Page 8 of A Very Happy Easter

Everybody was staring at me. The photographer was busy immortalising the moment forever. Auntie Eileen pressed the bouquet into my hands with a, “Gosh, this thing is heavier than I thought.”

My eyes began to prickle, and I fought back tears as I held the bouquet aloft like a prizefighter and everybody cheered.

Damn, I hated weddings.

Three

“I’m so sorry about the whole bouquet thing,” Janie said in a quiet moment between dances. Although “quiet” was a relative term. We still had to shout over the music. “I really thought I’d missed you.”

“Not your fault, honestly. Just a piece of bad luck.”

Eis wrapped an arm around my shoulders in a brotherly hug. Over the years, more people than I cared to count had asked how we could be related, given the fact that he was huge and I was tiny. But he really hadn’t been that big until he hit his teens. He’d shot up in height and started working out, while I never got that growth spurt.

“I’m proud of you,” he said. “You made it through the whole day. Nobody will be offended if you call it a night.”

“Mama will.”

“Okay, nobody except Mama.” Eis’s lips twitched. “So, you and Heath Carlisle, huh?”

I shoved him away. “Shut up. We were watching bats, okay?”

“Bats?”

“You have bats in your garden.”

“We do?”

We. Just another reminder that he’d become a part of something bigger. A new family.

“Stand near the pond and look up at the moon. You’ll see them flying around.”

“Really? I should tell the boys.”

“Not tonight,” Janie warned. “If you tell them tonight, they’ll want to go out bat-watching, and I have other plans for you.”

“Okay, great.” I began backing away before she elaborated on that part. “Super. I’m going to bed now.”

“Heath’s a nice guy,” Janie said, pulling me in for a hug. “More intense than Liam, from what I’ve seen, but handsome, and kind, and—” She glanced at her new husband. “I’m going to stop talking now.”

But she wasn’t wrong. Heath was handsome, kind, and best of all, distracting. Jazzi still hadn’t called, but for a few blessed moments outside, the knot of tension I carried inside my gut had loosened. Now it was threatening to slither up my throat and choke me.

Sleep would be nothing but a pipe dream tonight.

I’d planned to slip out, hopefully unnoticed, but Heath was trying to do the grown-up thing and say goodbye to everyone. Bad move. Uncle Dennis had Heath’s hand in a death grip, and he wasn’t letting go. If it had been anyone else on the receiving end of Dennis’s attention, I would have carried on walking, but I owed Heath Carlisle, and when I owed someone, I always paid up. He’d released the millstone around my neck and made tonight bearable.

I touched him lightly on the shoulder. “The waitstaff found your missing wallet—it’s over at the house. Lovely to see you again, Dennis.”

I swanned off before Dennis could grab any body parts, and Heath hurried after me.

“Thanks for that. Thought I’d never get away.”

“It was the least I could do.” We paused outside where the path forked, one branch leading to the house, the other to the stables. A paddock had been repurposed as a car park. “I say this genuinely, which is rare for me—it was nice to see you tonight.”

“Likewise. Did the girl call back?”

“Not yet.”

“Don’t think the worst. That shit can weigh you down, and if you try to shoulder everyone’s burdens, you’ll break.”

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