Tessa
My mother was getting married in the morning and I already wanted the groom’s son.
That was the whole problem.
The hotel smelled like roses and carpet cleaner. Rehearsal dinner on the mezzanine. White dresses that were not the dress. A photographer who kept saying family, family, closer. I stood next to Roman in every shot because someone had decided the bride’s daughter and the groom’s son should bookend the smiling lie.
He was twenty-eight. I was twenty-three. Tomorrow he would be my stepbrother. Tonight he was just the man in the dark suit who had looked at my mouth when I said cheers and had not looked away fast enough.
“Little sister,” he said under his breath when the flash went off, like a joke for the adults.
It did not land like a joke.
Heat went down my body so fast
