Page 38 of Anything For You
She couldn’t do any of that. Not here, not in the fifth row surrounded by people applauding. So she squeezed Elizabeth’s hand, firm and deliberate, and held on.
Chairs scraped against grass as the guests stood in a wave that started at the front and rolled backward. Kelsey rose with them.
Elizabeth was clapping. Both hands, which meant she’d released Kelsey’s fingers to do it, and the loss of contact felt abrupt.
But Elizabeth was doing it. She was standing in the fifth row of her ex-wife’s wedding, clapping and smiling and looking exactly like the kind of woman who wished the happy couple well and meant it. Nobody else would question a single thing about Elizabeth Moretti’s face right now. Nobody else was close enough, or paying enough attention, or loved her enough to see what Kelsey could see, which was that the smile stopped at the surface and the tightness went all the way down.
She’s so much stronger than she thinks she is.
The thought arrived fully formed and settled into Kelsey’s chest with a weight that made her breathing change.
Grace and Charlotte walked back down the aisle together, both of them radiant in the way that people who had just promised each other forever were radiant. Kelsey watched them pass and then she stopped watching them because they didn’t matter. Not to her. Not right now.
She leaned in. Close enough that her mouth nearly brushed Elizabeth’s ear, close enough to catch the scent of her perfume.
“You okay?”
Elizabeth’s chin dipped. A single nod, precise and small. “I’m fine.”
Her voice was steady. Of course it was.
Kelsey reached down and took Elizabeth’s hand again, lacing their fingers together as the crowd began to shuffle toward the wide glass doors of the reception hall.
Champagne appeared on trays. The evening light came through the reception hall windows, catching the crystal, the flowers, and the gold of Kelsey’s dress.
They still had hours ahead. Dinner, toasts, the first dance.
She tightened her grip on Elizabeth’s hand.
“Let’s get you a drink before dinner.”
19
The plates had been cleared twenty minutes ago, the last of the dessert forks collected by staff who moved between tables with the quiet efficiency of people trained to be invisible. Elizabeth sat back in her chair and let the fact settle: dinner had gone well.
Better than well. Kelsey had spent the last two hours seated between Sonia and the Pattersons, a couple from Charlotte’s side who apparently now considered Kelsey a personal friend. Meredith Patterson kept touching Kelsey’s arm when she laughed, and her husband, David, had gone on for fifteen minutes about cold brew ratios with the genuine enthusiasm of a man who had found his people.
Kelsey was warm with them. Funny. She fielded every question without fumbling, turned “so how did you two meet” into a story that was charming and specific and technically true. She made the table like her, which wasn’t surprising anymore. Kelsey was good at this.
She needed to stop being surprised. Surprise implied she’d expected less, and Kelsey deserved better than that.
The DJ’s voice cut through the ambient noise, and the room shifted its attention to the floor. Grace and Charlotte stoodtogether on the dance floor, Charlotte’s hand already on Grace’s waist, Grace’s fingers resting lightly on Charlotte’s shoulder. The opening bars of something soft filled the room. Not a song Elizabeth recognized, which felt right. This was not her world anymore. These were not her songs.
They began to move. Grace was always a good dancer, and Charlotte matched her. They looked right together. That was the word that came to Elizabeth, watching them turn slowly under the warm light. Right.
Elizabeth reached for her white wine.
Kelsey went still beside her.
It was a subtle thing. A shift in the quality of her stillness, the difference between sitting comfortably and sitting carefully.
Elizabeth glanced at her. Kelsey’s hands, which had been loose in her lap a moment ago, went quiet against her thigh. And then her knee pressed against Elizabeth’s under the table. Firm. Not accidental. The deliberate pressure of someone planting a foot to hold steady.
Kelsey wasn’t looking back. She was watching the dance floor with an expression Elizabeth had seen in courthouse hallways. The careful, studied blankness of someone trying very hard not to look at someone else’s pain. Her jaw was set. Her eyes were bright and fixed on Grace and Charlotte, but she wasn’t seeing them. She was monitoring Elizabeth in her peripheral vision, waiting for the crack, the flinch, the moment when the composure finally gave way.
She thought Elizabeth was breaking apart.
Kelsey must have been thinking it all day. The silent car ride up. The ceremony, where her thumb had traced slow circles on Elizabeth’s knuckle as if she could hold her together through the skin. Every careful sideways glance during the vows, every whispered “you okay,” every small deliberate touch calibrated to say I’m here.
