Page 153 of Shellshock

“There’s a difference?”

She shoved him. “Yes!”

“Okay, darlings,” her mom said as they slowly dispersed. “Me and a few of the girls are gonna steal Lucca to get her dolled up.” Her eyes narrowed on Caligher, scolding him for how he’d gathered Lucca into his arms protectively. “That means you have to let her go, Caligher.”

“I’m sorry, Watts—”

“My name’sMom,not Watts.”

“—but that seems counterproductive to having a wedding,” he argued. “The point is to be together. You can’t have her anymore.”

Her eyes simmered with a stern and frankly intimidating glare. “Boy, I am not the woman you want to have this fight with.”

Lucca turned in his arms. “It’s part of the wedding. I take hours getting ready, and you don’t get to see me until I walk down the aisle. After that, we go to an office where they surgically attach us. You’ll have to sign a waiver saying you won’t hold them liable for the end result.” She started bouncing on her toes in excitement, her cheeks lifting and eyes squinting. She looked so happy that his heart skipped. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. This is so weird, Cal, isn’t it?”

She kissed him. Some pink, slippery, fruit-flavored substance coated her lips. The imitation flavor distracted him—she bit his lip, right in front of everyone.

He jerked back, startled. The pink stain was smeared on her mouth, smeared on his, and she was looking at his mouth with predatory focus.

Uncertainty clouded him as they were separated.

He’d almost lost her forever.

“Come on, son,” Bill said gruffly, slapping his back with the force of a leaf. “Let’s let the girls go do their thing. You and I get to go inside and have the shotgun talk.” His eyes held the sharpened gleam of anticipation.

Caligher shot a bewildered look at Lucca, who rolled her eyes while her mom escorted her inside.

“The shotgun talk?” he asked.

“Ignore it,” she said. “We’ve broken all the rules, and my dad doesn’t own a shotgun.” Her mom cackled and her dad scowled.

* * *

As night fell, everyone arranged themselves under the darkening sky. Soft, wordless music played from hidden speakers while people set out lamps and twinkling strings of light. A walkway was created. Everyone sat in flimsy chairs, planted in the grass on either side.

They ushered Caligher to a covered gazebo that was just out of sight. There, he was able to make his final preparations.

The wedding would initially appear to be a human event, but Lucca had given him the go-ahead to do the last part his own way.

The tone of the music changed subtly and Caligher knew it was time.

Excitement welled up as he moved down the soft, earthy aisle. Faces turned his way, lit by a twinkling glow. A raised stage waited at the end of the walkway. The hillside dropped off behind it. Beyond stretched an immense valley of rolling mountains, dotted over with the thick growth of cone-shaped trees.

The sky above had darkened to a perfect, inky black, showing off the colossal river of stars. Thick, blotchy white with the suggestion of deeper shadows.

It looked foreign from this side of the galaxy—breathing of immense possibility, an astounding sense of being small in a large, unknowable universe. Standing at the start of something big. Everything had a wild aliveness about it.

Stopping at the altar, he turned and waited for the next part. Gradually, his heart raced faster. For some reason, he grew nervous.

The music changed.

Strange pitches of sound were dragged off some alien instrument. It was the tune of strings sliding against strings—a symphony, Lucca had called it. High, continuous whistles and low, bone-deep vibrations worked in harmonious tandem, and Caligher felt as if his heart was physically tugged along by every drifting—sliding—note.

It was soft, but he would never describe that sound as gentle. It was too forceful to call it peaceful. Any louder, any faster, and he just knew that music would do devastating things to his organs.

By the time it had his heart in a deadly chokehold, everything wenthush.A collective gasp sounded across the rows. His eyes were pulled down the aisle.

Lucca stood opposite him, bright and resplendent in a glittering garment of moon silk. Her silver dress flowed into the grass behind her, whispering with the sound of the soft, black breeze.

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