Dancing Away With My Heart (Wishful 12)

“Dearly beloved—”

As the ceremony proper began, Zach split his attention between the pastor and Lexi. She moved like a ninja, silently slipping in and around the group clustered at the altar to document each step of the occasion. She pulled back when the vows began, swapping to a second camera with a longer lens to capture the moments without intruding.

Zach found himself watching her as his friends spoke words of promise and fidelity, and he knew that this simmer in his blood wasn’t just some passing fancy. He wanted to hold Lexi. Wanted to slide his fingers into the heavy silk of her hair and lay his lips over hers. And he wanted to follow that with a whole host of other things that should have shocked him. Because this was Lexi. But having her come back into his life was like looking at an old photograph and seeing something he’d never noticed before. Some detail that changed the whole composition.

She looked over at him, catching his gaze. For just a beat, something passed between them. An awareness. He couldn’t read her eyes at this distance, but he’d have sworn he could feel the same knowledge in her—that they were both grown up now.

And as she looked away, lifting her camera to catch the first kiss, he thought maybe…maybe, it wasn’t just him.

Chapter 5

In the normal course of things, Lexi found shooting weddings to be a lot of work. They were long, intense days, typically around a lot of high-stress people. She knew how to wade into that and still manage to make art out of those memories, and she was good at it, as her growing list of happy clients attested. But shooting Jace and Tara’s wedding was different than what she did in Austin. Because she knew him. She knew most of the people standing up there with him and his bride. And that imbued the whole thing with more meaning.

This, she realized, was the value of doing this at home, for people she cared about instead of strangers. Did Zach even realize how lucky he was to get this privilege? Did he feel this way about what he did? Catching sight of him, camera in hand as he coaxed Tara and Jace through the cake cutting on the opposite side of the table, she knew that he did. And for that moment, she envied him. She envied what he’d fallen into here, what he’d made of it, and she found herself wishing she could be a permanent part of it.

He’d let her. He’d make a place for her, as he’d made a place for her in his friend group, all those years ago. But that was taking a temporary situation and turning it into something it wasn’t. She was being very careful this go-round not to do anything but accept the status quo. And the status quo was pretty damned good. Reconnecting with Zach was healing that bruise on her heart. She had friends in Austin, but no one like him. No one like the rest of their zany crew. She already knew she wouldn’t let the miles cut her off from them—from him—again when she went back. And it would be enough. It would have to be.

She was relieved when the toasts began. It meant she could get back to work, get out of her head.

The groom kicked things off, warming up the crowd with humor before turning to lace his fingers with Tara’s. “It’s amazing the little moments that can change your life. If I hadn’t finished my take-home exam early. If I hadn’t met my friends up at The Grind that day, I might not have met Tara. I can’t even imagine what that life would have looked like, and I’ve wondered, would things have turned out the same if we’d met somewhere else? Somewhen else?”

Jace lifted his wife’s hand to his lips. “I like to think we’d have ended up here no matter how we started.”

Lexi took the shot, but her brain was still turning over what he’d said long after he’d ceded the mic to others. That was the ultimate question, wasn’t it? She thought back all those years to that first bonfire. If she hadn’t gone, if she hadn’t met Zach that night and had the chance to bond with him over photography the rest of the summer, would they have become friends? Or would they have circled in parallel groups for the rest of high school? Would he have seen her at some other time and place and thought of her as a girl instead of as a friend? Or would things have turned out exactly the same?

Unsettled, and not at all sure which version of “What if?” she preferred, she lost herself in the focus needed for the work.

After the first dance, she finally got to relax her vigilance for a moment. She wandered over to the bar set up in the corner and asked for a bottle of water. Her throat was parched. She’d been working steadily for hours and her feet were aching. She couldn’t wait for the end of the night, when she’d get to go home and take a long, hot bath before falling into bed and crashing.

“Helluva day.”

Still guzzling down the water, she inclined her head to Zach as he ordered a beer. He’d shed his tux jacket and rolled up his sleeves. The top edge of what she recognized as a folded tie peeked out of one of the shallow vest pockets.

He held up his drink. “To teamwork.”

She tapped her bottle to his. “Seems we make a good one.”

“We always did.” There was an intensity in his gaze as he looked at her that made her skin come alive. She wanted his hands on her.

Don’t be stupid.

She finished the water and thought about asking for another. Was it getting hotter in here?

Zach took a sip of his beer and set it on a nearby table before lifting the camera she wore up and over her head. “Watch these for a minute, would you, Joe?”

“No problem.”

Lexi narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing?”

He grabbed her hand and began towing her toward the dance floor. “In most circles I believe it is referred to as dancing.”

But the song playing was slow and romantic, not one of the big group line dances. Which meant they’d be dancing together.

“Why?” By some miracle, she managed to keep the panic out of her voice. They didn’t do this. Ever.

“Because it’s what you do at weddings.”

“Do you regularly dance at the weddings you work?” Was his way of doing this job so much different from hers?