Sunny.
I wonder if he knows what that nickname gives me. How my stomach turns.
If he knows, he doesn’t show any signs of it. Because, right now, I barely recognize the man in front of me. Jasper has been in my life for almost two decades and I have never seen him so… deadly.
Not even on the ice.
He leads me around the room, but stops when he hears voices. Sterling. My parents.
My God. How many people have heard the words that have been exchanged here today?
With a deep rumble in his chest, he pulls his phone out from inside his suit jacket. His slender fingers fly across the screen.
-What are you doing? I ask behind his back because I haven’t yet gathered the courage to get that close to the door.
I want to leave, but I don’t want to look everyone in the eye. They will try to convince me to stay, and I just want to go back to the place where I always felt safest as a child. I long for that place and the simplicity of life that came with it. It’s a deep tug in my chest that I can’t ignore.
Sending messages to my brothers.
-So that? I take a step forward and peek over the crest of his bicep, glancing at the screen.
Reading raptly the messages that appear between him and my cousins.
“Help,” is his abrupt response. A moment later he turns to me, a hint of steel peeking beneath his handsome features. You should take off your shoes.
My face turns downward as I lift my skirt.
-The shoes?
-Yeah. Difficult to run.
My toes wiggle, pink polish glistening under cheap fluorescent lights. I want to tell Jasper that he could run with them. I love a good pair of heels and would suffer in them all day. But my almost future mother-in-law chose these, and they are not me at all .
The idea of getting out of them is too tempting.
With a sharp nod, I grab my skirt and pull it a few inches to crouch down. But before I can, Jasper crouches before me. His deft fingers are quick to open the delicate silver buckles as I sit open-mouthed, watching as this man kneels to take off my shoes, wrapping his calloused palms around my ankle as he removes my shoes.
Without looking up, she hands me the shiny heel while tapping her opposite foot. And it’s not the first time I’ve stared at Jasper Gervais with my heart pounding as he does what he does as if it were the most mundane thing in the world.
“That’s it,” he says, looking at me with the ankle strap dangling from his outstretched finger.
It’s hard not to admire him on his knees, but it’s his thumb that makes me gasp. The one that presses the arch of my foot, as if it can’t help but massage me.
“Sore?” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, one knee on the floor and the other raised, making his pants stretch over his muscular thighs in the most delicious way.
What kind of man stops in the middle of my wedding charade to rub my sore feet?
A very good one.
I shouldn’t be salivating over him on what was supposed to be my wedding day. But salivating over Jasper Gervais is part of my personality right now.
“No, I’m fine,” I say quickly, putting my foot back on the ground. I feel safer with bare feet.
I step forward, go around Jasper as he pushes himself to his feet, and put my ear to the door. It’s hard to make out anything other than the low tones and deep baritone of what I recognize as my father’s voice.
“Ready, Sloane?”
-So that? -I whisper, leaning against the door as if that could help me catch some words-: To escape.
My head turns in his direction.
“Are you going to help me literally become a runaway bride?”
Jasper smiles and his eyes soften, wrinkles appearing next to them. He has always been my gentle giant. Tall, calm and good to the marrow of the bones.
-That’s what Friends Are For.
Friends.
That word has haunted me for years. As a child, I felt special when he called me his friend, but as an adult? Of woman? Watching other women strut on his arm at different events while he calls me his friend?
It kills me .
And I’m always too much of a coward to do anything about it. The moment is always wrong. And I’ve been tucking my tail between my legs since he turned me down for prom, and then again in a more joking way.
If we lived together, I wouldn’t have to bother you like this.
It was an offhand comment that slipped off my tongue all too easily as he helped me mount a television to the wall of my new apartment. He waved it off effortlessly with a deep chuckle as he lifted the flat screen and placed it on the stand, as if he were swatting a mosquito that was buzzing on his head.
As if that were going to happen.
He told me those words a year ago, and I understood. I decided that having Jasper as a friend is better than alienating him completely. And that’s what would make me let go of my feelings. So I let it go. I may be stupidly obsessed with him, but I have some sense of self-preservation. I like to think I have some dignity. But lately I’m questioning even that.
Realizing that I’ve been staring into space for too long, I ask him: How are we going to do it?
He raises a thumb in the opposite direction to the church entrance.
The emergency exit is that way. Cade and Willa planned a distraction. And then we’re going to…” He shrugs, looking like a child. Give him.
-Give him?
His laugh is a deep and funny murmur. He draws me towards him and makes me smile; It calms me in a way I can’t explain.
He nods and is so confident. Decisive. There’s something reassuring about knowing that you’ll always have my back, that you can take an out-of-control situation and make it feel under control somehow.
-Yeah. Like… hit it hard. Go hard.
I shake my head.
-Is it a hockey saying?
“Now that I think about it, probably. Yeah.
-OK. “Let’s give it a try ,” I accept with a light laugh.
But a serious expression appears on his face.
“Are you sure about this, Sunny?”
Sunny. This time I can’t help but shudder. I think he realizes it, because his chiseled face reflects confusion. And all I can do is nod. With determination.
His phone rings, distracting us both. And then he takes my hand, intertwines his fingers with mine, and carefully turns the lock on the door.
Before I went out into the hallway, I heard a cry of pain.
“Ah!” My baby!
When seconds later we look out into the hallway, everyone turns their backs on us. Willa is on all fours in the hallway, dramatically clutching her stomach while Cade stands, arms crossed, gruffly asking if she’s okay while trying not to roll his eyes.
I am momentarily confused. Because if I know Cade, he’s as protective as anyone, and seeing his son’s mother on the floor suffering would drive him crazy.