Page 1

Chapter 1

Runaway Bride

Bex

A ll eyes are on me.

I guess if I was hoping to fly under the radar, I should have probably stopped somewhere to change out of my wedding dress.

When the door of the bar closes behind me, every single person inside turns to look at me.

There’s music in the bar, but all I can hear is the deafening noise of my heartbeat in my ears.

I don’t even blame everyone for looking at me that way. I look like a giant meringue in the over the top, puffy white dress. Thank fuck I had the sense to rip the veil off of my tiara when I snuck out of the church and boarded a cab from Bridgeport to Star Cove.

The good thing with bar goers is that their attention span tends to get shorter with every drink they have.

I let myself exhale, willing to calm my frayed nerves, when that attention returns to their glasses and bottles, their friends, and their conversations.

My eyes sweep the long room. There’s no sign of him. I ignore the way my mouth waters at the scent of fried food that hit me the second I came through the door, and walk to the long wooden bar on the opposite end of the room.

A brunette woman in a pink and blue checkered flannel shirt that's open over a white tank top is filling a glass with draft beer behind the bar. “Can I help you?” she smiles.

There are a few people waiting to be served, but I guess curiosity has the best of her. None of the people waiting for a drink complain anyway, so I relax just a fraction.

“Uh, I’m looking for Luke Harper.” I say, looking around the bar again.

The bartender smiles. “I saw him earlier. He’s outside with his teammates. If you go out from there, they should be on the pier.”

“Thank you.” I’m so grateful I could hug her.

The sprawling establishment’s back door leads directly out to the busiest section of Star Cove’s pier.

A cordoned area with high top tables clearly belongs to the bar, but the punters are partying all over the place.

I spot several stands lined all the way to the end where a tall Ferris Wheel dominates the view at the end of the pier.

Jeez, it’s crowded tonight. Finding Luke isn’t going to be easy.

But there’s a bright side to the fact that I stick out like a sore thumb in the monstrosity I’m wearing.

My brother spots me immediately. “Hey Bex,” he waves from a table at the end of the cordoned area. “Over here.”

I run toward him—well, I move as fast as humanly possible in this huge dress—I haven’t seen Luke for over three years. I’m surprised he actually even answered my text.

“Hey.” I say softly when I reach his table.

My first instinct would be to throw myself into his arms, but I don’t do it.

Luke’s green eyes take me in for a long second. If I had been in his shoes, I would have ignored my text.

But besides being the extrovert between us, Luke is also the smart twin.

“Come here.” He opens his arms, and this time I don’t resist the urge to walk into his embrace.

He holds me against his wide, muscular chest. I can hear his heart beating as fast as mine as he squeezes me tight.

“I thought I would never see you again, Bexie-Boo.”

I bite back the tears at the sadness in his voice and at how much I missed hearing him use my childhood nickname. He’s the only one who’s ever called me that. I feel like I’m home for the first time in years.

If I hadn’t I snapped out of our father’s brainwashing, we would have never seen each other again.

Luke pulls me back after a long moment, keeping his hands on my shoulders to take a better look at me. “You look beautiful, as always.”

I press the back of my hand against my nose to try to keep the tears that have welled in my eyes from falling. “I look like a train wreck. And I should have stopped somewhere to get out of this dress, but I just wanted to get away from Bridgeport. Now everyone is looking at me, and I can’t take it.”

If Luke is thinking that I deserve every bad thing that has happened to me, I don’t even blame him. The things I’ve done in the past few years are hard to comprehend, even to myself, when I think about them.

I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life, and I literally escaped with the clothes on my back.

The thing when you break out of a terrible situation, though, are all the jagged little pieces that come from that break.

Right now I feel surrounded by those sharp shards and I don’t know if I can avoid cutting myself as I attempt to navigate through the ruins of my life.

“Yeah,” Luke muses, rubbing his chin as he looks me up and down. “Can’t say that dress is what I would have gone with, sis. Besides, it can’t be easy to walk around in it.”

“It isn’t.” I sigh, defeated.

Luke considers me for another second, then nods, grabbing my hand. “Not to worry. Luckily, your twin brother is a fashion major and I think we can do something about it. Follow me.”

He grabs my hand, dragging me back to where I just came from. “Talia, babe,” he gets the attention of the pretty bartender. “Mind if Bex and I use your staff room for a sec?”

The woman looks at me with even more curiosity this time around. “Sure thing, sweetie. You know where it is.” She opens a section of the long bar to let us behind it.

Luke leads me past the area, ushering me through a door on the far end of the wall.

We’re in a narrow, dark hallway with a few doors on either side.

My brother opens a door with a sign that says Staff Room. “In here.”

He flicks the light on, as if he knew his way around here. He then goes to the old kitchen cabinets on one side of the room, opening a drawer. “Perfect. This won’t be fashion show ready, but you’ll be able to walk around easier.”

Luke comes to my side with a pair of scissors in his hand.

I barely have a chance to ask him what he’s doing when cold air hits my legs as the thick satin and lace of my wedding dress falls on the carpeted floor around me.

He cut off the wide, white gown, so that it hits mid thigh. He managed to cut out all the layers of tulle underneath too, so that the fabric falls naturally without that puffy effect it had a second ago. It almost looks like the dress was born this way, with its halter top and the flowing silk and lace short skirt. The only things that are still reminiscent of a wedding dress are its color, and the intricate crystals and pearls that adorn the bodice.

“They should have a sewing kit if you want me to hem it,” he says, admiring his handiwork.

I shake my head. “No, thank you.”

In reality, I can’t wait to get out of this dress, but that will have to wait until…

The thought hits me hard enough to take my breath away. I have nowhere to go. When I walked out of the bridal suite in the church where my wedding was about to take place, I burned every bridge with my old life. Everything I was, everything I owned, was tied to him and to Pure Shine .

Walking away meant leaving everything behind and the enormity of it comes down on me like a ton of bricks.

“Luke, I?—”

My twin takes me into his arms a second time tonight, and I let his warmth seep into me. I don’t deserve any of it. I don’t deserve him.

“Shh,” he soothes me, kissing the top of my head.

Luke and I might be twins, but he’s over six feet tall and I’m a pathetic five foot three.

We stay like that for a long moment, and it feels good. I feel safe. I’m home.

However, I know I have a lot of explaining to do and a lot of amends to make. I don’t even know if the void I created where my relationship with Luke was can ever be filled. I wouldn’t blame him if he couldn’t forgive me.

“I don’t know where to go.” I whisper. “I understand if you don’t?—”

“You’re going to stay with me.” He cuts me off.

I realize that I don’t know anything about his living situation. “Really? Do you live alone?”

He shakes his head. “I have three roommates. I live with three of my teammates. We used to live in the Gamma house last year, but some of our alumni built new dorm houses for the athletic department. The frat house was fun, but too crowded. As seniors, we would have been entitled to our own rooms this year, but sharing with three people is easier than having to deal with twenty to thirty other guys.”

It makes sense. “Luke, if you live in the dorms, I don’t want you to get in trouble for letting me stay.”

He tucks one lock of hair behind my ear. “They’re condo style houses. We share a living room and kitchen, but each of us has their own rooms with a private bathroom. We even have a small deck outside. As long as you don’t throw a rager and keep us up all night, the guys won’t mind.”

I wish I shared his confidence. It’s not like I’m not used to living in shared housing, but we’re talking about three strangers here. Four, if I count Luke. We were about to turn eighteen the last time we saw each other. I have no idea of who he is now, or the man he’s become in these three years, during the entirety of his college career.

“I’m not going to stay long.” I say. “Just until I figure out what’s next.”

He looks at me for a long moment. His green eyes, identical to mine, bore into me as if he were trying to read deep into my soul. “You can stay as long as you need, sis. Let me worry about my roommates. There are just a couple of things I need to know.”

I swallow the lump of anxiety lodged in my throat. I know that I’ll have to explain a lot of stuff. Own up to a lot of things I’ve done. “Ask away.”

Luke’s hand cups my shoulder. He squeezes gently, which is surprising since he has such big, strong hands. “Whatever this was,” he points at my wedding dress. “Is it over? Or are you going to go back to whoever you were about to marry?”

I close my eyes, suppressing a shudder at the thought of my fiancé—now my ex, I guess—Kurt. “It’s over.” I thank all the gods that I chose a halter dress, and not the one with the sweetheart neckline that would have shown the bruises around my throat.

Luke nods. “Right. The other thing is… I’ll just come out and say it. I have a boyfriend. We’ve been together for almost a year now. I would love for you to meet Shane, unless you have a problem with it.”

By it, he means his sexual orientation.

I hang my head in shame. “No, Luke. I have no problem with whom you love. Or with who you are. I know I should have stood up for you when Byron kicked you out. I have no excuse for staying and for my behavior for the past three years. I don’t even know why you’re helping me. If you wanted nothing to do with me, I’d understand.”

“Never, Bexie-Boo.” He pulls me back into his arms, but it’s fleeting. “Look, we have a lot to talk about. A lot to figure out. Tomorrow. Just know that I understand. We were only seventeen. If you had tried to leave and come with me, he would have come after you.”

Luke is right, but that doesn’t justify my behavior and all the decisions I made after Byron—Dad—shunned him.

“I know, but?—”

“Tomorrow.” Luke’s tone brooks no argument. “It just so happens that you arrived during Star Cove’s County Fair. This is the last weekend of the year. The entire pier is open. There are games, award-winning fried pickles and shots. Lots of shots. We turned twenty-one three days ago, and I say let’s party tonight. I don’t even have practice tomorrow morning, so fuck the hangover. Come on, let’s forget the past three years ever happened, and we’ll talk about the rest tomorrow.”

And just like that, I let my twin brother lead me back out onto the pier.

We return to his table, where two tall guys are now sitting with huge mugs of beer in front of them.

“Hey babes,” Luke kisses the lips of the one with pitch black hair and dark brown eyes. “This is my twin sister, Rebecca. Everyone calls her Bex. Bex, this is my boyfriend, Shane.”

There’s a moment of uncertainty.

Shane and Luke look at each other in some kind of silent communication. Whatever they are discussing with their eyes is solved in mere seconds and Shane’s lips open in a bright smile. “Bex, it’s so nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He offers me his hand to shake, but when I take it, he pulls me into a hug.

I doubt that the things he heard about me were good, but I’m grateful for the welcoming reception.

“Shane plays right wing on our second line. And this over here,” Luke says. “Is my roommate, Connor. He plays defense.”

Emerald green eyes meet mine, and heat floods to my face the second Connor nods in my direction.

His smile is warm and inviting and makes his already handsome face look even more attractive. “Hey Bex.”

I’m disappointed when he doesn’t initiate any physical contact, not a hug, a handshake or even a fist bump.

I’m a very sensual creature, and all of a sudden, it’s like my body is starving for the human contact I’ve been denied in the past three years. Especially when the human in question is smoking hot.

“Hey Connor.” I nod back at him.

“Where are the others?” Luke asks.

Connor answers with a shrug. “Fuck knows. Jamie disappeared with two girls. I think Keene might have gone home. I’m surprised he came out with us to begin with.”