The Worst Wedding Date

I am going to throttle the crap out of Theo Monroe when I find him.

If I don’t hug him to death first.

My father’s fine. We get him to the hospital, where they treat him for an allergic reaction, and I help my mom hold it all together while he’s admitted for observation overnight.

“Just forgot,” he keeps saying to my mom. “You cut macadamia nuts out of our diet so long ago and always tell me what to order when we go out to eat. I forgot.”

“You could’ve died,” my mother keeps sobbing. “I didn’t ask and you could’ve died.”

“You didn’t know there were macadamias all over this island.”

“I told you three weeks ago I wasn’t booking a tour of the macadamia nut factory across the island because you were allergic! I filled out the allergy information form on the wedding RSVP.”

I flinch at that one.

Watching my dad go blue in the face while he gasped for breath and then passed out was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Terrifying doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Definitely shifts some perspective.

Makes me think about what matters. About what’s important. About hopes. Fears. Regrets.

And it reinforces how I want to live.

That’s why I’m leaving my parents in the hospital while I catch a ride back to the resort now that I know my dad’s stable and he’s going to be fine.

Theo’s not in our room.

He’s not baking cookies in the bistro kitchen. Smells like he has been though.

Eventually, a very loud sneeze erupts from the general vicinity of the ocean, and it leads me to finding him sitting on the beach.

And shoveling his face full of cookies.

“Got enough to share?” I ask as I sit down next to him.

He lifts the bag and sets it far on his other side, well out of my reach. “No eating. I might kill you.”

“Theo.”

“Everything I touch turns to shit, Laney. Go away. You deserve not shit.”

I ignore him, lift his arm, and settle under it. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I picked the fucking menu.”

So he heard through the grapevine that Dad’s allergic to macadamia nuts.

Awesome.

Figured he would. It’s why I kept texting him this is not your fault.

To no response.

“Don’t even start with you didn’t know and this isn’t your fault,” he grumbles.

“How about this is the universe’s way of giving him a wake-up call that he’s just as mortal as the next person? Or maybe this is the universe’s way of reminding him to not be a judgmental ass?”

“You shouldn’t say things like that about your parents after they almost die. Believe me. That’s a road to regrets.”

I wrap my arms around him and hold him close.

He sighs heavily, like he’s letting out all of the tension, and then wraps his other arm around me too.

A wave rolls to shore and covers our feet. It’s cool but not cold. Just like it was this morning as we came down from parasailing.

“He forgot he was allergic because my mother’s taken care of everything for him for the past too many decades,” I say quietly. “And she didn’t question dinner either.”

“I should’ve asked.”

“This wasn’t your fault.”

He grips me tighter like he’s holding on to me since he can’t hold on to the words and make himself believe them.

“I have a lot of secrets, Laney,” he says quietly.

“Modeling is a cover and you’re secretly a government assassin who just failed his last mission?”

“No.” He doesn’t laugh. Not even a little. “But I still don’t want to tell you.”

“Why?”

He doesn’t answer.

Silence can say so many things. I want to hug him and kiss him enough to reassure both of us, but this silence—it’s heavy.

Too heavy.

“Try me,” I whisper. “Tell me a secret.”

He shakes his head and drops one arm, then shoves half a cookie in his mouth.

The surf rolls over our feet again.

“Can we pretend I don’t have secrets?” he asks quietly, smelling like chocolate chip cookies and paradise and everything right in my world. “For one more day? I don’t want to ruin Emma’s wedding by making you mad.”

Whispering “sure” is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

I want to know his secrets. I want to know why he thinks they’re so bad. I want to prove to him that I don’t care, whatever it is.

Because this Theo?

The Theo who rescues cats and introduces me to parasailing and arranges meals on the fly so that his sister gets the wedding of her dreams even when he doesn’t like the man she’s marrying but respects her right to decide what she wants for herself?

I cannot believe this Theo has a secret so terrible that it would make me look at him any differently.

And it hurts that I haven’t earned his trust enough for him to know that.

“Your dad’s really okay?” he asks.

“Vitals are good. Benadryl’s working. My mom’s there to fuss, and the hospital staff is monitoring him too. He should be fine.”

The surf rolls up to our ankles.

“You’re my favorite part of paradise,” he whispers. “Whatever happens, I just want you to know—you’ve been my favorite.”

“Theo—”

He cuts me off with a searing kiss that takes me back over the ocean, to him telling me he wants love to be his purpose in life, that he wants loving someone to be all-consuming, all-encompassing, everything, the only thing that truly matters.

Like he chooses me.

He wants me.

And he desperately needs to know that I want him back. That I choose him back.

No matter his secrets. No matter our past. No matter what our relatives do or think or say.

I’ve never in my life felt more like I belong somewhere than I feel right now, with this man who had no reason to give me a chance at his heart kissing me like I’m his reason for living.

And I’ve never felt so inadequate as I do at wondering if I have it in me to love him as much as he deserves.

Everything in my life has always been so safe. Safe town. Safe family. Safe college. Safe job. Safe boyfriends. Safe sex.

Theo isn’t safe.

He’s life. Real life. Big life.

Can I be enough for him?

Can I?

“Awww, Laney and Theo, sitting in a tree…”

I flinch, and then I kick myself for flinching.

The Sullivan triplets. Where you hear one, you hear them all.

“I’m working on that reaction,” I whisper to Theo as he releases me with a sigh.

“I know.”

“I have a lot of work to do on me too. You don’t embarrass me. I embarrass me.”

He doesn’t answer. Just watches me in the moonlight while the tide creeps farther up our legs.

“How’s your dad, Laney?” Lucky asks.

“Better. Thank you. We’re all so, so grateful that you were there and knew what to do.”

“That was my brother.”

Theo grunts softly. “Don’t be a dick.”

“Okay, yeah, that was me.” Lucky’s teeth flash in a grin in the moonlight. He apparently is alone. At least for the moment. “Welp. Gonna let you get back to what you were doing. Looked like fun. Need a third, you let me know.”

I don’t know what my face does, but it’s enough to leave him laughing as he walks away.

I groan to myself. “It is so hard to get over decades of being a stick in the mud.”

“Don’t have to get over it,” Theo says. “Just have to find where you’re comfortable and where you’re choosing for you.”

I watch him in the moonlight too. He’s resting his forearms on his knees, looking down like he’s waiting for the next waves to roll in and he wants to know how close they’ll get to his butt.

“You’re very wise about the human experience.”

“I’m very experienced in the human experience.”

I nudge him softly with my shoulder. “Wanna come show me some of that experience after we play with some kittens? I’ll help with chores.”

“Not up for more fun in public?”

“Rather not risk the tide rolling in a jellyfish while you’re naked.”

He groans too.

And then he laughs. “Probably fucking right.”

“Bring the cookies.”

“Like I’d forget those.”

He snags the cookies, then my hand.

And he grips it hard all the way back up to our room.

And then nothing else matters.

Nothing but that niggling fear in the back of my mind that this is all just a dream.