From This Day Forward (The Wedding Belles 0.5)(6)

The corner of Jason’s mouth tilted up in amusement. “I forgot how you did that.”

“Did what?”

“Romanticize what we do.”

Leah tilted her head. “Well, it is romantic. We get to watch people promise to stay together forever.”

“Well sure, that’s what they promise.”

“And I’d forgotten how you did that,” Leah said. “Sprinkling all your jaded skepticism on something beautiful.”

“I deal in facts, Red. And the facts state—”

“That fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, I know,” she said with a little sigh. “But I choose to believe that the ones I photograph last forever. Your share of the pie can be the ones that end in divorce.”

He laughed. “And what about this one? What happens when we both work on a wedding? When all my bad vibes mingle with your Disney version?”

Leah pursed her lips. “Happiness wins.”

“It didn’t for us,” he said quietly.

Leah blinked a little in surprise at the seriousness in his voice.

For some reason she’d have thought that their brief time together would have barely registered for him.

Jason Rhodes’s life had been a rough one—that much she knew and couldn’t deny no matter how bad he’d screwed her over. Despite the fact that they’d only been together for a couple months, she’d talked with him more than with any other boyfriend she’d ever had.

Late into the night they’d stay cuddled in bed while he quietly told her about Afghanistan. About his friends’ deaths and the IED that had shredded his knee. He’d told her about growing up in the foster system, never at one home for more than a year before being shipped off to the next one.

Her heart had ached for him even as she admired how the man had refused to let himself become a victim. Nobody gets to control how life happens to us, Red. Only how we react to it.

And Leah had done some sharing of her own. About how she secretly feared her parents never loved their children as much as they loved each other. About how she’d spent most of her twenties thinking something was wrong with her because she’d wanted career success more than she’d wanted a boyfriend.

At least until she’d met him.

Leah glanced over at Jason, taking in the somber set of his jaw, the bleak and vaguely defeated look in his eyes.

For the first time, she wondered if the aftermath of their relationship hadn’t played out quite the way she’d envisioned—with him smugly moving on to the next woman, while she’d subsisted on ice cream bars and watching The Way We Were on repeat for two months straight before she’d managed to throw herself back into the dating ring. Unsuccessfully so far, she might add.

“Surely you’ve been to at least one wedding where you looked at the bride and groom and thought, ‘Them. They’re going to make it’?” Leah asked, steering conversation toward safer topics.

“Sure,” he said, cutting off another piece of his steak. “My sister’s.”

Leah’s hand froze in the process of dragging a piece of bread through the deliciously buttery sauce on her plate. Sister? “I thought you were . . . I thought . . .”

“Foster kid?” he asked without emotion. “I was. Didn’t even know I had a sister until she found me a few years back. Same mom, different dads.”

“I didn’t realize,” Leah said quietly.

He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t . . . I don’t mention her much. It’s weird to spend your entire life thinking you’re an only child, having nobody, and then all of a sudden this sibling shows up on your doorstep, and it’s . . . You just never know how it’s going to work out, you know?”

Jason’s voice was nonchalant, but Leah’s heart ached for him. She hurt at the realization that this man, by default, was skeptical of trusting anyone. He simply expected everyone to walk away.

Just like she had.

Leah pushed that last thought away. Their situation was different. She hadn’t left him so much as saved them both a whole lot of awkward when he realized that what was a fun summer fling for him had become a hell of a lot more for her.

“Your sister’s wedding . . . Did you work it?”

He shook his head and took a sip of wine. “I offered. I’d have done it for free, obviously. But she . . .” Jason glanced down at his plate. “She wanted me to walk her down the aisle.”

His voice was puzzled, as though he still couldn’t quite believe it, and again Leah felt that ache in her chest.

“I’m glad she found you,” Leah said before she could think better of it.

His gaze locked on hers, looking very much like he wanted to say something, but instead he gave a slight shake of his head. “So what’s the plan tomorrow?”

Leah blinked, surprised by the sudden change in conversation to work, but all too happy to go to a safer place where she wasn’t tempted to touch him. Care for him.

She hadn’t even seen him in a year, for God’s sake.

Leah forced her mind back to the wedding. Typically the photographer didn’t come into play until the day of the wedding, but since this was a high-profile destination wedding, all of the vendors had arrived on Thursday for a Saturday ceremony.

Friday—tomorrow—would be all about prep and celebrating during the day, before the evening rehearsal and dinner that followed.