Ryan
One month later
Since we’d never had a wedding in the Riggs family before, we improvised a lot of things. We held it in the backyard of the Riggs house on a dark, cloudy day on Thanksgiving weekend, with cold wind and snow threatening to fly. The women wore matching dark brown knitted shawls over their shoulders, and those of us in suits just suffered the cold. There were about forty guests, all from Emily’s side: her parents, women who worked at the salon, a couple of cousins, some cops who worked for Emily’s mother and had known her all her life. Luke had Dex, Jace, and me, and Dex was late.
Emily’s sister Lauren was late too, because she was the one who had gone to the guest house to make sure Dex got ready. Maybe I was the only one who noticed that it took them a long time, but then again maybe I wasn’t. Emily stared daggers at her sister when she finally showed up to the house, and Kate caught my eye, eloquently lifting an eyebrow.
She looked gorgeous in her dark green dress. Of course she looked fucking gorgeous—she was Kate. The dress curved over her perfect tits, then tucked in just below them before draping to the ground. It matched her dark red curls, which she wore down over her shoulders. I’d helped her get ready, and I’d behaved like a gentleman, but I wasn’t going to be a gentleman later, when I got that dress off her. No fucking way.
Dylan was in a suit and tie that we’d carefully picked out for him, waiting for his serious gig as the ring-bearer. He didn’t care about the cold. He was happy just to be here and to be a part of the action.
Dylan, like I’d predicted, had taken pretty well to Kate becoming my girlfriend. We kept his routine steady: Kate took him to school and back while I worked at Riggs Auto Two, and I took over evenings and weekends while Kate went to class and studied. Amber had gone back to Thailand, thank fucking God. I hoped it was for good, but somehow I doubted it. In the meantime, she was completely gone from my mind.
Along with school, Kate was in the process of starting her business. It was going to be a tutoring school, aimed especially at helping kids with learning disabilities keep up with their schoolwork. With Lauren’s help, Kate was going to rent the space, hire tutors, and run it while she trained to be a teacher herself. Then she was going to take over a lot of the teaching duties, which was what she really wanted to do. There was nothing exactly like it in Westlake, it was going to be amazing, and Kate was going for it.
I’d never seen her so happy, and whatever made Kate happy was fine with me. She’d taken over the basement apartment as her office and study room, which meant she spent a lot of time down there.
But every night she left the basement and came to bed with me.
We tried to be quiet. We really did. But on the nights when Dylan had a sleepover, we made a lot of fucking noise.
Riggs Auto Two was making good money. The pain in my shoulder had mostly cleared up, which meant I could work longer hours. Dex was hung over half the time, but the man could fix cars like nobody’s business. He wasn’t an oil-change guy; he liked hard problems, obscure makes and models, impossible-to-find parts. And, it turned out, so did I. If you had a classic car that needed an overhaul, Dex and I were your men. We could spend days on a single car, tossing problems and solutions back and forth, making it work again. After all these years, we actually had something we could talk about without killing each other. The word was slowly getting out, and we were getting more inquiries for custom jobs. The custom jobs were fewer, but they paid more.
It was time for the ceremony to start, so we left the house where we’d been eating and drinking and filed out into the yard while the guests took their seats. I didn’t mind that it was under a gray sky; there was something fitting about it, about doing this on Thanksgiving when everyone else was eating dinner with families. The Riggs brothers had never had a family. Today seemed like a good day to start building one.
“Welcome to the party, man,” I said to Dex as he slid into the best man’s spot beside me at the front next to the altar. “Nice of you to show up.”
“Fuck off, Riggs,” Dex said. He was actually cleaned up: showered, hair combed, shaved for once. His suit fit and his tie was straight. Since Lauren had taken so long getting him ready in the guest house, I had to assume she should get all the credit. Jace took his spot next to me, and I had to do a double-take. My tattooed ex-con little brother cleaned up pretty good, too.
Jace caught my eye. “I know,” he said, looking me up and down. “This is fucking weird.”
“We are never wearing suits again,” Dex said quietly and definitively as the music started. “Not for anyone, ever.”
“What if I marry Tara?” Jace said. “No, forget it. I’m not inviting either of you if I marry Tara.”
“I’m keeping mine,” I said. I was going to need it, because I planned to marry Kate as soon as she would let me. I didn’t know if she knew that yet. I caught her eye as she stood on the other side of the altar with the other bridesmaids. She looked back at me and her cheeks flushed. Maybe she was thinking the same thing.
Dylan came out on cue and stood by the altar. Luke came out, looking pretty fucking good, and waited. The music changed and Emily came down our makeshift aisle, on the arm of her dad. She looked spectacular and happy. Everyone sighed. I could kind of see why people liked weddings so much.
Emily and Luke joined hands, and the justice of the peace they’d brought to officiate started talking. It was going to be kept to a short ceremony so everyone wouldn’t get too cold before going back into the house to drink some more. Dylan only fidgeted a little bit before being asked to present the rings.
Toward the end, I looked at Dex and noticed he wasn’t even watching the ceremony. He was standing in place next to the altar, but his gaze was fixed on Lauren Parker, a few feet away on the other side of the altar in the maid of honor spot. And she was looking at him, the two of them so focused on each other that nothing else existed. They were doing a full-on staring contest. Lauren’s eyes were narrowed, like she was pissed at him and she wanted him to know it. Dex’s expression was impossible to read, but there was a gleam in his eye that was a little bit gleeful, like he’d won something. What the fuck was going on?
Dex and Lauren, I thought. Never gonna happen. No fucking way.
I moved my gaze back to Kate and watched her for the rest of the ceremony. It finished, Luke and Emily kissed, and everyone clapped. Then the music started again and we all started to move toward the house.
Kate came over to me and took my hand. “Come here, Bad Boy of Baseball,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
“Follow me.”
She led me away from the others and around the side of the house, where we were alone. Then she pinned me against the wall and kissed me.
I was all in. Her arms around my neck, my hands on her waist, I kissed her back until she broke away. “What was that for?” I asked.
“For looking gorgeous in a suit,” she said.
“You already knew that.”
“I’m freshly reminded of it. It was also for looking at me like that during the wedding. And for being wonderful. And for being all mine.”
“Okay,” I said, brushing a curl from her cheek. “I’ll cop to those things.” I pulled her to me and kissed her again. “How long do we have to stick around here?” I asked when I finished.
She leaned in to me. It was cold, and I kept my arms tight around her, keeping her warm. “Do you think they’ll notice if we leave now?” she asked.
I smiled at her. I had no idea what I had ever done without this woman. “I give Dylan five minutes before he comes around that corner, asking what we’re doing,” I said.
Kate leaned up and brushed her lips against mine. “Five minutes then, Ryan,” she said. “Let’s see if we can make it count.”
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