The Wedding
Cross POV
“Smile,” his mother murmured as she checked his suit.
Cross had all he could do not to roll his damn eyes when Emma fussed at his tie. A grown man, with adult children of his own, even, and his mother still acted like he was her baby. “The tie is fine, Ma.”
“Says you.” Emma patted his cheek with a warm palm, and drew his gaze to hers. There, he found childhood memories, comfort, and a mother’s love. She had always been a safe place for him, of sorts. A soft spot to fall. “Now, smile.”
“I am.”
Emma lifted a brow. “Not really.”
Cross tilted his head a bit to look at the mirror behind his mother. She was right. There wasn’t exactly a scowl on his face, but his smile wasn’t quite in place, either. “Huh.”
“Big day.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“It’s okay to be a little sad about it, too.”
Cross frowned. “I don’t think I’m sad, Ma.”
“Sad about what?” Calisto barreled into the private suite with two garment bags thrown over his arm. Likely his mother’s dress, and his father’s tux. “What did I miss, now?”
“Cross is sad.”
Emma tossed Calisto a smile over her shoulder, and his father returned it before his gaze cut to Cross.
“Sad, huh?”
“I’m not sad,” Cross denied. “I’m just …”
Calisto tossed the garment bags to a nearby chair, and came to stand beside his wife. “Not ready.”
Cross looked at his father. Calisto stared back.
For a long while, the two men stayed like that. Suspended in a silence that only the fathers of daughters could truly understand at the end of the day. He wondered if this—this heaviness in his chest, and the waiting of this day—was what his father had felt like when he gave Camilla away on her wedding day.
“That’s a good way to put it,” Cross settled on saying.
Calisto nodded. “I know. You’re never going to be ready, son. No father ever is.”
Cross let out a hard sigh, and glanced down at his hands. He fumbled with the cufflinks on his suit jacket because it was just easier than talking for the moment. He really didn’t have much to say.
“Emma, go grab Catherine,” Calisto murmured.
“Sure, Cal.”
Cross glanced up in time to catch his mother give his father a kiss on his cheek before she quickly headed for the door.
“But be quick, Emmy, we have to get dressed,” Calisto called over his shoulder.
“You always have to rush.”
Calisto rolled his eyes. “That woman, I swear …”
Cross smiled at his father’s false complaints. Really, his dad loved his mom to the ends of the earth and back. It was a special, crazy kind of love that no one on the outside looking in could truly understand.
He was pretty sure even he didn’t understand it, all things considered. Then again, he was sure people looked at him and Catherine in the same way. Like their love was something strange and strong and unobtainable.
He thanked his mother and father for that. For seeing what good, healthy, true love really was as he grew up. They had taught him how to love someone, and how to do it properly.
A good man earns a good woman.
“Juan is a good man,” Cross said.
Calisto passed Cross a look. “I think so, yes.”
“And I know he loves Cece like nothing else.”
“Seems so.”
“So why can’t I—”
“You’ll smile,” Calisto told him. “You will smile when you need to, and when she looks at you to make sure that everything is okay today. You will smile when you have to because it’s what father’s do when our hearts are breaking, but theirs is so full. You will smile because you want to—when the time is right, and when you’re feeling up to it. You will smile, Cross, and it will be okay.”
It was like his father had taken the air right out of his lungs with that statement. Cross didn’t even know how to respond.
Instead, he settled on a quiet, dumb, “Oh.”
“I know—it doesn’t feel like it right now.”
“I’m not sad,” Cross murmured.
And he wasn’t.
He was a lot of things.
Sad was not one of them.
“It’s not about being sad. It’s about change, and moving into a new chapter. It’s about letting go of a hand that’s been holding onto yours for twenty-three years. And it’s fucking fine to not know how you want to feel about that, son.”
“Is this how you felt, too?”
Calisto cocked a brow. “What, when Cam married?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
“I wondered,” Cross admitted.
“And for you, too.”
Cross glanced up again at that statement. “What?”
“I felt like this when you married, too. Of course, I had a much longer time to prepare for you leaving than I did with Cam. You started walking ahead of me as soon as you learned how to run your mouth, and talk back. I figured by the time you were a grown man, it would be … well, not fine, but a happy moment for me to see you marry and start a life for yourself.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“It was,” Calisto returned, shrugging, “but it was also heavy. I didn’t realize that there was still a piece of me holding onto the part of you that was still a little boy. The little boy who followed me around nonstop, and thought I was his hero. And the little boy who fell asleep in the back of my car, and played with his trains and trucks under my desk. So yes, I was happy, and it was also heavy.”
Cross blinked. “But you didn’t seem … you smiled all day.”
“And you will smile today, too. All day.”
Catherine poked her head in the private room, and looked Cross’s way instantly. “Someone said I was needed in here?”
At the sight of his wife, Cross couldn’t help himself.He smiled.
She was excited—she had been planning and planning and planning some more for this day. Cece’s number one supporter, all the way, no matter what their daughter wanted to do with her life. Catherine was always there to tell their girl, yes, be amazing.
She was the best mother.
“What’s up?” Catherine asked.
“I can’t fix my tie right,” he lied.
Catherine clicked her tongue, but didn’t even question him. “All right, then.”
“Cece?”
Cross held his breath just as Cece turned around to find him in the doorway of her private suite. All of the women that had been fussing over her stopped for a moment, and became still statues. He was grateful for their silence. It gave him a moment to just … appreciate how beautiful and grown up his girl was.
Her ivory lace, ball gown style wedding dress made her look like every inch the princess she had grown up as, and like the queen she would soon become. Seems she had gone with sweeping her hair up, instead of wearing it down. Her makeup was striking with dark red lips, and a smoky flair around her eyes.
He expected nothing less.
“Look at you,” Cross said.
A wide grin spread across his face as he held his arms out, and came closer to his daughter. She beamed right back, already coming for him, too.
Cross caught Cece in his embrace, and brought her close enough to cup her cheeks, and make her look up at him. She smiled widely—all happy, and ready to start her life. Despite the heaviness in his gut, he smiled back.
He had to.
How could he not?
“Out, out,” he heard someone say.
Cross barely got the chance to look up, and the women were leaving the room. Giving them some privacy, it seemed.
Again, he was grateful.
Now, his attention was on just one.
Cece.
She pointed at him. “Don’t you make me cry, okay? Ma made me cry earlier, and they had to redo all of this makeup. My skin can’t take a third round, Daddy.”
Cross laughed. “You know, I don’t think Juan would give a shit how you looked when you walked down the aisle, as long as you did actually walk down to meet him.”
Cece fake glared. “Still!”
Quickly, Cross brought her in close, and dropped a kiss right to the middle of her forehead. For a long while, the two of them simply stood like that.
Him kissing her forehead. Her, holding tight to his arms.
There was a time when this woman—this girl he helped create—wouldn’t let him go at all. A time when her fingers had been small enough to wrap around his thumb, and he could hide her away in his arms.
He remembered a treehouse she loved.
A princess bed. Books every night.
A little brother who was her very best friend.
Cross had so many things he wanted to tell her. So many things he could tell her that were running through his mind about her life, and how she had changed his with one single breath. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to say them.
Not right now.
Not yet.
“I love you, Daddy,” Cece said quietly.
He nodded, and for a second, his smile faltered. She couldn’t see it, though, because he was still kissing her forehead.
“I love you, my Cece.”
Cece pulled back with another wide smile. “Are you ready to walk me down the aisle?”
He smiled back. No, he thought.
“Whatever you need,” he said instead.
It was just them left behind the church doors, now.
Cross and Cece. The flower girl had gone. The ring bearer, too.
All the bridesmaids, and Cece’s maid of honor. It was just them, now.
Her fingers tightened around Cross’s arm as she glanced down at the bouquet of white and pink roses decorated with jewels.
“Did you see Nazio with Rosalynn today?” Cece asked.
She said it in a whisper, like someone might be around to hear them, and she didn’t want her secrets overheard. All conspiratorial and amused like her mother was whenever Catherine had some cute secret to share. It almost made Cross laugh, really.
“I did see them,” Cross mused. “Quite a pair.”
“It’s only been a month,” Cece pointed out.
“And yet, you can’t separate them.”
Zeke was both amused and frustrated that his almost eighteen-year-old daughter had suddenly found she would much rather chase Cross’s son to the ends of the earth and back instead of her dreams of becoming a world-class pianist.
Thing was … Cross knew Rosalynn would get back to her dreams, only now, with someone good and honorable to make sure she followed through. Once the newness of a first love was settled with them both, the girl would find her way back to the dreams that followed her from the time she was a young lady. Nazio would be her greatest supporter at the end of every day, and at the beginning of each morning.
Because that’s who Naz was. That’s how they raised him to be.
Right now, though, Naz and Rosalynn were still trying to figure this love thing out.
It amused Cross to no end.
“They caught them in the confessional,” Cece whispered.
Cross pressed his lips together hard to keep from laughing. It didn’t help because his shoulders shook from the force, anyway.
“If that was me, you would not be laughing,” Cece pointed out.
“I probably would,” Cross said. “Listen, you two are my kids. I’m not going to act surprised when you all do things that I would have done. Because yes, I would have absolutely done that, Cece.”
She just shook her head.
“Are you sad?” he heard her ask.
Cross laughed softly. “No.”
It was a battle he had been dealing with all day. A fight that just wouldn’t seem to drop. One moment, he was caught up in everything happening, and the happiness of his family. And then the next, he was thrust into a catacomb of nostalgia.
“No?” Cece asked.
“I thought I might be,” Cross admitted, bringing her a little closer to his side to hug her with one arm, “but really, I’m just happy to see you where you want to be, Cece.”
She beamed up at him.
Forever his little principessa.
A Donati queen with Marcello blood.
And a new last name on the way.
She came from the best of the best. Their legacies were ingrained in his daughter, and she would carry it well. He bet she was going to do more with it than they ever had. And he couldn’t wait to watch her do it, too.
Like his son.
Because these kids … these little people they raised to be adults were the most amazing humans on the earth. They were a perfect mix of their mother and father, but with just enough of their own quirks and personalities to make them stand out.
They were amazing.
They were going to do amazing things.
And maybe …
Maybe that’s when Cross finally felt a little more settled. Maybe that’s when the heaviness left him because he knew … this was what fathers did.
This was life.
The doors finally opened.
And Cross walked his daughter to her future.