The Note by Natalie Wrye (the read aloud family .TXT) 📕

Especially when he reaches for my free hand, touching my fingertips to his lips. He rubs them there for a second, smoothing out my nerves with his touch.

“I’m going to freshen up while you re-write those. Got any idea where the back bathroom is in this place?”

Jesse points down the hallway. “Down that way until you reach the end then hang a left.”

Gripping the skirt of my long lavender dress in one hand, I hurry down the hall, hanging the left until I’m standing right in front of the bathroom door, the other hand landing softly against the dark wood.

I lean my forehead against the mahogany, taking a weighted breath, expelling it when I feel a touch, trailing down the tendrils of hair near my neck.

I nearly jump in the air.

“Fuck.”

His voice is as clear as a bell when he responds. “Calm down, Little Bear. It’s me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I rotate towards him. “But I almost hurt you. You were two seconds from being slapped.”

He grins. “Wouldn’t be the first time that almost happened…” He glances towards the door at my back, his navy blue eyes dark and moody. “Let’s go inside.”

I turn the knob, swinging the huge wooden slab to enter and look into the face of the most beautiful man I’ve still ever seen.

Stormy blue eyes peek beneath a fan of dark lashes set in the middle of a chiseled face that could turn the strongest of women to stone. His dark eyebrows are straight and full—unmoving underneath a crown of carefully smoothed brown strands.

The cinnamon and cedar locks hold themselves in carefully mussed place, and when I glance down towards the equally elegant tux, every ounce of oxygen in my body holds still.

Noah is more than gorgeous; he’s ethereal in a dark tailored number that showcases the limestone cut build of his perfectly muscled body, and I am absolutely speechless, flabbergasted as to how any man can look this good.

As far as I’m concerned, he is absolutely perfect.

Until I see the disgruntled look on his handsome face.

I frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” the amazingly tuxedo-clad rumbles out. “And nothing…when you look at me like you could eat me alive.”

I shut the door behind me. “It’s hard not to, after what we just did in the limo.”

“Ten more seconds of you looking that way at me, and those things we did won’t just be confined to the limo. But I’m trying to restrain myself here…We have more important—albeit way less interesting—things to talk about right now.”

He attempts a smile, and I return one of my own.

“How’s Jesse doing?” He asks.

“Fine.” I try not to trip over the word. “Wonderful, actually. He’s marrying his dream girl.” I pause, analyzing the lines of Noah’s face, committing them to memory in the small dark room. I reach for his arm, feeling the warmth of his body beneath the fabric, wishing it were already on mine. “But how are you?”

“Contemplating. And rightfully so. There’s so much going on…”

He leaves the sentence hanging, and I nod.

Because I know. Boy, do I know how much is going on under this one roof. How much is happening behind the scenes.

Nancy is on her way, and I don’t know how to keep the secret about her father’s demise. Or even if I need to, in case she already knows.

My own boyfriend happens to share a father with my soon-to-be sister-in-law and the secrets are piling up, draping themselves over my back as my body threatens to buckle under the weight.

Days after Jase’s wedding, Marilyn had called me, her normally chipper voice subdued, even somber as resignation rung in her tone, an unknown secret threading itself through her words.

I sat down, unable to do anything else as she told me.

“I knew it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. But I knew I’d seen a watch just like the one you described. And when you guys recovered it from that prick Rick, I knew it was true.” She exhaled a long, shuddering breath. “There are only two like it in the world…and my brother Heath owns the other one. Not to mention the inscription on both: To my loving son. The carved initials of F.S. would have tipped the truth over the scale, but then when I met Noah for the first time, I remember seeing his face there.” Her blue eyes glaze over. “At the funeral. At the cemetery. For my father’s burial a few months before. And that’s when all the pieces fell together.”

And right now, all I can do is wish they would stay scattered a little while longer. Because frankly? I can’t take the pressure of holding in all the skeletons.

The only thing secret-keeping was good for was my figure…because basically, I was unable to eat.

And right now in the bathroom outside my brother’s wedding, I’m sure Noah can see the worry in my eyes. He reaches for me.

“And how are you?”

“Other than the fact, I’m holding secrets back from the closest people to me? I’m just fine and perfect.”

Raising his chin, he twirls a curly lock of my hair, sliding it across his finger, mesmerizing me with its sheen.

I have to fight to keep from gasping as his playful lips spread into a grin. He peers over at me, his smile bright.

“I’m just glad I won’t have to keep one of my secrets for much longer.”

A glint enters into his blue eye, rendering me speechless. But the question on my lips slides into a speedy death as someone knocks on the center of the closed bathroom door, a voice ringing out shortly after.

A voice I know more than most.

Nancy.

“Everything okay in there? I came over here to look for you, Soph. But then I heard two voices behind the door. Kinky.”

Noah calls out. “We’re fine in here, TSA. No ignitable substances are in here, I swear.”

I swing an eyebrow upwards, staring at him. “Are you sure about that?”

And with that he leans closer. “You can