Page 158 of Lemon Crush

“Hey, I’m doing this for free so you can remember the insanity forever. You’re a grumpy old bastard, and if it were up to August, you’d only have Snapchat pics as a wedding album, but I love you both anyway.” He nudged my shoulder with his. “I’m happy for you, Wade. She’s good for you.”

Yeah. She was.

The music started and my niece and her baby appeared at the end of the aisle, surrounded on either side by family, friends and half the neighborhood.

At one point in the midst of planning, August had suggested we elope to Vegas, but I’d said no. I knew that wasn’t what either of us wanted. I’d done the civil ceremony. This time, I wanted the spectacle. With her. For her.

I leaned around Kingston to glance at my groomsmen. Todd was dressed in a well-fitted suit and staring at his fiancé and child with adoration. They were planning an April wedding.

Gene was on the other side of him, in a full kilt with a jaunty hat tilting drunkenly on his head. The guys were all wearing their Ren Fest gear for the occasion. Because of course they were.

In the front row was my stepson Cody in a sedate suit. He offered me a genuine smile when he caught me looking his way. August had been right about him remembering me. We’d exchanged emails and phone calls for a few weeks before I asked if he wanted to come to the wedding. He’d agreed, and he’d brought his partner along, a good guy named Steve—a dentist whohappened to be a fan of August’s book series. He had his arm through Cody’s and was smiling like he’d won some sort of sweepstakes.

I’d always regretted losing touch. Having him here was more than I could have hoped for.

I turned back to the aisle in time to watch my sister posing, pretending to draw a bow and arrow and causing several people in the crowd to chuckle. Then Morgan was gliding toward us in yellow and Gene whistled under his breath.

It was her wedding, and before that her mother’s, that had started all of this. Nearly twenty years later, I was finally having a Retta wedding of my own.

If you’d told me six months ago I’d be standing here right now, happier and more nervous than I’d ever been in my whole damn life, I’d have called you a liar. Things like this didn’t happen to stick-in-the-mud, stuck-in-their-ways mechanics like me. We didn’t get married to the woman of our dreams on streets transformed into magical forests. We didn’t have to get a brand-new passport photo to take our new wife to Lesa before a week-long stay in Tuscany, complete with cooking lessons for yours truly. Guys like me weren’t this lucky.

But I wasn’t the same guy anymore. Not since August announced that she loved me in the middle of the car race she was driving in, in front of everyone we knew. If she could find the courage to do that, I could be the kind of man she deserved. At least, I’d spend the rest of my life trying.

“Here she comes,” the woman to my right murmured. Lucy’s wife, Julia, was ordained and had agreed to marry us. She was standing behind a beautiful podium, with her notes in front of her and two beribboned water bottles beside her.

My future wife had told her about the honesty pool, and she’d thought it was so adorable, she couldn’t resist adding it into the ceremony.

August stepped onto the aisle with Chick beside her and the violin music, the people in the crowd…everything else disappeared and all I could see was this woman. My woman. She took my breath away.

“I dazzle you?”

Damn right she did.

If I’d had nerves, they were gone. She was walking toward me, smiling the way she always did when she saw me, those deep blue eyes sparkling with happy tears. When she sped up on the petal-strewn aisle and stumbled, I stepped forward instinctively, ready to catch her. Then Chick said something that made her laugh and she straightened, making her way to me at a slower pace.

When they finally reached me, I met Chick’s gaze as he said, “Take care of our girl, Captain.”

“I will.” I always would.

I hooked an arm around her and pulled her close. “Holy bananas, you look beautiful,” I teased under my breath while I willed my hands to stop shaking.

“You do too. This is crazy,” she whispered, beaming at me as I turned us toward Lucy’s wife. “I can’t believe they put this together so fast. I can’t believe we’re really doing this.”

“I can’t believe we waited this long.”

According to all the video evidence, we said our vows on the street between the garage and the icehouse. Or Hudson Forest, as the guests had taken to calling it after a few pints of free ale.

My sister sang for our first dance, and Morgan cried in public, though she swore to everyone that would listen it was dust in her eyes. Watching her and August on the temporary dance floor, laughing as they tried to remember what were obviously some choreographed moves from their childhood and teach them to Cody and his partner, was one of the highlights for me. The wayGus smiled and showed off her silver sneakers for me, blowing me a kiss.

And in the parking lot of my shop, hidden by both real and fake trees, Jiminy sat on an elevated platform for the day, to honor Sam Retta and the race that had brought us closer together.

She’d done a lot for me over the years, but bringing August back home felt more like some of that divine intervention I didn’t believe in. I owed her one hell of a favor for that, Retta rules or not.

She would have loved this party even more than she’d liked the last one.

Almost as much as I loved my wife.

August’s initial and supposedly private notes about a potential new romance series revolving around an amateur car race (Read by Chick at the reception).

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