Page 15 of The Rogue

Then they all took their places and waited for Rue. His pocket buzzed.

“She’ll be here in five minutes.”

And right on the dot, she was.

She opened up the door, wearing a long coat, which she discarded and revealed a cute floral dress beneath that was definitely not weather appropriate.

She looked so much like the girl he’d always known. But also the woman she’d become.

His family all hooted and shouted and it did the work to knock him out of his sudden fog.

She looked shocked to see such a full house.

“Oh my,” she said.

And Justice walked across the living room, holding a sash aloft that said Bride. “Welcome,” he said. “Guest of honor.”

“Thank you, man of honor,” she said. “I didn’t expect such a big turnout.”

“I’ve a feeling there’s going to be a few things you didn’t expect tonight.”

And that was when he grabbed the necklace of naked men and bestowed it upon her. She frowned and looked down, and then her face turned bright red. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s a bachelorette party,” Arizona shouted. “So let the fun begin.”

And it did. There was food. Cake. And even though Rue barely drank, she tasted some of Bix’s brew and got surprisingly into the spirit of it all.

They paired off for games, and he and Rue were on the same team. There was balloon shaving and myriad other nonsense, which she would’ve said he hated, but it was all just traditional and delightful and hilarious, and he felt happy that he could give it to her.

Because she looked filled with joy, and that was all he had wanted. Wanted for her to love this. Wanted for her to have the best wedding. The best lead-up to the wedding. The best life. It mattered so damned much.

They were trying to play pin-the-veil-on-the-bride, with a big life-size tracing of a person on the wall, but Daughtry was a dick, and he had moved the poster so that it was sitting weirdly high when it was Rue’s turn. She was spinning around, and trying to find it. Justice stood up and, without thinking, grabbed her around the waist and hefted her toward the wall. She shrieked and kicked, and his hand made contact with her bare thigh. He felt like he’d been kicked, but he lifted her up to the poster on the wall anyway and let her pin it before setting her down slowly. Which put his palms on a lot more of her leg than he had counted on. She lifted her blindfold up, and wrinkled her nose. “That was cheating.”

“Look how good you did,” he said, pointing to the veil, which was actually on the wall above the poster.

“Cheaters don’t prosper,” Rue said, smacking him on the shoulder, and if she had any feelings about hishands being all over her legs, she certainly wasn’t acting like she did. Which was good. That didn’t need to become a problem.

He had to question why the hellhewas having a reaction to touching her legs? They touched each other casually pretty much all the time.No, he didn’t touch her bare thigh as a general rule, but he’d had sex just a few days ago. It wasn’t like he was hard up or anything. And she wasRue, for God’s sake. Her legs were a fixture in his life, as was the rest of her, and there was no reason for anything to feel illicit or anything like that.For God’s sake.

He had let Bix’s moonshine get to his head. It pissed him off, because he had felt like his sister and sister-in-law were being so out-of-pocket earlier. He didn’t like that he was feeling weird over physical contact with her body now.

So he decided the best thing to do would be to throw another drink on it, and keep the party rolling.

And they did. Loudly.

“I can’t stay up all night,” she said softly when they were all sitting around in the living room listening to Denver tell raucous stories.

“Yeah. I guess you need your beauty sleep.”

“I guess.”

“I’ll walk you out.”

It was freezing outside. Not even her coat could possibly be keeping her warm with that little dress beneath it. And his palm still burned.

She was getting married tomorrow.

“I remember when you first came to school,” he said. He hadn’t intended to take a little walk downmemory lane, but hell. It was preferable to focusing on the way his hands felt.

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