Page 24 of Won't Back Down
“Oh, I… yes, actually.” With a little laugh, I gave up on the tangles. “I should’ve braided it before we got on the boat.”
“You’ve had a few things on your mind.” She took the comb and nudged me onto an ottoman.
“I kind of didn’t expect this from you, being the mom of a boy.”
The hands in my hair slowed a bit. “I always kind of wanted a girl, too. It just wasn’t in the cards. So thank you for letting me fuss.”
We were silent for a few minutes as she gently worked the tangles free.
“Are you ready for this?” And it was Mama Flo asking, not the stiff attorney.
“Does it matter if I am?”
“I suppose not.” She cupped my cheek in her palm and looked at me with more softness and genuine affection than I’d ever seen from my own mother. “You’ve had to face so many things you weren’t ready for.”
Uncomfortable with the moment of vulnerability stretching between us, I twitched my shoulders. “Isn’t that life?”
“To some extent. Yours has been made harder than many by the very people who were meant to look out for you. I won’t belabor the point. Just know that everything we’re doing here is to defend you from that.”
I gently squeezed her wrist. “I know.”
“Sawyer was a good boy, and he’s grown into an even better man.”
“I know that, too.” And he was, perhaps, the only reason I hadn’t absolutely lost my shit.
Apparently seeing whatever she needed to see in my face, she went back to my hair. Once the tangles had been dispensed with, she managed some kind of quick, loose, beachy look, with the sides twisted and held back with bobby pins. Then she affixed a little crown of sand lilies she’d gotten from who knew where and declared me ready.
I pulled her in for a hug. “Thank you for being here for me.”
“Anytime.”
We made our way out to the back of the house, which opened into a courtyard exploding with blooms. Live oaks and behemoth magnolias provided dappled afternoon shade over stone pathways, accented with seashells and framed by overflowing garden beds, where foxgloves, lilies, and delphiniums swayed gently in the breeze. At the garden’s edge, a massive arbor drowning in climbing jasmine and morning glories framed a path that led down to the glittering sound beyond. Beside it stood our officiant. Judge D’Angelo had changed into a linen suit and done something to tame her mane of hair into a more sedate Gibson tuck. Beside her stood Sawyer.
I stopped at the sight of him. The sleeves of his untucked Oxford cloth button down were rolled, revealing muscled forearms, but his dark slacks were creased with military precision. The mix of casual and dressy was just exactly right for this garden wedding.
He broke off in the middle of a sentence as he spotted me, his gray eyes honing in with a focus that froze me in place. Without finishing whatever he’d been saying, he strode over, stopping on the step below me, which put us almost on eye-level, though he was still taller.
“You look beautiful.”
He didn’t have to say it. More, he didn’t have to mean it. But I believed him as he stared down at me with an intensity I wasn’t entirely sure how to read. My heart kicked into high gear because this was the man I was about to marry. For real. Even though it was just for show. My inner thirteen-year-old was swooning because this was Sawyer. My Sawyer. Who’d been there for me so many times. Who’d saved my life. Who was saving my life again in a wholly different way.
“Thanks. So do you.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up.
“You’re going to need these, baby.” Delilah thrust a mammoth bouquet of blue hydrangeas and white lilies into my hands.
I stared down at the neatly beribboned bouquet. “How?”
“I’m an artist. I can do flowers. Just because this wedding got put together fast, doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful.” She squeezed me in a hug. “Now, let’s get this show on the road.”
We were herded over beneath the arch and positioned until Delilah was satisfied we were properly framed, a process that seemed to amuse the judge immensely. Then, at last, we were beginning.
“Do you have the rings?”
Sawyer’s face blanked in uncharacteristic panic. “Oh, hell, I forgot?—”
“I didn’t.” I reached into the pocket of my dress—its number one selling point—and produced a pair of simple gold bands. “These were my grandparents’. We may end up having to get yours resized, but I thought…”