Page 31 of Knot Your Bridezilla (High Fructose Corn Syrup Verse #2)

AVRIL

The last six months didn’t do Dylan any favors.

His hair was longer and greasy. He had dark rings under his eyes as if he hadn’t been sleeping.

Hey—that was all on him. I’d been sleeping like a baby. It wasn’t like I was the one who had gone and blown my life up by sticking my genitals where they didn’t belong.

“Avril, Baby. I made the biggest mistake of my life. I can’t live without you. These last few months have been torture without you. Please Baby. In front of God and all of our families, I promise; I will do whatever it takes to win you back.”

I just stared at him. He was not serious…

My ex was going to show up now?

Dylan Kingston-Storm somehow thought it was appropriate to crash my wedding? After all the planning… to make everything perfect, he thought this was okay?

How?

In his wildest fantasies, how would crashing my wedding somehow make me want to marry him? Make it make sense.

I had color-matched my wedding bouquet to the floral arrangements on the tables, even down to the intricate details on the napkins. Now, nobody was going to notice, because all they were going to remember was this stupid drama shit.

“Avril, you can’t marry a stranger,” my ex pointed an accusatory finger at David, as if it wasn’t his own actions that made him a stranger over the past half a year.

Okay, so the past six months might have been nuts, yes. But this —having a begging, crying ex, crash my dream wedding—this was the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me.

No. Absolutely not. I paid way too much money for this wedding to have everything fall apart over my dramatic ex and his sad little tears.

Daddy-Gee was subtly giving me the eye. Asking me silently if I wanted this little issue taken care of.

I waved him over. Daddy-Gee leaned in closer, taking in every word as I whispered the truth. “I broke up with my ex-fiancé because I walked in on him having sex with some other woman.”

Daddy-Gee straightened immediately, going tense with barely hidden rage. “Don’t worry about a single thing. We’ll take care of everything, sweetheart.”

I nodded gratefully.

As one, all six of my dads left their section, closing in on my ex—creating a wall of enraged alpha men. They moved all together, like a pack of wolves, closing in on him slowly.

“Look, Avril’s fathers, this is between your daughter and me…

” Dylan was holding his palm out like he was some kind of traffic director…

as if his little hand gesture was going to do anything to stop my dads—Dylan would have better luck holding his palm up to stop a tsunami than trying to get between alpha dads and the guy who had hurt their precious daughter.

Dylan didn’t know what he was getting himself into.

They were prowling toward him. Like predators descending on their target, and for some reason Dylan couldn’t see that it was him.

I guess it was a little gratifying seeing a little apprehension and understanding light up on his little walrus face. Then Dylan was holding up two hands, like he were warding off the devil, and backing up slowly. “No, wait. You don’t understand. I love your daughter. I never meant to hurt her.”

Oof. Yeah, saying the “h” word in front of my dads was not making this any better for him.

Dylan grew up in a pack as well. How did he not see that he was digging himself his own grave?

Eventually, my dads had backed Dylan out of the ceremonial hall—getting him out of sight of all the other guests before the muffled yelling and screaming began.

In a quiet voice next to me, my groom cleared his throat.

“So…” David whispered to me, “that’s my competition?”

Oh, please.

David better not make me roll my eyes. I bet that it would get photographed and immortalized for all time that I was reacting with so little dignity at my own wedding.

“Yeah, no.” I shook my head faintly as I looked over to him to try to figure out if this was David’s idea of a little joke. “I mean, have you looked at you? There’s no competition.”

Okay, the little hiccup was over… so my perfect day was almost perfect, until now. I would have thought that something like this would have been more upsetting for me.

Maybe the only thing that you need for a perfect wedding was someone who’s just perfect for you?

Pffft, that’s crazy. Imagine calling a wedding perfect if there wasn’t even any food. Not even any gourmet hors d’oeuvres.