack’s Appliances logo on the front.

“Then you’re going to be a real bummer of a bride,” Clancy said, turning back toward her. “Seriously,whatwas so good about Claw Haven that it’s got you like this?”

Luna lay back in her chair. The evening sun was warm on her skin, her college friends shrieked with laughter down below, and her parents chuckled with her fiancé not far away. And she was longing for a tiny town in Nowhere, Alaska. A town with a terrible cell connection and spotty data service even after she changed providers; where everybody knew each other’s business and there wasn’t a single spa, frozen yogurt place, or even a mall.

She missed it. She ached for it down to her bones.

“It was… intimate,” she said, grimacing even as she said it. “I don’t know; don’t make that face. People were so down to earth. They cared about stuff.”

“We care about stuff,” Clancy protested.

Luna ignored him. “And they talked about what was really going on with them! Even if you had to pry it out of some of them first.”

He made a face. “Since when do youpry?”

Luna didn’t answer. She was too busy thinking about Oliver’s scowl finally softening. Of him watching his family bicker at the dinner table, unable to hold back a fond smirk. He’d kissed her forehead sometimes when he thought she was asleep. He had such a big heart. She’d felt it pressed against hers, late at night. Beating in perfect unison with hers. Warming her up in ways she’d never felt before or since.

She sat up and rummaged underneath her deck chair.

Clancy groaned as she pulled out the laptop she had hidden in a blanket. “Comeon, Lu.”

“I’m just checking in,” Luna said. “It’s my wedding day tomorrow, so you have to let me do what I want.”

She clicked on her emails. She had a few more from potential sponsors interested in the buzz she’d been making about the town, but she ignored them to click on the pottery store’s latest email.

She beamed. “Oh yay, the plushies arrived! We were so worried. And they’re going to do a face painting stall!”

A voice boomed across the deck: “There’s that big smile!”

Luna looked up.

Hector was padding toward her, biting that weird olive off a toothpick and tossing it back into his drink. “What’s my girl smiling about, huh?”

He leaned down, kissing her cheek. Luna tried and failed not to think about Oliver’s hot arms wrapping around her, his nose brushing hers, and his eyes, which were so dark on hers as he murmured,you smell like mine.

“Paint,” Luna said, pushing the laptop screen down.

Too late. Hector zeroed in on it and sighed. “Okay. I see emails.”

“Wait!” Luna grabbed for it, but Hector was too fast, tossing her laptop back onto the blanket under the chair. “Come on! It’s my pre-wedding day! You’re supposed to let me do whatever I want!”

“Andyou’resupposed to want tohave fun,” he said with an incredulous look. He turned toward the others, raising his arms. “Who wants the bride to put away the emails and have a good time tonight?”

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