Page 97 of Call You Mine
CHAPTER 31
ANDERSON
I’ve never seensomeone look as beautiful as Ava does right now.
And I realize, it’s because she looks like my wife.
CHAPTER 32
AVA
I thought marryingAnderson was the most reckless thing I could ever do.
Turns out, falling in love with him is.
CHAPTER 33
ANDERSON
It’sour first day home as husband and wife.
I thought I’d feel different, the marriage making things official, but I don’t.
But things still don’t feel the same, not like they did before we left for Vegas.
The night before our wedding, alone in our hotel room after the concert, changed everything.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the way Ava opened up to me, in more ways than one.
And the way she looked when she walked down that short aisle in the Little White Chapel. The way her auburn hair hung in loose waves over her shoulder, decorated with a veil, her long legs on full display in her little white dress, her eyes on me the entire time.
I never pictured what my wedding would look like, and even if I did, I don’t know if I would’ve pictured a Vegas wedding with more strangers than friends—with generic vows and an officiant I hadn’t met before that day—but it was somehow perfect.
“Sonny.” Jack claps me on the shoulder. “Your uncle is looking for you,” he says over the noise of the hose as hewalks past. I’m out in the garage, cleaning the fire truck with the rest of the crew who are on safety and decontamination duties for today.
“What’s he want?” I ask, handing the hose off for someone else to finish up.
Jack shrugs, walking off, and I know I won’t get more of an answer out of him.
Heading toward the chief’s office, I start racking my brain for what he could need. My immediate response is worry, my feet picking up the pace as I make my way up through the garage.
I haven’t talked to my uncle since that day in his office before we went to Vegas. He sent me congratulations when I texted him a picture of me and Ava in front of the Little White Chapel that Emerson took—the same picture I sent in a group chat with my brothers and my mom. They sent their congratulations as well, and I wasn’t even disappointed when that’s all I got.
Not even a phone call.
Part of me feels guilty. Like it’s justified, since I went off and got married without them.
Maybe that’s why they didn’t even so much as tell me congrats over the phone.
The other part reminds me that it’s not my responsibility to make them care, no matter how much it feels like it is.
“Chief,” I say, knocking twice on the open door to my uncle’s office. “Jack said you were looking for me?”
Uncle Artie stands up from his desk, setting his glasses down on the paperwork stacked in front of his desktop computer. A warm smile spreads on his face, the skin near his eyes crinkling as he closes the distance between us. “Congrats, kid,” he says, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me in for a hug. “I wanted to give you two a little something,” he adds when we pull apart.
Reaching into his back pocket, he pulls out an envelope, addressed to “Anderson and Ava Montgomery”.
And damn does that do something to my chest, my uncle wanting to give me a wedding present.
