Page 81 of Mess With Me

I’m holding on to a ring, tight in my pocket. But it’s not the one I bought this morning. “Hold your damn horses, Sasha.”

She looks up at me, laughing, and the sound is so beautiful I have to set my jaw to keep from grinning like a fool again.

“Fine,” she says finally. “But only because we’re going to be late for our own wedding.”

* * *

The woman performing the ceremony is in her sixties, with pale skin and slate-gray hair, her thick glasses so pointed they’re almost horn-rimmed.

“Are we ready?” she asks, glancing at the clock.

“They were too busy staring into each other’s eyes,” Chelsea says, practically sighing. “Lost track of time.”

Everyone laughs, except me and the officiant. We both grumble. If I didn’t look so much like Dad, I’d have thought I was switched at birth.

There are a dozen chairs in the room, mostly filled with my family. Almost everyone is here: Dad. Cassandra and her husband Blake. Jude and Cap, with Nora on the tablet Cap’s holding. It’s midnight in London, but she still got dressed up to watch, her glasses fogging with tears already.

Sasha waves and she waves back.

Chelsea and Seamus are in the back, Seamus bouncing a babbling baby Imogen in the baby carrier.

I wanted to do this just the two of us. But seeing everyone here—everyone except Eli, Reese, and, of course, Mom—fills me with unexpected happiness. They’re here for me, no matter how many times I couldn’t be there for them because I was on the other side of the world or knee-deep in some dangerous assignment.

“We’re ready—” I begin, but just then, the doors burst open, and Eli and Reese appear, a crowd of people calling out behind them, phones raised high.

Eli slams the door closed behind them, looking sheepish. “Sorry we’re late.”

I frown, trying to cover up that warmth turning to an explosion of happiness in my chest that they dropped everything to fly here from California for this.

Sasha makes a little sound of excitement, her hands squeezing on mine.

“You’re just marrying me for Reese, aren’t you?” I whisper.

“You’re just now figuring that out?” she whispers back.

My lips tug up in a smile, which Cassandra takes a goddamned picture of.

The officiant clears her throat loudly, and everyone takes a seat.

“We’re gathered here today in the presence of witnesses to unite”—she looks down at the paper in her hand—“Griffin and Sasha…” She looks confused. Probably because I got my friend to make sure no surnames were mentioned.

She looks up, clearing her throat. She doesn’t like surprises. Okay, maybe she’s a long-lost great-aunt.

“The contract of marriage is not to be taken lightly. It is a commitment between two partners in life…”

I should be sweating with these words, but at that moment, Sasha turns to me, sliding both her hands into mine. She’s smiling wide, looking perfectly comfortable, like she’s made peace with this situation.

Like she’s happy to be here.

“Do you, Griffin, take Sasha to be your lawfully wedded wife?” the officiant asks. “To have and to hold from this day forward, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, and to love and cherish as long as you both shall live?”

For a moment, Laura flashes before my eyes, her face so different from Sasha’s. The image threatens to shift to the last time I saw her, her eyes on me as she left the world, blood on her lips.

But I shove the image aside.

“I do,” I say, my voice hard.

I feel the room—my family—let out a collective sigh.

---