CEREAL DATER (The Way To A Man's Heart)

She gestures vaguely to Lucky, and I take a deep breath to try and control myself. If I lose my shit at her, she’s going to find some way to use that against me. So, instead, I play by her rules, and I pretend that she’s not even there.

"Lucky," I murmur, turning to the woman beside me. "Could you give me a moment? I need to speak to my sister. And then we can go."

I ignore the stunned expressions on my parents’ faces as I brush past them to find Cassidy – if they think I am going to stand there and listen to them talk to Lucky like that, they’ve got another thing coming. I hear my mother’s voice calling after me, but I pay it no mind, instead scanning the crowd for my little sister.

It doesn’t take long to find her – she's with her husband-to-be, a broker from another wealthy family who my parents all but sold her to. She smiles and gives me a big hug in greeting, and then glances over my shoulder to see how pissed our mom and dad are with everything that’s going down.

"What’s going on?" she asks. "Why are you–"

"I came with a date who didn’t get pre-approved by our parents," I reply, and she widens her eyes at me.

"Oh, shit," she mutters. "Do you think that’s a good idea? Sophia’s really nice, you know, I met her and I–"

"Cass, I don’t think I can be at this wedding," I admit to her. Her face drops and we take a few steps away from her fiancé, out of earshot.

"What?”

"I can’t stand by and watch another marriage start just because two families want to make sure that they can’t stab each other in the back," I go on. "I love you, Cass, you know that. And I hope that you’ll be happy with your new husband, I really do. But I can’t keep doing this, pretending that I want something like this, too."

Her eyes gloss over for a moment, as though there is something clicking into place in her head. But I don’t have time to sit here and talk her through it – she has already gone along with what my parents wanted for her, and that’s the only thing that matters. I plant a kiss on her cheek, and turn to find Lucky again, to find the woman I really want to spend this night with, no matter what.

But when I look to the bar, she is already gone. And my stomach drops at once.

Chapter Eight

Lucky

Sitting there, my heels perched beside me and my bare feet dug into the warm, damp sand below me, I can almost pretend that none of this is happening.

His parents hate me. And I mean hate me. Not to mention everyone else back up in that place – everyone else who looks at me out of the corners of their eyes, as though they’re trying to work out what I am doing here.

Hell, I am not even sure right now. I want to be with him, I know that, but that world – it’s not something I can cope with. All that money, all that pressure to look and act a certain way. And his parents reacting to me as though I just shot the officiant for the wedding right in front of them, it would almost have been funny if it wasn’t so hurtful.

If this is the life that Landon wants, that he lives, I know I can’t do it with him. I think back to the café, and I wonder if I would have been better off staying there after all. I take another sip of the wine that I managed to get out of the rehearsal dinner. At least the booze is good...

"Lucky?”

I glance over my shoulder, and to my surprise, see Landon standing there at the top of the path that leads down to the beach. I smile at him, a little sadly.

"Hey."

"Can I join you?”

"If you don’t mind wrecking your suit..."

"I don’t," he replies at once, and he plants himself down in the sand beside me, his hand just behind the small of my back. Even now, I can feel the heat of it burning against me, and I want nothing more than to shift over and snuggle myself into his arms.

"Some party, huh?” I remark flippantly. He shakes his head.

"Fuck them," he replies, and the vehemence in his voice catches me off-guard. I furrow my brow at him.

"What did you say?”

"I said, fuck them," he repeats himself. "If they don’t even have the respect to treat you like a real person, I don’t want anything to do with them."

"Landon, it’s your sister’s wedding," I remind him. "You don’t have to take a stand because of me–"

"I want to," he replies, and he slides his hand over mine in the sand, the shape of our fingers marking the damp earth below us.