Page 1 of Wild River

One

Becca

Your wedding day is supposed to be a dream come true. Right? You’re all done up and beautiful, wearing the ultimate dress. Feeling like a princess. Friends and family watch you walk down the aisle, smiling and wiping away happy tears. And there, standing waiting for you, ready to tie the knot in front of everyone you know and love is… your fiance.

The person you love more than anyone in the world. The person you’re about to spend the rest of your life with.

Yeah, none of that shit is happening for me. I’m bundled into a white dress I’ve never seen before in my life, while strangers do my hair and makeup, and none of this is how I dreamed it would be as a little girl.

I’m a sheep being readied for market—albeit in a fancy dressing room in a manor house, rather than a barn.

“Don’t fuss,” my aunt Prue says as I tug at the dress seams, trying to get it to lie properly against my body. The lace trim itches. “It’s made to your exact measurements. There’s no reason to act like today is such a trial for you, Becca.”

Hey, maybe I’d be cooler about all this if I could have picked my own dress.

I bet I’d be thrilled if I could’ve picked my ownfiance.

But that’s not how the Pritchard family does things. That’s not howanyof the wealthy, uptight, always-tactical families in our set do things. Once we’re of age, we’re matched carefully in mysterious meetings in mahogany drawing rooms. We’re all pieces in some grand chess game, being moved around the board, carefully balancing the power between the elites.

And that is why my shoulder-length red hair is being brushed and teased and braided into an updo. That is why a middle aged woman with coffee-breath is painting make-up onto my face, erasing every blemish and flaw. She contours the crap out of me, too, until I barely recognize myself in the dressing room mirror. I look like an alien. Like one of those Instagram models.

My fiance will have a shock once he finally sees me without makeup. He’ll wonder if his new wife has been body swapped.

“I don’t know anything about Tristan Peters.” Cold fingers fasten the buttons on my dress, trailing up from the base of my spine to my mid back. There are so many strangers’ hands on me right now, and every muscle in my body is bunched tight. “We’ve met, like, twice. And we barely spoke either time.”

Aunt Prue sighs, her focus now fixed squarely on her phone. She taps out a message, manicured nails clacking against the screen. “Don’t fuss,” she says again. “You think I knew your uncle when we got married? And look at us now.”

It’s a good thing my aunt is so fixated on her phone, because this time my nose really does wrinkle. The make-up lady huffs and raises her groomed eyebrows until I carefully blank my features again.

But seriously. My aunt and uncle have one of the blandest, coldest marriages I’ve ever seen in my life. Sure, they somehow squeezed out two sons, but they barely spend time in the sameroom. They don’t love each other; they tolerate each other. Out of duty.

My own parents are the same. And so are my other aunts and uncles; so is my older sister and her recent husband. All of them are cool and refined and completely joyless.

In truth, that is the future I’ve always expected for myself. Forget those little-girl daydreams about marrying my soulmate; I’ve known for a long, long time that my life was leading me here. To a fine silk dress that itches my neck.

And I’ve been okay with that.

Well… resigned to it, anyway.

But on the drive up the mountain path to this old, gilded manor, I glimpsed something through the tinted car window. Something that stopped the breath in my chest and made my knees go all sweaty against the fine leather seats. Something that made the world tilt sideways and my ears ring.

Okay, this is gonna sound really dumb. But stay with me.

It was a pair of squirrels. Two fluffy gray squirrels, chasing each other up a tree trunk, their puffy tails bobbing. They swirled around each other and waited for the other to catch up; they skittered and chittered and wrapped up together, tails entwined. The seat belt cut into my collarbone as I jerked forward, eyes fixed on those two little critters, then the car swept on and they were gone.

It was over so fast.

Just the tiniest glimpse.

But as I sat back in the car, my heart started pounding in my chest. My vision blurred.

Suddenly, it was too hot in the vehicle, too airless, all that machinery rumbling around us. Even through the tinted windows, the sun was too bright. I smacked at the controls, cracking the window open a few inches, a crisp mountain breeze flooding into the car—before someone huffed and overrodemy controls, closing the window and cranking up the air con instead.

“Please,” I croaked, a desperate bride on the way to her wedding venue. In the front passenger seat, my father was on the phone with his solicitor about something. Oblivious. Beside me, my mother and Aunt Prue were murmuring about some scandalous affair at the golf club, far too wrapped up in their gossip to notice or care about my meltdown. The driver caught my eye in the rear view mirror, but looked away quickly. He knew better than to interfere.

So, yeah. I saw two squirrels this morning on the drive up here, and I’ve been jittery with panic ever since. Because those two little critters seemed more in love than any of the humans I’ve been around lately.

“Do you think animals can be romantic?” My voice sounds weird in this plush dressing room. Strangled.

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