JACK WAS TOTALLY CALM when Bridget went to check on him. Not that she expected him to have a sudden-onset case of cold feet. No, her brother was so in love with Hannah that it shone out through every word he spoke.
She was, however, surprised to find her other brother, Michael, in equally good spirits given his pending divorce. For months, he’d been sulking in a corner at family events. She’d barely seen him at the fateful bachelor/bachelorette weekend. He’d been like a ghost.
But when she walked into the musty room where grooms got to stew in the significance of their decisions and make sure their bow ties were straight, she walked in on a distinctly bro-y hug.
And she might have been mistaken, but she thought she saw Michael wiping under his eyes.
She’d seen her oldest brother cry maybe three times—when he broke his leg skateboarding at fourteen, when his daughter was born, and now. Jack and her dad were the emotional ones.
“Do you want me to come back later?” If they were having a moment, she didn’t want to interrupt.
But Jack motioned for her to come in. “Nah, he was only telling me he was proud of me.”
“That was private,” Michael said in a familiar grunting cadence. “I don’t want to get a reputation for being soft.”
“Nothing wrong with being soft, bro.” Jack gave him another pat on the back. “I mean—emotionally.”
Not expecting a sex joke, Bridget covered her mouth to stifle a laugh that would probably reach the sanctuary.
“Shut the fuck up, Jack-hole.” There was the familiar brother-to-brother dynamic she had been expecting. If one of them knocked the other to the floor, maybe equilibrium would be restored.
“I came to check to see if you guys needed anything before the ceremony.” Once she’d arrived at the church with Hannah, her mom, and the other bridesmaids in tow, things had been hectic. She wasn’t going to tell Jack that Hannah had told her to make sure that Jack hadn’t cut and run while he still could. She didn’t think her new sister-in-law would appreciate being ratted out.
“I’ve been expecting you.” Jack walked over to her and slung an arm around her shoulders. She had to do a little maneuvering to make sure that he didn’t do any damage to the elaborate updo she was working. Her thick, heavy hair was held together by bobby pins, hairspray, and hope. “Hannah wanted to make sure I was still here.”
“It’s not like she actually thought you would leave.” She didn’t think.
Jack made a little, thoughtful humming noise. “It’s not like she actually thinks that I’m going to suddenly turn into a runaway groom, but I think she feels like it.”
“Dude, she knows that you’re butt-crazy in love with her.” Michael was spilling all the emotional tea today. Bridget was tempted to check his temperature.
“She knows I’m in love with her, but she always feels like the other shoe is going to drop.” Jack shrugged and dropped his arm from Bridget’s shoulders. “It’s barely conscious, but it’s just one of the things I have to work around with her.”
Jack was probably the most empathic person she’d ever met. His willingness to read between the lines of what his betrothed said instead of stopping at the surface was unique as far as Bridget knew.
Her brother reminded her of Matt that way.
Just thinking about her husband had Bridget smiling and feeling warm all over. In that moment, she was a little ashamed of how she’d assumed he was a jerk at first. How she’d been the one who had only looked at the surface—the wealthy playboy who had probably never taken anything seriously in his life. She’d almost missed out on a kind and generous friend, a scalding-hot sex god of a lover, and the best person she knew whom she wasn’t related to.
“I’m surprised you ventured in here, knowing that Chris might be around,” Jack said. “He, on the other hand, has been asking where you were all day.”
And she’d been avoiding him all day. She’d made sure that both he and Matt were escorting people to their seats—on opposite sides of the sanctuary—before coming in. Partially because she wanted to avoid any toxic posturing. Mostly because she’d wanted a moment alone with her brothers.
Bridget rolled her eyes. “Why the hell would he want to know where I am?”
“Dude’s still in love with you.” Michael threw that out there as though he was telling her that the sky was blue or that the Cubs were going to have a losing season.
“No, he’s not.” Bridget was sure of that. He wasn’t as stupid as he appeared to be sometimes. If he was really still in love with her, he wouldn’t have been behaving so badly. Chris didn’t require a look below the surface. That one thing she’d learned and learned well. If only she’d listened the first dozen times he’d told her that he wasn’t ready to talk about their future. She could have avoided a lot of pain. “He’s just mad that he can’t have me.”
“Definitely sounds like Chris.” Jack snorted as she pinned on his boutonniere. “Are you sure you’re okay that he’s back in the wedding?”
Bridget thought about it for a beat. Although at first she’d wanted to stay married to Matt because it would make Chris feel like a chode to see her with someone who was better than him on every level imaginable, she truly wanted Chris there that day for closure. Maybe if he saw the two of them together and married and happy, he would give up on trying to get her back out of some sense of FOMO.
Maybe it was a sign that she’d truly moved on that she wanted her ex to find happiness—with someone else who wouldn’t expect as much as she had.
“It’s fine. I mean, Matt will be here, too. He’s going to see that we’re together-together, and then maybe he’ll give up the ghost.”
Michael went to leave the room and patted her on the shoulder. “Sure, tell yourself that.” Then he turned to Jack. “You ready for this?”
Jack met both their gazes in turn and said, “I was ready for this the night I met her.”
Then it was Bridget’s turn to get teary-eyed. It was because of Jack and Hannah, but also because now she finally knew how he felt. Still, she covered. “You definitely would have had a runaway-bride situation on your hands had you proposed over tacos.”
BRIDGET HAD AN IDEA of how Matt would look at her in her bridesmaid’s dress when he first laid eyes on her the first time that day. Not that awed, sort of slack-jawed, stupid, and trying-not-to-cry look that the groom usually had—that Jack would definitely have. After all, Matt had already seen her in her dress, though it wasn’t the completed look.
What she hadn’t expected was the tight, almost constipated smile that he gave her as he took her arm. She immediately got a sick feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with the emergency queso that Sasha had ordered for lunch or the champagne that she’d had with that queso. It was the same feeling that she’d had those last few months with Chris—the feeling that something was off and she was in the dark as to what that thing was.
She wanted to stop Matt in the middle of the aisle and ask him about it, but she wouldn’t do that. So she settled for going through the previous night in her head and coming up with nightmare scenarios for what might have happened.
Totally reasonable.
Her thoughts about her own marriage stopped when Hannah came into the church. She’d seen the dress of course; she’d helped Hannah put the thing on. But, when she entered the sanctuary, there was a certain impact of the simple blush A-line that skimmed Hannah’s curves that couldn’t be overstated. The church Bridget had grown up in was filled with white flowers and rich greenery, giving the whole thing a sort of enchanted-forest feel. Unlike on the Sundays of her childhood, there was a hush. Bridget knew for a fact that there were three whole babies in attendance, but not a single one of them cried as Hannah and her mom marched up the aisle.
And Hannah was looking at Jack and smiling like a woman who was definitely sure of her decision. When Bridget glanced at her brother, he rubbed a hand over his short beard. He shook his head slightly, as though he couldn’t be sure that he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.
Bridget was more like Michael than she was like her dad and brother on the crying, but she was most definitely getting choked up. But when she glanced over at Matt, he was looking down at the ground as though he wanted to be anywhere but here.
She tried to shake off the feeling that last night was the setup for some sort of hoax but couldn’t. Still, she needed to pretend, so she focused on Hannah, Jack, and Patrick, the only people who really had anything to do with this ceremony.
“All right, folks, I’m going to keep this short—just kidding.” Patrick paused for laughter, since he was a pro at this. Bridget couldn’t help but notice that Sasha laughed a little too loudly at the joke. “This is a Catholic wedding. You knew what you were in for.”
After that, Bridget let herself go on autopilot. Kneel down. Stand up. Read First Corinthians. Listen to Patrick give a beautiful homily about the power of love being stronger than the power of anger and fear—with stories about Hannah and Jack and how God was smiling on the latter when blessing him with a woman who wouldn’t let him rest on his laurels. And then Hannah and Jack said their vows and kissed for way too long.
It was all very beautiful, and it made it easy to forget that her husband hadn’t once looked at her during the ceremony. The most innocent explanation—that he was still too sick and weak to be here but had come anyway to keep his promise—wasn’t the one chief on her mind. She couldn’t stop thinking about his mother and her offer, which were not things she wanted to think about as a newlywed.
And neither of those things mattered, did they? She’d told his mom to shove it, and she wasn’t with him for his family’s money. Maybe she should have totally come clean last night, but she couldn’t figure out a way to tell him without damaging his relationship with his mother. Despite the fact that she couldn’t stand Jane Kido, she respected that the woman loved her son.
Bridget likely imagined the chill that passed through her when Matt took her arm during the recessional out of the church. She peered up at his face, and he had a grin that she would definitely characterize as political affixed to his face.
As soon as they got to the reception, she was going to pull him aside so that they could talk. This sort of icy silence between them was not sustainable. At all.
But the pictures outside the church and at the reception venue—a modernist hotel built in an old church/cult that had to liquidate its considerable property assets—took forever.
And then they were with the rest of bridal party—plus Patrick, who was not dressed as a priest that night—in a hotel suite, toasting the bride and groom during the cocktail hour.
“We’re not doing one of those dumb entrance things, Jack,” Hannah said.
Jack looked at her with pleading puppy-dog eyes. “C’mon, wifey, let me do this one cheesy thing. I promise I’ll do the thing with the thing we were talking about the other night.” Her brother waggled his brows, and Bridget most definitely did not want to know what they were talking about.
Hannah got this half smile on her face and said, “The zip-lining thing?”
“Oh yeah,” Jack said.
“Fine. You owe me one.” Hannah was doing a pretend-mad thing that Bridget knew worked on her brother because she’d taught it to Hannah.
Jack counted something out on his fingers. “I owe you at least five.”
“Stop it, you guys.” Bridget was actually sort of jealous that the other married couple in the room was cracking sex jokes while her husband was sulking with a glass of soda water in the corner. Maybe he was irritated that he still wasn’t up to partying at the wedding. Perhaps she should send him home after the toasts?
“Besides, you’re going to scandalize Patrick, and that’s really not fair,” Sasha added.
Hannah narrowed her gaze at her best friend. “So generous to Patrick.”
“At least it got you to stop,” Sasha said with a cheeky raise of her shoulder. But then Patrick leaned down and said something close to her ear that Bridget couldn’t hear, and she got all red. Hopefully, her little crush went away after the wedding. If it didn’t, she was in for a world of celibate heartbreak.
Hannah must have had the same idea because she clapped her hands together and said, “Let’s get downstairs.”
MATT REALLY DIDN’T WANT to believe that Bridget was after him for his money—the way she’d looked at him right before the ceremony had told him that. And he didn’t want to ask her about everything his mom had told him this morning. But he hated that she hadn’t told him the whole truth. The beginning of the end with Naomi had been when she’d started lying to him. The lies had been small at first—what she’d been doing when she said she was at home studying, or who she was texting with on her phone.
He’d thought he had a more honest relationship with Bridget, and he desperately needed that to be true. He’d thought that they’d broken through all their bullshit, and he needed it not to be a lie. If things with her turned out like things with Naomi had, he wouldn’t be able to shake it off through one impulsive decision. He couldn’t run away from what he felt for Bridget, how much he wanted to earn her respect. The feelings he had for her didn’t work like that. Even the word—love—felt too small.
While listening to the sermon, he thought about what kind of blessing Bridget had been in his life. He thought about how she expected more from him than just throwing money at problems. How she expected him to be present. How hurt she’d been when he’d missed the rehearsal and hadn’t been in touch. And he questioned whether he could measure up.
They didn’t know each other that long, only for four months. And he didn’t have the depth and breadth of knowledge of what made her tick that Jack seemed to have of Hannah—he couldn’t possibly have that.
By the end of the homily, Matt wasn’t sure that he and Bridget should stay married anymore. They didn’t know each other; how could they braid the whole of their futures together without spending some time first?
They’d had so many miscommunications over the past few months. She’d thought he was a lazy, rich asshole. He’d thought she was cold. Neither of them had to make any compromises. Hell, they were married, and they hadn’t even talked about where they wanted to live.
He had huge confusing feelings for her—but could he really be in love with her in the way that he should be with the woman he was going to marry?
Thinking about all this as they walked out onto a dance floor filled with Bridget’s family and friends made him dizzy. He knew, in that moment, that he didn’t belong where he was standing right then.
His tux felt as though it was going to smother him, and the thick air, filled with the scents of hors d’oeuvres and gin cocktails, made him sick. As soon as the spotlight hit Sasha and Chris instead of him and Bridget, he tried to slip away. He ignored Bridget’s questioning look.
He made it out to a coat closet, but he still couldn’t breathe. He even did that cliché thing where he loosened and undid his bow tie. But he still couldn’t seem to get enough air.
“Are you okay?” When Bridget’s hand hit his back, he jumped even though he’d had warning. When he turned, her eyes were really big. She seemed truly concerned. But how could he know that she was really worried about him and not a big payday? “Are you feeling sick again?”
“Yeah.” That was the truth. But then again, he’d only ever barely lied to her to keep her close. The only thing that he’d ever told her that was close to a misrepresentation was that getting rid of Naomi was the only reason that he wanted to stay married. “Why didn’t you tell me about lunch with my mom?”
Her face went totally pale—like paler than usual. And then he knew that there was more to what his mom had told him than her not approving of his life choices. Maybe she’d been right to want to protect him from Bridget. His panic fled and he stood a little straighter in that moment.
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t want me to know that you were taking money from my family in exchange for breaking up with me?” That was probably—definitely—the wrong thing to say, but he couldn’t seem to find the right words. He felt as though he was in some sort of soap opera teleplay rather than his actual life right then.
“I didn’t accept her offer.”
The only thing he could remember then was how Naomi had kept telling him that her fucking someone else in his house wasn’t what it looked like. But he knew then that he could trust what he saw with his own eyes. With Bridget, he couldn’t square what he’d seen from her since the day they’d met and how his mother’s accusations fit in with that.
“I know what this sounds like.” His words came out harder than he’d intended.
Bridget looked down at her hands, and it was such a contrast to the usual sure-and-steady way she talked to people that it made him doubt her even more. He didn’t want to feel like he couldn’t trust what would come out of her mouth next, but he couldn’t help it. His mother had never lied to him about anything important before. Why would she start here?
Something about Bridget’s posture changed as he watched her thinking. Instead of wringing her hands, she crossed them over her chest and met his gaze. No trace of the watery emotion he’d seen from her during the ceremony. “Are you accusing me of being with you for your family’s money?”
“That’s what my mother thinks.”
The last thing he expected her to do was snort and roll her eyes, but she did. “Oh, believe me, I know.”
“What would have given her that idea?”
“I don’t know what your mother was thinking when she tried to buy me out of your life.”
“She must have—”
Bridget held up a hand. “No, that’s exactly what she tried to do. She thinks I’m some tramp, only with you for the precious trust fund. The trust fund that I knew nothing about until she told me.”
He realized his mistake then. Bridget barely believed that she was cut out for a relationship. She was afraid that she was exactly like her capricious, social-climbing mother. And the fact that Matt gave any credence to his mother’s theory that Bridget was a gold digger hit that sore spot with Bridget harder than she could poke at it herself. He was inflicting a bruise on a bruise.
Instantly, he wished he could go back and approach this differently. He wished Naomi hadn’t gotten so far in his head. He wished that he had waited until after the wedding to talk about this.
More than anything, he wished he could pull Bridget into his arms and make things all right.
“I don’t believe her, Bridget.” It was too little, too late. But he had to try to claw this back.
“Then why haven’t you so much as looked at me all day?” Bridget had already turned this around in her head, and he wasn’t going to be able to save this. When she’d first walked in, he had her on the defensive—not a position she liked to be in. Now she was fully on the offensive, her home base. And just like an unwary defense attorney, he was toast. “And then you run out of the reception as soon as possible. Were you going to leave without telling me?”
“I was only getting some air.”
Bridget gave him a rueful laugh. “So funny that you need air when last night you were in love with me and wanted to be with me.”
“It’s not like that.” The way she looked at him in that moment told him something. It was the same way she’d looked at him on the first day of his internship. As though she couldn’t care less that he existed. “I needed a minute to think. My mom came over right before I left to come here and said all these things. I didn’t—”
“You didn’t know that she was just trying to plan your life and curate who’s in it. Just like she’s been doing your whole life?” Bridget asked, though he knew it was a rhetorical question. “After last night, when you were so sure that being married to me was the right thing, it was that easy.”
He didn’t have anything to answer that with. It had been that easy. So easy for him to doubt her. And if so little could make him doubt that she was exactly what she was—tough, kind, generous—and that she loved him, then maybe his big feelings weren’t enough to make a go of this.
Before he could open his mouth to speak any words, she did it for him. “I should have signed those divorce papers at lunch.”
He couldn’t disagree, no matter how much he wanted to. Looking at her, even now when she was looking right through him, made him achy all over. He wanted to touch her, and he knew he’d think about kissing her for the rest of his life. She felt like his match on a deep level, and it wrenched at him that he could be wrong about that.
She must have been going through something similar. It wasn’t as though they didn’t have palpable chemistry. She stepped toward him and put her hand on his chest. Then she brushed her hand over his chest again and the pocket where he’d put the divorce papers before leaving.
He took them out, knowing that she would think he was the biggest asshole on the planet when he did. But wasn’t he?
Even if he’d approached this as delicately as he ideally would have, she wouldn’t forgive him for not believing in her.
“You brought them with you.” Bridget bit her lip and made a noise that was somewhere in between a groan and a laugh. “Classy.”
“It’s not what it looks like.” He felt sick again.
“That’s my line.” She tipped her chin at him. “You have a pen?”
“You don’t have to do this.” He wanted to take it all back and beg for her forgiveness even though he didn’t deserve it.
“Yeah, I think I do.”
Matt knew when he was fighting a losing battle. That was the one thing he could say for himself. He might not have had the good sense to disbelieve his mother’s wild theory about Bridget this morning or the better sense to keep any doubts to himself, but he knew that if he didn’t give Bridget a pen right now, she might cut herself open to sign the papers in blood.
So he pulled out his grandfather’s pen and handed it to her. She smirked before pulling the papers out of the envelope. It probably took less than a minute for her to sign and initial all the designated places, but it felt like agonizing hours. It felt like she was cutting his heart out while he was awake.
And when she was done, she was out of the coat closet in a flash. He could still smell the faint residue of her perfume in the air, and he tried to savor it for a moment before leaving. She was gone, and he wouldn’t get to smell it again.