Page 84 of He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

‘Dax seems distracted, too. Did something happen?’

‘What?’

‘You two fight?’

‘No,’ I say, shaking my head quickly.

Ian cocks his head. ‘Was it the opposite of a fight?’

I stop what I’m doing, thinking about his question. Yes. It was exactly the opposite of a fight.

‘No. He’s probably just nervous.’

‘Hey, girl!’ Mercy says in a singsong voice as she approaches, violin case in her hand. ‘How’s my winner this morning?’

‘You know me. Just following orders like a good little girl.’

She pinches her eyebrows together. ‘Good little girl? Blech. That’s boring.’ Her eyes are on the arrangements I’m working on. ‘These are pretty. But where’s Dax?’

I shrug my shoulders. He kind of bolted when we got here.

‘How don’t you know? Aren’t you his assistant?’

‘Yep. I’m his assistant and his assistant only,’ I say, shoving a flower into an arrangement so hard the stem snaps. ‘Crap.’

‘Only his assistant, eh? Does that mean something else was a possibility?’

I glance at her, my face probably doing all sorts of things I don’t want it to. I forgot who I was talking to. She can read between the lines of anything. I could tell her about last night, especially since I have a feeling she knew about the crush thing all along. Dax said something about needing to tell me before River or Mercy did. She had to have known. Why else would he say that?

‘Fuck. Fuck.Fuck.’ Dax walks into the awning I’m working under, mumbling swear words under his breath into his shirt pulled to his mouth as though that will hide them.

I stare in a way I shouldn’t, forgetting entirely that Mercy is standing next to me.

‘What’s wrong with you two?’ she asks.

Dax practically growls as he drops his shirt. ‘I fucked up an order, and now I have to start over. How long do we have?’ He looks at me, his jaw clenched, a hand on the back of his neck.

I glance down at my phone, tapping it to life. ‘An hour and a half.’

‘I need your help,’ he says, pleading with his eyes. ‘We can throw these together at the end.’

Because of River showing up last night – yes, that’s what I’m going with – we didn’t quite finish the arrangements for the reception, so I’ve been working on those.

‘Whatever you need,’ I say, dropping the flower stems in my hand to the table. I glance at Mercy. ‘Sorry, assisting calls.’

‘Don’t mind me,’ she says, backing away with a clenched-teeth smile. ‘I just came to chit-chat because Dylan won’t shut up.’ She walks away slowly. ‘Not sure why I thought working with my ex was a great idea…’ Finally, she exits the awning, disappearing inside the ceremony space.

I follow Dax to where the ceremony is taking place. ‘What happened?’

‘I know we agreed to slow things down hours ago, but I can’t quit thinking about it, and you, and instead of a C in the center of this flower wall, I was halfway through an H.’ His eyes finally meet mine, the corners of his lips turning as if he’s almost amused.

‘An H? Like for—’

‘Don’t say it,’ he says with an irritated laugh. ‘I’ve never made a mistake on something like this, but my head’s all over the place. The bride caught it. She wasn’t thrilled.’

Stop smiling, Hollyn.That would be easier if he didn’t have the same guilty grin on his face.

‘We can fix it. Just tell me what to do.’

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