Fly With Me (Wild Aces #1)(78)

I wasn’t nervous. At all. No second thoughts—I’d been to those weddings too, one where a friend had almost been a runner—my body was free from tension. I was excited. Ready to start the next chapter of my life, ready to claim my future with Noah. Maybe it was all we had been through in the past few weeks, but I liked that we’d stripped all the trappings and excess away, and while I wasn’t having the glossy magazine wedding, we’d gotten down to the essentials.

Him. Me. Forever.

“Are you ready?”

I turned toward Sharon, the wedding planner, hovering near the open doorway.

“Yes.”

I slid my engagement ring—I couldn’t stop staring at it—to my right ring finger in preparation for Noah slipping on the band that would make me his wife.

My bouquet in one hand, the hem of my skirt in the other, I did a last-minute beauty check in the mirror. I’d splurged and had someone from the hotel salon come to the room and do my hair and makeup and she’d done an amazing job. With how casual the wedding was, a big veil had seemed kind of silly, so I ended up with a short wisp of netting that covered the side of my face and was attached to the most gorgeous headpiece of crystals and feathers.

It was amazing.

I followed Sharon out of the room, the first flutter taking root in my stomach.

This was it. This was the beginning of the rest of my life.

I walked forward, each step feeling like it took me closer and closer to where I belonged, and the music hit me first. And when I realized the song he’d picked, a smile spread across my face, a laugh escaping, then another. And then the tears came.

Elvis Presley. “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

It was the perfect song for Vegas, the perfect song for the love that had swept us up and turned our lives inside out. And it was Noah, big, badass, fighter pilot Noah, giving me romance.

My feet hit the aisle runner as Elvis crooned around us, at the exact moment when the Bellagio fountains shot up over the Strip, the Vegas sun setting in a gorgeous sky of pinks, and reds, and oranges. But the thing that made me stop in my tracks for a moment, stealing the breath from my chest, wasn’t the scenery or the unabashedly romantic air enfolding us. It was the sight of Noah standing at the end of the altar, dressed in a formal blue uniform—elegant jacket that looked like a military version of a tux, crisp white shirt, navy bow tie, and blue trousers that highlighted how tall and masculine he was. The medals on his chest gleamed in the dying Vegas light.

I’d been wrong when I’d said I liked Navy uniforms best. This was something out of a f*cking fairytale. He looked like every prince I’d read about when I was a child.

Total Chupacabra.

Our gazes locked across the aisle and the look on his face was so close to the one he’d given me the first time he saw me, like I was everything he’d ever wanted, and it hit me so hard that I gave up on trying to fight the tears and crossed the distance to my future.



NOAH

I would never forget this moment as long as I lived.

I was a guy, so it wasn’t like I’d spent a lot of time thinking about my wedding. I’d wanted Jordan to be happy and have the kind of day she’d dreamed of, hence the wedding package at the Bellagio, and the mess dress, and the fancy dinner reservations I’d made for later on tonight. A part of me worried that I’d cheated her out of the big wedding, so I’d tried to make up for it as best as I could, knowing that this wouldn’t be the first time I couldn’t give her everything she deserved.

The blinding smile on her face told me she didn’t care.

A lump filled my throat.

I was asking a lot, and a part of me kept waiting for her to tell me that it was too much, that she couldn’t handle the move to Korea. And yet here she was. Standing in front of me, ready to give me her future, trusting me to do right by her.

I was thirty-three and I’d known plenty of women, but anything before paled to this. It wasn’t just the sex—the way her body welcomed mine, the way sliding into her tight heat felt like heaven. It was my ability to see a future with her, the knowledge that this was forever.

Who would have guessed that I’d find forever in a nightclub in Vegas?

My gaze swept over her, the initial punch staggering. I didn’t know how she did it, how she managed to stun me, and yet she did. There was just something about her. Something beyond the mouthwatering cleavage and curves I couldn’t wait to explore later; it was the spark of her, the promise in her eyes that said she’d take you on the ride of your life. The smile that told the world she’d wring every last drop out of life. It was the way she’d stood by us all when Joker died, thrown into a world she didn’t understand, a world so far out of her depth. She grabbed life by the balls and it was impossible not to be impressed by such a feat.

Impossible not to be impressed by her.

I was a guy, and more than that, I was kind of a simple guy. I didn’t have poetry for her or pretty words, and I wasn’t sure I was even all that great at romance.

But while this life might have molded me, chiseled my edges, hollowed me out of whatever frivolity I had left, it had taught me the value of a promise. Had taught me how to stick through the bad times, how to hold on to the good times with a tight grip, to live the hell out of life, and to spend my life serving something greater than me.

So maybe I couldn’t give her the window dressing of love, but I gave her my heart and soul.