“I’ve got to look through these books?”
Nami returned to the counter and grabbed a notepad and two more books. “No, sugar. We have to look through
allll
these books.” She handed the two in her hand to Ken, and handed one each to Badger and Beck before grabbing the final two. “If you had an idea of the kind of dress you wanted, we could narrow it down. Since you don’t, we start from the beginning.”
Badger cackled as he claimed a comfortable, overstuffed chair for himself. “Peyton and Trent didn’t specify what kind of dress, as long as it’s formal. Fancy. Froufrou.”
Nami plopped down on the couch, on Dewi’s other side, her mouth working back and forth as she considered something. “I’m guessing they mean something stylish, and not some layered-chiffon nightmare.”
Badger shrugged. “They want her to look beautiful. Their mother doted on her. She was her little princess. They want something they can feel comfortable their mother would have loved. I’m sure they’ll trust your judgment.”
“You realize I’m sitting
right
here, right?” Dewi asked.
“Hush,” Nami said. “You stay out of this.”
“Hey, I have to wear it.”
“Shut yer pie hole, girlie,” Badger scolded. “We’ll decide on a few options and let ye narrow it down from there.”
“Don’t worry,” Nami reassured her. “I planned Lu’ana’s wedding, and she looked gorgeous. Everyone said so. I’ve been doing this a lot of years. I won’t put you in something hideous.”
By the end of the afternoon, they’d narrowed it down to ten choices, two of which Nami could tell Dewi really liked, but something inside the woman wouldn’t let her openly show it. Especially not to the men.
Nami held up the options side-by-side in front of Ken. “Choose.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You’re her fiancé.” Nami suspected of any of them, he’d be the best one to figure out which one Dewi would want.
He held the two books in his lap, studying them. Both were strapless, with lace overlay on the bodice. One had a fuller skirt and longer train on the back, the other a slightly more modern take, with some pleating details on the front, and a gracefully cascading bow on the back worked into the design of the fabric.
“If she hates it, it’s my balls on the line,” he said.
Nami pointed at Dewi. “Talk to her. Pick one.”
“Shouldn’t this take a little longer?” Dewi asked.
“Normally, yes. But if your brothers want you married, we need to get this ordered now. It’ll take time to get it in, and time to alter it.”
“Can’t we just order it in my size?”
Nami realized this woman had zero experience with formal wear. “It’s never just in a size. We have to take your measurements and order it, and then when it comes in, we’ll have to check the fit and make adjustments as necessary. And it can take a couple of months to get a dress in depending on the stock. Since it’s a Sunday, I can’t call them to check until tomorrow.”
“I thought you all made dresses here?”
“Yeah, if you’re a fifteen year-old teenager celebrating your birthday. Or some of the bridesmaid dresses. Mother-of-the-bride dresses, too. We don’t make many wedding dresses from scratch. Not formal ones. We make simpler ones.”
“Make me one of those,” Dewi begged. “Please?”
“Hush, girl,” Badger said. “Those two are perfectly gorgeous. Either of them’ll bring a tear to Peyton’s and Trent’s eyes.”
“I know another way to bring tears to their eyes—”
“Dewi!” they all scolded.
Nami took a deep breath. “Honey, let me put it into language you might understand a little better. You are outnumbered. You are surrounded by greater forces with more firepower and ammunition. You have no choice but to surrender. Now give up.”
“I could off myself,” she said.
Ken made Dewi look at him, his fingers holding her chin. “Which dress will be easier for me to bend you over the bed and fuck you in?”
The room went silent, except for the audible click in Dewi’s throat when she swallowed hard. She finally reached out and pointed at the one with the fuller skirt.
He smiled and leaned in to kiss her. “Good. Then that’s the one you’ll wear.”
Nami took back the books. “Boy, don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t have a sneaky streak in you.” She smiled. “Dewi, that is one chic dress. Your brothers will love it.”
“Yeah, well, do I get to dress the boys up in monkey suits? I want Ken in a tux if I have to put on a dress.”
Nami laughed. “Absolutely. Your groom will be the chicest geek ever.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ken heard the knock on their bedroom door bright and early on a Sunday morning.
“Wake up, y’all,” Nami called out. “Lots to do today.”
He had just enough time to pull the sheet up over him and Dewi before Nami opened the door, stuck her head inside, and flipped on the overhead lights. “Dellis Tadewi Bleacke, get your butt up and out of bed, girl. We have to finish fitting this dress today so I can get it done before we head to Idaho.”
Dewi fumbled for and found a pillow, grabbing it and launching it at the door. “Go away,” she mumbled. “It’s too early.”
Nami pushed the door all the way open and walked in. “You think that’s going to stop me, think again. You’d better be up and moving next time I come up here, or I will pull you out of that bed and drop you in the shower myself.”
She turned and left, leaving the bedroom door standing wide open.
Dewi pulled another pillow over her head before she let out a groan. “Is nothing sacred anymore? I want my sleep, and I damn sure want my coffee!”
Ken grabbed Dewi’s robe, from where it had landed on the floor on his side of the bed the night before, and pulled it on as he got up. “She’s not going to give in,” he said as he walked over and closed their bedroom door. “You realize that, right? Give in, get it over with, and knuckle under.”
“You’re supposed to be on
my
side! And what the hell is she doing here this early on a farking
Sunday
? Her and Beck have their love nest back. Why is she heeerree?” Dewi howled.
Nami had moved in with Beck, leaving Da’von and Malyah the apartment. After lots of convincing by everyone else, Nami had given Da’von her old car with the stipulation that he would make her payments on it once he’d graduated and started working.
But that, for now, he had to keep his grades up.
And Beck had insisted Nami would drive a new car—and had purchased one for her.
Nami had also finally decided to quit driving a bus. Now she worked several days a week at Lara’s dress shop.
After the weddings were over and they returned from Idaho, and life settled down, Nami would look into going back to college to finish her architecture degree.
“Hey, Peyton says he and Trent want you froufroued to the gills. Suck it up, buttercup.”
She peeked at him with one eye from under the pillow. “This is sooo not fair. You all are ganging up on me.”
He walked around to her side of the bed and pried the pillow out of her hands so he could lean in and kiss her. “You’re beautiful. You’re going to be a beautiful bride. And I’m going to have a pup tent in my tuxedo pants watching you walk down the aisle. So if you are still having trouble stomaching that concept, then reframe it as you’re making your mate happy.”
She didn’t look convinced. “I look stupid in a dress.”
He sat next to her, capturing one of her hands in his and bringing it to his lips. “Sweetheart, you look beautiful in anything you wear. Why don’t you believe me, or any of us, when we tell you that?”
He knew part of it had to do with what happened to her as a baby, when Endquist raped her mom, murdered her mom and dad, and attacked her. Some primitive, deep memories remained inside her from that.
But that didn’t explain all of it, and he couldn’t understand it.
She finally sat up, pulling the pillow he’d taken from her back into her lap, hugging it to her. “I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up.”
“You told me that. But it’s not an explanation.”
“Badger told you about the time I wore a dress to school when I was little and beat up that boy who complemented me.”
“Yeah?”
“What he didn’t tell you about was my senior prom.”
“You went to prom?”
Her gaze dropped, refusing to meet his. “Yeah,” she quietly said. “I was trying to fit in, thinking it was my last chance for anything remotely resembling normal. I was on the track team in high school. Cross-country.”
“Nothing like a ringer.”
She faintly smiled but still wouldn’t look up. “Yeah. I spent a lot of time sandbagging so I didn’t raise too many questions. A guy from the boys’ track team asked me to go to prom with him, so I said yes.”
“What happened? Was he a jerk?”
“No, Scott was nice. We’d dated for a couple of months. We even slept together a couple of times. We were the same age. I knew it wasn’t something that would last past high school, though, because of the whole…shifter thing. I didn’t feel a deeper connection with him.”
“I figured you’d say with the Head Enforcer gig.”
“Well, that, too. Hard to explain I spent my weekend flying up to Maine to kick a couple of people in the ass to straighten their shit out, or that I had to go kill a guy because he’d molested a child or something.”
Ken wasn’t sure how in-depth he wanted to explore this topic right at that moment, but he knew she needed to get whatever it was off her chest. “Then what happened?”
“Went to prom. I even bought a dress and everything. At the dance, I was in the girls’ bathroom and heard a couple of bitches from the cheerleading squad talking about me. They didn’t realize I was in there. I came out of that stall and you should have seen their faces.”
Her voice sounded sad, quiet. “A couple of them had been nice to me to my face during meets and practices. I’d stupidly thought maybe they could actually be friends.”
“What were they saying?”
“They thought I was a lesbian. That the only reason Scott was with me was because he was gay and I was his beard. And that I looked ridiculous in my dress.”
“What’d you say to them?”
A sad smile curved her lips. “I told them that he was fucking hot in the sack, and that they were just jealous because their boyfriends weren’t nearly as well-hung as Scott. Then I was kind of bad.”
He could only imagine. “Kind of?”
“I’m not proud of it now, but I was pissed off and it was all I could do not to start a fight with them right there. And I knew if I did that, I might accidentally hurt one of them. I mean, you know,
really
hurt them.”
“What’d you do?”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “I used my Prime on them. I sent them out to start a food fight between them. We hadn’t even had pictures taken yet.”
“That’s all?”
She reddened. “Before I sent them out, I made them use their phones to take pictures of them French kissing each other and then post the pics on their Facebook pages. And then made them forget I was ever in the bathroom. Like I said, I was kind of bad.”
He let out a laugh, wishing he could have been a fly on that wall. “So where’s the picture of you and your date at prom? I didn’t see it in the albums you showed me.”
She got up and walked over to a bookshelf in the corner of her bedroom, where she kept her most favorite books. She pulled out a manila envelope from between a couple of tomes and walked back to the bed. Opening it, she withdrew two uncut sheets of photos.
Ken recognized the evil, satisfied smirk on Dewi’s face. The boy standing next to her and holding her hand was smiling, apparently nothing wrong in his world that night.
Dewi wore a gorgeous turquoise satin sheath dress that accentuated her skin tone perfectly. She wore her brown hair long and loose, and minimal makeup.
“Sweetheart, you looked beautiful,” he said. “Just because a few bitches were jealous of you and how pretty you were doesn’t mean you don’t look great in a formal dress. Since when do you let other people define who or what you are? You’re a strong, gorgeous woman. Let go of those past ghosts.”
“I never told Badger about the food fight,” she said. “Or the kisses and pictures. Please, don’t tell him. He was just happy he got to see me dressed up and doing something that resembled normal in his eyes. He never knew about the other stuff. Well, he heard about it, but he didn’t know I was involved. I told him the girls smelled like booze, that I thought they were drunk. He bought it.”
“I won’t tell.”
“Plus he would have ratted me out to Peyton and Trent if he’d known I’d used my Prime like that.”
“Well, you were a kid.”
“No excuse. I knew better. I was already actively working as Head Enforcer, from when I was twelve. I knew better than that. Especially against humans.”