Chapter One, True Blue
It would be a crying shame if Lexie Gallagher threw up on her pretty white wedding dress.
Then again, the dress hardly mattered now.
She was sure her jaw actually gaped as she watched her fiancé—former fiancé—all slim and clean-cut in his charcoal tux, walk away after calling off the ceremony, then turn the corner and disappear from her sight. Her chest felt heavy and tight as the situation sank in.
Now what?
She was standing in a nondescript hallway in the basement of a church she’d been in exactly three times in her life, with close to a hundred and fifty people due to show up in twenty-ish minutes. Alone, stunned, and nauseated as all get-out.
She found the wall with her back, leaned into it, suddenly needing its support as her mind went from numb to whirling like a tornado in a matter of seconds.
“Lex?”
The deep, so-familiar male voice resonated through her as Gabe North, her best friend, strode around the corner from the direction Raleigh had gone.
“What did he say?” Gabe said in a low, controlled voice as he hurried toward her. With some measure of relief, she drank in the sight of him, every golden-brown hair uncharacteristically in place, his tuxedo fitting him impeccably.
Lexie reached out and wrapped her fingers around his forearm, maybe subconsciously hoping to prevent him from going after Raleigh when she filled him in.
“We’re not…” She cleared her throat to get her voice to work. “The wedding’s off,” she croaked out.
Gabe swore as his blue eyes, filled with compassion and concern, held hers. He pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her as she came away from the wall and inhaled his comforting scent, let herself wilt a little into his strength.
“I’m sorry, Lexie,” he said into her hair. “What the hell?”
She blew a shaky breath into his lapel, where, she realized, she was crushing his boutonnière, the single bloom that signified his role as her honor attendant. Man maid, his brothers had teasingly called him.
Instead of answering his question, she said, “Good thing you don’t need your flower. I killed it.”
“I’d like to kill that son of a—”
“Gabe.” She shook her head adamantly, unable to handle thinking too hard about Raleigh at this moment. She angled her chin to look up at him, one persistent thought jabbing at her with spikes of anxiety. “What do I do about all the people?” She could hear a note of hysteria in her own voice.
He considered that as her own brain ground to a halt.
“He’s the one who called it off?”
She lowered her gaze and nodded.
“Then you don’t do anything,” Gabe said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “He caused the problem. He can deal with it. I’ll let Sierra and Mackenzie know what’s going on, and they can talk to anyone you need them to.”
He had a point. This was Raleigh’s doing. Raleigh’s church. Raleigh’s family, since she didn’t have one. The Norths were her surrogate family and Gabe would tell them. The vast majority of guests were on Raleigh’s side, with the exception of a small group from her department, the entire North clan, and a few others.
A wave of light-headedness came over her, and she grasped Gabe’s upper arms for balance, grateful he was here for her, like he had been since the first day of kindergarten. “Okay, so…what now?”
He looked both ways, spotted the exit sign at the far end of the hall, took her hand, and pulled her along. “I’m getting you out of here.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “True Blue is one of the best contemporary romances I have read in recent memory!”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️“This is one of those stories that will stay with you after you are done reading”
