“What the hell?” Quinn questions.
“How long where we gone?!” I ask in a panicked tone. “Jace!” I cry out into the vacant house.
About ten feet from the front door, I find a white piece of paper lying on the floor. I crouch down to scoop it up and recognize the small handwriting that flows across the page in black ink.
Dear Audrey,
There are furniture magazines in the kitchen. Circle what you want and Josie will have it all ordered and here before you return from your honeymoon. Fill me with furniture. Make me your own.
Love, Your House
P.S. Don’t be mad at your soon-to-be husband. He loves you more than anything in the world and just wants you to feel at home.
I smile at his quirky, yet sweet note. I should be mad at him for doing this the day before my wedding, but I just can’t bring myself to find anger anywhere inside me. This is the new side of Jace I’ve learned to love. He tries to fix any problems between us immediately. After we realized how stupid we’ve been wasting so much time apart when we could have just talked out our issues, he won’t let a second of misunderstanding pass without trying to resolve it.
“Me and my big mouth...” Quinn grumbles, reading the note over my shoulder.
“Do you hate me?” Jace’s voice calls out from upstairs, and I look up to see his handsome face peeking around the corner.
I run up the stairs toward him and launch myself into his arms. “You big idiot, you have more money than sense!” I say into his neck, hoping that my words come off gentler than they sound.
“I want you to be happy in our home,” he whispers into my ear, while pulling me into his arms tighter.
“As long as it’s ours, I’m happy. I don’t ever want you to think otherwise,” I say, kissing a line along his neck.
A throat clears from behind us and we both turn to see Quinn stomping her foot in clear frustration. Jace chuckles under his breath before Quinn says, “And where exactly is my family?”
“Sorry, Quinny. I had to move you guys to Jax and Em’s house. But you’ll come back when the new furniture gets here,” Jace explains.
“Well, if we’re already over there, we should just stay until our house is done,” she replies.
“No!” Jace and I say in unison.
When she gives us both a puzzled look, Jace says, “I want to see my baby as much as I possibly can before you guys have to move into your home. I’m gonna miss her.”
When he juts out his plump bottom lip in a ridiculous pout, my heart beats faster at the idea of Jace being a dad someday. I know without a doubt, he’ll be the best there has ever been.
That night after our rehearsal dinner, we all crowd in through Em and Jaxon’s front door. Chloe is spending the night at her grandparents’ house so that Cole and Quinn can stay out late tonight. Jaxon leads us all to his back porch where we can have a few more drinks and talk late into the night.
“Mom, you can’t be mad at me forever,” Jaxon complains, while trying to hold back a laugh.
“Yes, I can. Jace is my good son, having a nice, respectable wedding. But you! Not once, but twice now you’ve run away to elope!”
“Mom, it’s been almost a year,” Jaxon pleads. “How come you aren’t mad at Em? She was there too, you know.”
Em immediately whacks him in the stomach and says, “Thanks, traitor!”
“Because I know you tricked her into it somehow. I only have you to blame,” Julie argues. This is an ongoing dispute between the two of them. We all know that Julie was over the moon when she found out Em was officially a Riley and honestly, I wasn’t surprised to hear those two snuck off to Vegas. But his mom still likes to give him hell anytime there is wedding talk.
Cole and Quinn had a massive wedding right after she gave birth to Chloe this summer, with all of his father’s political friends in attendance. It was more of a show-off affair for his dad’s campaign and less about them, but we all had fun anyway. Jace and I are the next ones in our little group to get married, and I can’t wait to finally ditch my father’s name and lovingly add Riley in its place.
I walk out to the porch railing and gaze at the light from the moon bouncing off of Jax and Em’s pond. Lane wraps his arm around my shoulders and squeezes me tightly into his side. Lane has been my rock for so many years that I can’t believe our little era is coming to an end. I swipe away the tears that escape from my eyes.
“He’ll take good care of you, doll,” his raspy voice says from above me.
I look up to see the moisture in his eyes. “I’ll be a sobbing mess in seconds if you start the waterworks too!”
He laughs softly and says, “I’m happy for you. I’ll miss you like fucking crazy, but you deserve this more than you know.”
“I can’t wait to be in your wedding someday,” I state but he rolls his eyes. He doesn’t like talking about falling in love or marriage when it pertains to himself. I give him a break and ask, “You’re not upset about not being a groomsman, are you?”
“He doesn’t even have groomsmen,” he laughs. When Jace and I decided we wanted a very small and intimate wedding, we cut the idea of having a wedding party standing alongside us. Besides, if we had our close friends standing up next to us, we would lose half of our audience. “I would much rather walk you down the aisle any day, doll,” he whispers.
“Thank you for saving a broken mess of a girl, Lane. I can’t thank you enough. You’ll never understand how much you helped me grow,” I say, while hugging him around the waist.
“Damn, all this time I thought you were the one saving me,” he chuckles and I pinch his back, just like old times.
“You haven’t finally realized what you’re missing and trying to run away with my girl, are you?” Jace affectionately says from behind us.
I leave Lane’s warm grasp to enter Jace’s. I’ve never felt more at home than I do in this moment. It’s almost as if there’s been a light turned on for me, and I can finally see how blessed I am. And just like Jace said to me a year ago, I would walk through the sadness all over again if I knew I would be reaching this point.
Lane leaves Jace and I alone out on the porch to look out over the pond. When Jace wraps his arms around me from behind, I whisper, “You know, it’s unheard of for a bride to not know where she’s getting married.”
He tucks his face into the nook between my chin and my shoulder and says, “I promise this is my last surprise. From then on out, we’ll make joint decisions. This is a good one though. I know you’ll be happy with it.”
I turn in his arms and grab the lapels of his suit coat. “I love your surprises, Jace. Quinn may have had a point about your work hours, but she failed to mention that you’re great at surprises,” I rise up on my toes and whisper in his ear, “and at taking control.”
A low rumble emerges from his chest and he growls, “Well, that’s a damn good thing, babe, because there’s no way in hell that’ll ever change.”
I never pictured myself standing outside on my wedding day, with my hair tightly pinned to my head and my long, white dress blowing in the cold breeze…blindfolded. When Em approached me as I was climbing into the limo with a light blue sash in her hands, I stared at her with apprehension.
“Your something blue,” she chuckled wickedly.
“I already have something blue,” I reply, gesturing to the thin, sterling silver bracelet with diamonds and turquoise gemstones that Jace had sent over while I was getting ready.