All the usual disclaimers apply. They're not mine, I'm not profiting. Just borrowing to fulfill my muse's demands.
This story is inspired by a writing prompt I saw on pinterest close to a year ago. At that point I had scribbled out a section of dialogue on a piece of scrap paper. A scrap of paper that recently made it's way back into my hands and quickly evolved into this full-blown one-shot.
Throw the Bouquet
I came awake slowly, rolling onto my back and stretching out my aching muscles from last night's marathon love-making session. I was naked on the bed when Carlos finally returned home from a late-running meeting and he was all too happy to take the bait, not stopping until we were both satisfied. Smiling now, I let my fingers walk across the rumpled sheets in search of my fiancé, thinking that one more round before we started the day sounded perfect only to be bitterly disappointed when they found a distinct lack of Cuban sex God on the other side of the bed. Typically, he'd started the day without me.
A heavy sigh fell from my lips, and I threw back the covers. No point in waiting for his return. With the wedding mere days away, Carlos's schedule was jam=packed with meetings, trying to get everything in order before we left on our month-long honeymoon. I'd be lucky if I managed to catch fifteen minutes with him throughout the day. It didn't seem fair, but I knew it was necessary so that he could truly go offline after the wedding and relax knowing that the guys could handle anything that came up. Rangeman had a lot of clients that were very particular with their needs, many of them refusing to deal with anyone but Ranger, so he'd spent the better part of the last month massaging egos and assuring them Tank, Lester and Bobby or any one of the other higher ranking Merry Men would provide them with the same level of care and consideration.
He was doing the leg work for our honeymoon, but ultimately, I could see it being beneficial beyond our return as it would ensure a better work-life balance. Maybe then I wouldn't have to resort to my temptress act to ensure his attention stayed in the apartment for longer than the time it took him to wolf down some food and bathe.
In the shower, I let the seemingly endless supply of hot water Rangeman boasted pound down on my shoulders, loosening the tension there. But it seemed that for every knot unravelled from my shoulders, another one tied itself in my stomach so that by the time I shut the water off and wrapped myself in one of the fluffy white towels Ella kept the bathroom stocked with, I was nauseas with the intensity of my worry.
Something was wrong.
Dressing quickly in my usual uniform of jeans and a Rangeman tee, I did the bare minimum styling to my hair so that I wouldn't have a puffball on my head when it dried, strapped on my utility belt complete with loaded Glock and stun gun fresh from the charging port in the dressing room, and headed out of the bedroom. I ignored the breakfast set out on the counter for me. There was no way I could tolerate food until I got to the bottom of whatever was setting off my Spidey Sense.
I took the stairs two flights down and was greeted with a nod from Hal as I pushed through the door onto the command floor. They no longer batted an eye at my willingness to use the stairs, which I took as a good thing, especially now that I could almost make it all the way up to Five from the garage without being completely out of breath. Don't get me wrong, I had my limits, and I still very much preferred the elevator, but I'd also come to the realisation about a year ago that taking the stairs a couple times a week was a good enough cardio workout that it would keep Bobby off my back if I hadn't been to the gym in a while.
"He in?" I asked my gentle giant, tilting my head toward the hall that led to the core team offices.
Hal shook his head, tapping a few buttons on the keyboard in front of him. "Overnight log says he rolled out a little after oh-three, uh, three o'clock," he said, and before I could ask my standard follow-up questions, he added, "In the Cayenne, no partner."
The information did nothing to settle my nerves.
"Tank?" I requested, absently wondering when I'd started using the one-word communication methods Carlos was known for.
"In his office," Hal stated succinctly, and I left him to his monitor surveillance with a distracted Thanks.
It was barely eight o'clock in the morning, but I got the impression that Tank was already snowed under with paperwork by the time I entered his office. He'd never been fond of the forms and reporting side of the business, and as a result tended to put it all off until the last possible minute. And unfortunately for him, they always seemed to be the same last minute. Add to that the fact that he was already covering a portion of Carlos's usual duties, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was already counting the minutes until we'd be back from our honeymoon, and he could resume his regular workload, which allowed for much more time out in the field, and much more opportunity for throwing people out windows.
"Carlos left in the Cayenne at three o'clock this morning without backup," I stated without preamble, standing with my feet at shoulder width and my arms crossed over my chest directly in front of his desk.
"It's off the books," Tank replied easily, casting me only the briefest of glances to let me know that a certain amount of worry was warranted.
'Off the books', combined with that look could mean only one of two things. Either he was off dealing with a situation that pertained to one of his other personas, or the government had called him up and he was in the wind. I refused to believe that my fiancé would submit to leave on a mission this close to our wedding. Nor did I want to believe that if he'd been given no choice in the matter, he would do so without waking me to at least say goodbye, so it was likely the first option.
When I didn't move from my position, biting my lip as my brain scrolled through the archives of every possible thing that could happen to him, Tank's gaze lifted from his computer once more, examining my posture and expression more closely.
"Spidey sense?" he asked, and I nodded. It was all I could do. I had no other information to provide other than that my gut told me something was wrong. And just like that he was back to banging away at the keyboard, this time with a little more urgency. "I'll check his movements and call his handler," he informed me. "You go see Hector and see what he knows."
That was it, no empty words of assurance, just a swift action plan. But I was grateful nonetheless for the fact that the guys knew in times of high stress I didn't need my feelings coddled, I needed something to do to help the situation. Between that and my history of going off on my own half-cocked, they always made sure I had a task to focus on when we were dealing with something like this.
Most of the time I could identify where my skills would be of most use and rolling up my sleeves to get to work without anyone needing to be told. But with Carlos involved and my stomach roiling with a heavy warning, Tank had quickly determined that this was one of those rare times when the range of actions I was able to come up with on my own swung wildly between paralysis and another under-planned adventure. And there was no way of knowing where the needle would stop.
I nodded, turning on my heel and forcing myself to exit the office and retrace my steps across the command floor to the stairwell.
Lester and Bobby were leaning against the wall of one of the cubicles, talking quietly in that intimate way they had. But as I passed, both of their heads snapped up as though sensing the waves of anxiety washing over me. With a quick squeeze of Bobby's bicep to put a pin in whatever they had been discussing, Lester jogged the few steps to my side, slinging his arm over my shoulder and steering me toward the elevator instead.
"Where to, Beautiful?" he asked, pressing the call button and glancing over his shoulder to his partner one last time before focusing his full attention back on me.
"Hector," I said quietly as the doors sprang open. "Carlos is working off the books and something feels off."
He took this information in with a short nod, not questioning it in the least, as was Merry Man custom. I'd saved enough of their asses based on nothing more than my Spidey Sense that they'd learned to just trust my instincts. They hadn't led me astray thus far.
"Tank is checking with his government contacts, and I need to find out if Hector's heard anything on the streets," I added as the elevator descended the two floors to Hector's domain and we stepped out. "I'm glad you're tagging along, actually. These things always go quicker when we have an interpreter."
Hector spoke mostly Spanish which, for obvious reasons, did not mesh so well with my own English preferences. I'd been working on learning Spanish to allow me to integrate more fully with Carlos's family, and Hector had been helping with that, but it was still in the early stages. And while I knew that Hector understood more English than he spoke, which took the pressure off me when I had a message to deliver or a computer problem I needed him to solve, it wasn't as effective when he was the one that needed to provide information. We'd definitely made it through such conversations in the past, but they were slow going and lined with just a hint of frustration on both our parts as we were unable to convey and receive the messages easily.
With Lester accompanying me, he would be able to act as a translator for anything Hector or I said that got lost in the air between us, eliminating any need for a round of charades or resorting to pulling up Google Translate on my phone.
Hector looked up from his computer when we entered, that smile he only let free when we were out of view of the rest of the world splitting his features. "Hola chica, que pasa?" he asked, but as his gaze swept over me properly his face fell. "Qué te dice tu sentido arácnido?"
This much, at least, I didn't need a translator for. Arácnido was close enough to arachnid that I could surmise that he'd asked about my Spidey sense. "Ranger's out there without backup, and I don't have a good feeling about it," I explained, defaulting to my fiancé's street name as I always did when referring to him in conversation with any of the Merry Men beyond Tank, Lester, and Bobby. "Have you heard anything?"
Returning his attention to the screen in front of him, he started sprouting off a stream of Spanish. He was speaking so fast that I didn't have a hope in hell of understanding any of it but based on the determined look in his eye I was guessing he was checking whatever avenues he could for information on what might have called Carlos out of bed in the wee hours of the morning.
"He hasn't heard anything as of yet, but he's putting feelers out to his contacts as we speak and checking the message boards for mentions of Ranger's aliases," Lester supplied as Hector's words died off. His arm, which I just now realised was still around my shoulders, tightened reassuringly. "We'll get to the bottom of it, Beautiful," he said. "With any luck he'll be gliding back into his parking spot like nothing happened any minute now. You know it's not unusual for him to slip away like this."
"I know," I agreed. But I couldn't shake the feeling, nonetheless. I wouldn't be able to relax until I could wrap my arms around Carlos and assure myself that he was still alive."
While I was distracted, Hector had stood, retrieved a bandana from somewhere under his workbench and was tying it around his head as he rounded the table toward us. "I will let you know when I know something," he informed me in his heavily accented English. And with that, he pressed a kiss to my forehead, and slipped from the lab, silent as death.
Back upstairs, Tank confirmed that Carlos was not acting on any government orders and was definitely not on his way to parts unknown on a top secret, dangerous mission. The only other information he could provide was that he'd driven the Cayenne to a secure garage they kept outside of town where it had sat stationary ever since. A check of the security feed for the garage showed Carlos entering in the Cayenne and leaving in a burnt orange Chevrolet Camaro.
The moment he saw it, Lester was on the phone to Hector, updating him on which alias Carlos was likely to be flying under. This was one of the sections of Carlos's life that he had done his best to keep from me, not wanting me to know so that the knowledge couldn't be used against me. I knew that he had upwards of half a dozen different aliases he used on a semi-regular basis, but I'd only ever learned the name of one or two of them. And I certainly couldn't identify them by car choice alone.
"That Camaro doesn't have a tracker, does it?" I asked quietly, already knowing the answer.
"None of the cars in that garage do," Bobby confirmed, tapping away at a laptop in one of Tank's visitors chairs. "I've set up an alert on all the hospitals in Jersey and I'll be notified if any of his aliases or persons matching his description are admitted," he offered, setting the device aside to indicate his task was now complete.
"So, that's it?" I said, looking from one tense face to the next. "All we can do is wait?"
"We don't know that anything's happened as of yet," Tank said by way of reply, but like the rest of us, he wasn't comfortable with the inaction. He needed to be doing something as much as I did, and the fact that there was nothing he could do at this point had him on edge.
Lester's hands squeezed my shoulders from where he stood behind my chair. He'd been in constant physical contact since the moment he slung his arm over my shoulder earlier, and I couldn't decide if it was because he knew his touch was grounding me and keeping my thoughts from spiralling out of control, or if he was just trying to make sure I didn't run off to Stark street and try to find my fiancé myself, with or without a clue. "I hate to be that guy," he said, digging his thumb into the knot that had reappeared after all the effort I'd gone to to loosen my muscles in the shower this morning. "But we did try calling him, didn't we?"
I nodded. "The tracker on his phone puts it in the building, and even calling from my cell didn't put me through to forward me anywhere."
"Damn," he uttered, echoing my thoughts.
There was silence for a few minutes while we all contemplated the futility of the situation, and as the frustration at my fiancé rose in my chest, I found myself on my feet, striding around the desk to where Tank sat in his oversized office chair. "Move," I instructed, nudging his shoulder.
I'm not sure if it was the tone or his confusion, but he followed my order without hesitation, giving up his seat and stepping back to let me settle into it. "Steph?" he questioned when I pulled one of the file folders on the desk closer to me, glanced through it, and then reached for the computer mouse.
"I need something to occupy my mind," I explained, dragging my feet up onto the seat so that I was sitting cross legged. "And you look like you could use some time being physical. So I'm going to work on all this," - I waved my hand over the mess of paper on his desk - "while you go spar, or beat up the heavy bag or something. And hopefully by the time your paperwork is up to date, Carlos will be home and there won't be a reason to worry anymore."
The guys all shared a glance that I knew was full of an ESP conversation I wasn't privy to.
"I promise I won't leave the building," I sighed, dropping my hands to my lap and fiddling with my engagement ring under the table where they couldn't see. "I know the best way to keep him safe right now is to keep me safe as well. You don't need to be dividing your attention between monitoring the situation with Carlos and searching for my overzealous ass, so it's gonna stay planted right here."
Another significant look, a shrug from Lester, and a nod from Bobby as he picked up the laptop once more, propping his feet on the desk in the appearance of a relaxed posture despite the fact that I could see the tension filling his body. "Fine," Tank finally agreed, leaning across me to snag wad of paper by my elbow. "But start with these."
*o*
"That's your plan?" Lester practically yelled, sending me a look like I'd gone insane. Which, considering the course of action I'd just proposed, was a definite possibility.
It was five o'clock the next morning, twenty-six hours since Carlos slipped out of our bed and disappeared into the night. Four and a half hours since Bobby had insisted I return to the seventh floor to get some sleep (a laughable suggestion, really, but I'd reluctantly obeyed when my attempts to protest was interrupted by no less than three yawns). Eight hours since one of Hector's contacts reported back to him with the news I'd felt coming all day as I waited.
According to Hector's sources, a few key players that Carlos had established separate business relationships with under different personas had somehow gotten into discussions about their dealings and grown suspicious. Hector reported multiple enquiries throughout Stark Street and a few other neighbourhoods on both aliases over the last few days, and one of Carlos's trusted informants had reached out to him with a warning that the shit looked like it was going to hit the fan.
From what we could tell, Carlos had stalked out to set them straight and seal their lips tight. The process had gone exactly as we assume he'd planned until early evening when a parade of souped-up SUVs had swarmed him as he exited a building, a couple of burly, henchman-types jumping out and knocking him unconscious so that they could drag him away.
The news had taken more than an hour to reach Hector, by which point the trail had cooled enough that he'd had to do some hacking to figure out where Carlos had been taken, and then we'd talked in circles trying to come up with a way to eliminate the threat and rescue our friend and fearless leader without having to sacrifice a few men to do it.
"It's the only way," I stated, crossing my arms over my chest and returning Lester's look with a hard glare of my own across the length of the conference table.
"It's suicide!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms wide for emphasis.
"Well do me a favour then," I retorted, leaning back in my seat. "At my funeral, take the bouquet off the coffin and throw it into the crowd to see who's next."
A frustrated growl emitted from his chest as he resumed his pacing. "Beautiful, as much as I agree with the amount of shade you're throwing at the people in this town, I don't think it's the right attitude to have going into this clusterfuck."
"I'm going to do everything in my power to get him back," I reminded them, repeating my words from the previous night.
"NOT LIKE THIS!" All four of the men assembled in the room shouted in unison, leaving no room for interpretation as to what they thought of the plan I'd detailed.
"Then help me think of something better," I insisted, gripping the edge of the table in desperation as I looked from face to grim face. The unsettled feeling in my gut from yesterday had grown into a full body tension that wouldn't let me go no matter how hard I tried to relax and think about things objectively. "I've been up all night thinking through scenarios and no matter what, it leads to one of two endings, and neither of them is happy!" My voice cracked at the end, but I refused to let the tears stinging behind my eyes fall. Carlos needed me and being an emotional wreck wasn't going to help him.
*o*
"Steph, are you sure about this?" Tank asked, hitting me with the full force of his worried frown as his massive hands weighed down my shoulders. We were standing in the backroom of a bookstore Rangeman provided security for, having trooped inside several minutes ago under the guise of checking the premises when instead we were simply regrouping after a final perimeter check. "You don't have to be the one to go in. I can just as easily send Bobby in with Santos. It would be no trou-"
I set my expression to steely and stared up at the big man from under my furrowed brow. "How many times have I been the one being held captive?" I asked, working to keep my jaw loose so that I didn't grit my teeth. He opened his mouth to reply, likely having an accurate, and rather startling number on the tip of his tongue, but I cut him off. "And how many times has Carlos been the in the exact position I'm in now?" I questioned. "He would never allow anyone else to take point on such a mission, and neither will I."
"But-" he tried to protest, to make me see reason, but the only reason I could see was my reason for living being held against his will, possibly injured, probably being tortured to reveal his secrets, in an apartment above the butchers down the street. I could only imagine the kind of disposal methods they had at their disposal once they'd tired of his lack of answers and decided to strike all of his aliases from the board in one fell swoop.
"Man, you said yourself at her last evaluation that she's more than met the standard benchmarks for fieldwork at Rangeman," Bobby said quietly, seeing that Tank's efforts were getting him nowhere and that I was never going to willingly back down. "She's capable, determined and pissed as hell. The only way to stop her from going in is to sedate her." Tank rose an eyebrow at the medic, as though suggesting that sedation would be the preferable option, but Bobby just shook his head. "I sedate her, and I have to stay out here with her to monitor her vitals," he pointed out. "And you and I both know that this mission isn't necessarily in your wheelhouse, which means we'd have to send Hector in and compromise his identity, losing dozens of valuable sources of information from the streets."
"Just let her go, Tank," Lester added, his agitation at the hold up was evident in his voice and I knew that if we'd been at Rangeman he would have been pacing ceaselessly. "There's no one who's going to tackle this with as much determination as Steph, and Bobby's right. Without pulling more men into this and risking causing a bigger scene to give away our position, this is the only way. I've got her back."
"And I've got his front," I said with a determined nod, managing to shrug off Tank's loosening grip and move to stand with Lester by the door.
"I love you, Beautiful," Lester said, a ghost of his mischievous grin on his face as he slung his arm over my shoulders, letting me know that he was about to say something to break the tension filling the tiny room. "But my front belongs to Bobby and Bobby alone."
"Ha, ha, ha," I deadpanned. "You know what I mean."
"I do," he agreed, pulling me into a brief hug. "I trust you to keep yourself safe and to watch my six as well." His words were quiet in my ear just before he released me, but the affirmation and confidence served to strengthen my resolve. I'd been working hard on improving my skills for over a year, passing benchmarks, and feeling the effects of the increased capability every time, I managed to bring in a skip without first rolling in garbage, or being doused in spaghetti sauce.
I'd now reached a level where I was an acceptable substitute when one of the Merry Men needed an emergency partner on a job, and it almost didn't matter what the job was. There were obviously situations where they refused to let me get involved because of the nature of the job, or the specific enemies involved, but on the whole anything that came up in the day-to-day dealings at Rangeman, I was able to provide backup on.
Lester released me, allowing Tank to pull me into one final embrace while Bobby and Lester shared a kiss, promising each other they'd be back together before the day was out. When they separated once more, Bobby took his turn hugging me, and then Lester and I were squaring our shoulders and slipping out the door. Of to go rescue the man who'd been my personal saviour more times than I could count.
We crept to the base of the building, pressing our backs to the wall as we inched along until we reached the drainpipe. Ideally, we would have been doing this in dead of night with darkness to cover our asses, but we'd all agreed that too much time had passed already, and any delays could result in my wedding needing to be permanently cancelled. And after the struggle Carlos and I had been through to even make it this far in our relationship, no one wanted to let that happen.
"Check?" Lester said quietly into his mic, and a moment later a voice confirmed that our chosen entry point was still clear. He lifted his chin to me, crouching slightly and cupping his hands to give me a boost, getting me started on my climb up the side of the building. He would wait until I'd reached the top and was working the window open to slip inside before following me up.
Quietly as I could, I inched the window open and slipped inside, crouching bed and the wall as I waited for Lester to join me. Keeping my gaze on the door in case someone decided to come into the one room in the apartment we'd identified as barely used. It was mostly filled with stacks of boxes labelled in a language I didn't know. Once Lester was through the window, he crept to the door, peaking out to check the coast was clear. Hector's intel said there were only two people in the apartment, excluding Carlos, but that they were enough of a threat that we needed to act as though the building was swarming with henchmen. And really, it could be at the drop of a hat if these guys were anything like the forces we had at Rangeman.
"Clear," Lester murmured, jerking his head to indicate I should follow as he moved out into the hall.
It was easy to pick where Carlos and the thugs holding him were based on the raised voices drifting toward us. Based on what I could see of the rooms nearby and the blueprints we'd surveyed while refining my apparently deplorable plan, I guessed they were in the kitchen-dining area, which brought up a bit of bile in my throat as I considered what instruments would be available to them to torture information out of my fiancé. I swallowed it down, though, focusing on the task at hand. We had to clear the rooms quickly and quietly to ensure there weren't any surprise occupants that could sneak up on us.
I copied Lester's actions, gun in hand as I sidled up to a doorway and peered around the corner before entering and doing the same process for every cupboard I encountered. Another room was cleared in the same way as Lester covered the other side of the hall, and then we were stalking down the hall toward the voices. I used the slow rocking movement to place each boot silently just the way Carlos had taught me and before I knew it Lester and I were on either side of the arched entryway that lead to the kitchen, sharing a look as we listened in.
"We're just going to continue until you reveal your true identity, Mr. Lopez," a gravelly voice bit out, his words punctuated by the sickening sound of a fist connecting with what I thought was probably a torso, and the distinct grunt of my soon to be husband.
My jaw clenched and I sucked in a deep, silent breath as I met Lester's gaze across the doorway for a second before he ducked his head around the corner and returned to his hidden position so quickly I barely noticed. He held up two fingers, indicating that there were only two men in the room with Carlos, just as we'd suspected and then made a gesture to his eyes and then behind himself, which I interpreted to mean that they were facing away from the doorway. I lifted my left hand from my gun, ignoring the ache from how hard I'd been gripping it, and pointed to myself before holding my hand flat above my own eyes in the classic searching for something in the distance pose, before tilting my head toward the doorway.
He got my meaning and replied with a short nod, so I slowly inched over until I could see around the frame, taking a little longer to take in the scene than Lester had.
Carlos was duct taped to a chair, his head held proud and tall as he glared at his captors. A dark bruise was blooming on his swollen cheekbone and there was blood running down the side of his chin from his mouth. He was breathing heavily, probably from the blow he'd received, and although I knew he sensed my presence he never once glanced in my direction.
I was just pulling back to check what our next move was with Lester when the thug on the left apparently lost his patience with the situation. "YOU WILL TALK, MR. HERNANDEZ," he seethed in Carlos's face spittle flying. Then I watched as, in slow motion, he picked up the meat mallet that lay on the counter and slammed it down on Carlos's forearm eliciting a pained cry from the love of my life.
I saw red.
I didn't even pause for thought. A second after the meat mallet shattered the bones in my fiancé's arm, my gun was up and a bullet was entering the back of the thug's head, exploding his brain matter onto the kitchen cabinetry in front of him.
I heard Lester's muttered curse as he was forced to take out the other guy, but it barely registered as I raced across the space separating me from Carlos. If I thought his breathing was heavy before it was nothing compared to the breaths he was sucking in between clenched teeth as he stared up at me. "You're okay, Carlos," I assured him, taking his face between my hands as gently as I could. "We've got you."
"Babe," he managed to grit out between breaths, leaning the unbruised side of his face more firmly into my touch. And as if it was all he needed to get through the pain, his breathing started to even out.
I was vaguely aware of Lester speaking rapidly into his body mic as he checked the pulse on the second thug before moving behind Carlos to start cutting away the duct tape binding him to the chair. A door opened downstairs and I heard footsteps on the internal stairs leading to the apartment, tensing and turning so that my back was to Carlos, gun at the ready.
"It's Bobby and Tank," Lester said quietly, coming around to the side of the chair, his knife in hand as he stared down at Carlos's forearm.
I didn't stand down, though, not until I heard their voices in the hall beyond announcing their presence and intent to enter. Relief washed over me as Bobby swept into the room, coming straight to Carlos's side. I found myself sagging onto Carlos's knee, almost jumping out of my skin when his hand came up to rub my back. My head snapped around to find that Lester had abandoned Carlos's injured arm in favour of freeing the other and was now working on his ankles. I took a breath to calm myself, telling myself that the immediate threat was gone. I was safe. Carlos was safe.
"This is gonna hurt like a motherfucker," Bobby announced, taking his tactical knife from it's sheath on his leg and holding it poised over the silver tape securing Carlos's wrist to the arm of the chair. He sliced through it without further warning, causing a loud string of curses to fall from my fiancé's lips as his hand tightened down on my hip. Instinctively, I wrapped my fingers around his, squeezing tightly to let him know he could do the same if he needed as my gaze drifted away from the scene around us to his eyes, hazy with pain, but alive and alert.
By the time Bobby had stabilised Carlos's arm with a sling, emergency services had arrived. After securing the scene, we submitted to questioning, Carlos quoting the number of a contact at the FBI who could vouch for the necessity of our actions, effectively shutting down any attempts to charge Lester or myself with the deaths of the two thugs and ending the interrogation. Which was a good thing on a number of fronts: First, Carlos needed to get his arm fixed and his cheek checked. And second, the adrenaline let-down was hitting me hard.
"Come on, Babe," Carlos said once we'd finally been given the nod from Eddie Gazarra that we could leave. He grabbed my hand pressing his lips to my knuckles and tugging me along passed the EMTs that seemed almost desperate to check his injuries, and straight to the black SUV waiting at the curb. "Let's get you a couple Boston Cremes on the way to the hospital."
*o*
"Stephanie, this is a disaster!" my mother hissed, slipping into the small room down the hall from the function room of the Nassau Inn that had been provided for me to get ready in. She was in a state, strands of her wavy grey hair that had been perfectly in place before she left just a few minutes ago falling in her face, adding to her agitation as she shoved them out of her eyes. "Your perfect day is ruined."
I met Mary Lou's gaze in the mirror where she was paused in the act of securing my necklace. She rolled her eyes, finished fastening the clasp and stepped aside, allowing me to turn to face my mother and find out what the hell she thought was wrong.
"How is it ruined, Mom?" I asked, managing to keep my tone curious rather than exasperated.
"It's Carlos," she said, pacing back and forth in front of me. "He obviously got into a brawl of some kind at his bachelor party! He's got a cast on his arm! His sleeve is rolled up to his elbow so it's on full display! And he has a black eye! He couldn't keep himself out of a fight long enough to get married! This isn't the life I wanted for you!"
I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling, praying for strength. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best decision to 'accidentally' forget to mention Carlos's injuries to my mom, but I knew her reaction would be completely over the top and she'd jump to all kinds of conclusions. Just like this. Probably, if I'd mentioned Carlos's broken arm when I spoke to her the day it happened she would have tried to insist we postpone the wedding.
"Oh, the photos!" she bemoaned, turning on her heel to make another pass of the tiny room. "Stephanie, the photos are ruined! There'll be a big ugly cast right in the middle of them all! And his face! Maybe we can get the photographer to edit them."
When I divorced the Dick, I told myself I would never get married again. It was an institution I couldn't buy in to. If the man that was supposed to love me and had just pledged to love only me for the rest of his life couldn't keep it in his pants for five minutes after we returned from our honeymoon, then the system had failed me somewhere. I'd allowed Mom to convince me marriage was what I wanted, and that marriage to Dickie was the perfect addition to my life, but as with most opinions my mother had about my life, she was wrong.
Later on, she'd tried desperately to marry off to Joe Morelli, a Trenton cop whom I'd had a very tumultuous relationship with for most of my life. And once again, she was completely wrong. Joe and I weren't right for each other. Not in a long-term, rest of our lives kind of way. Sure, the sex was good, but we had too much history, and our tempers were both too hot to be compatible.
With Carlos, though, everything was different. Suddenly, ignoring my mother and her outdated Burg opinions became second nature. He never gave me reason to doubt my place in his life and in his heart, and he encouraged me to be the best version of me I could while still managing to let me be one hundred percent authentic, not trying to shove me into some mould of the perfect partner, the perfect bounty hunter, the perfect anything. He understood that life wasn't perfect, and neither were we.
And the moment that changed everything and brought us together was when he finally realised that there was never going to be a perfect time for his supposed Someday to be scheduled into the calendar. That was when he'd started being honest with us both about his feelings toward me, and I finally felt safe enough to do the same thing.
"The day isn't ruined, Mom," I said on a sigh. "And he wasn't in a brawl at his bachelor's party. He broke his arm four days ago when an enemy slammed a meat mallet down on it. I don't care if the cast is in the photos, so long as Carlos is in them as well, and we're not getting the photographer to edit anything out."
"Four days ago!?" she exclaimed, stopping in her tracks to stare at me. "Stephanie, why didn't you say anything? We could have done something about it four days ago. We could have rescheduled, we could have-"
"Remember what I told you when Carlos and I first got engaged?" I questioned, letting that tone that she'd always hated me using slip into my voice. It was my assertive tone that I used when I wasn't about to take any shit from her. "This is my wedding," I reminded her. "And it will play out how I want it to."
She let out a sound of frustration, her sensible heel-clad foot shifting slightly like she was holding herself back from stomping it. "And you still can, Stephanie," she insisted. "But later, when his face has healed, and the cast has come off. I mean what will the n-"
"I swear to god, Mom, if you finish that sentence, I will have security kick you out and you will not be allowed to attend the ceremony or the reception. You will have to settle for whatever un-retouched photos and videos we see fit to let you see later, when Carlos's face has healed, and the cast has come off." Throwing her words back in her face was a dirty move, I knew, but I wasn't about to let her ruin my day.
She looked like she was going to blow a fuse and start yelling for about thirty seconds. I stared her down, refusing to budge, and she finally took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through her nose in a gargantuan effort to calm down. "Are you almost ready?" she asked in a sickly-sweet tone that did nothing to ease the tension still lingering in the air from our argument.
"Yes."
With a short nod, she turned on her heels and stalked toward the door. "I'll send your father in and let the organist know."
"There's still no organist, Mom," I called after her as the door swung shut. Turning to face Mary Lou I let my shoulders sag a little. "She realises this isn't a church, right?"
Mary Lou sent me the same she's crazy look that we'd been sharing our whole lives in relation to my mother. "Sometimes I wonder," she confessed, and we both burst out laughing.
"I'm glad you stopped letting her get to you, Pumpkin," Dad said a few moments later as he entered on the tail end of our giggles. He held out his arm, and after a brief pause to allow Mary Lou to fix how my dress sat, I took it. "Let's get you to your groom."
The ceremony was everything I'd wanted. Simple, sweet, non-traditional and about as far away from a Burg wedding as you could get without holding it on the moon. And above all, shared with the people I loved (yes, including my mom). The celebrant kept her speech short and to the point before leading us in the modified vows she'd been all too happy to work with us on. I spent the whole thing staring into the eyes of my love and marvelling anew at how lucky we were to have gotten to where we were today.
With the rings exchanged along with a matrimonial kiss to seal the deal that had the assembled family and friends hooting and hollering while my mother probably made the sign of the cross, we lead the way out to the fairy lit courtyard for drinks and canapes while the hotel staff transformed the function room from the makeshift chapel to a reception venue fit for a… well, fit for me and my new husband. It wasn't no-frills by any means, but we'd chosen classic beauty over gimmicks and over the top decorations. Honestly, for all I cared, it could have been a hay barn and I would have been just as happy so long as I had Carlos there beside me.
I was sitting in his lap, letting him feed me tiny forkfuls of cake between kisses when Lester appeared on the other side of our table. "I hate to interrupt this truly endearing show of your love and affection, but I need to borrow the bride," he announced.
The cake fork froze in mid-air as my husband sent his cousin a single raised eyebrow, letting him know just what he thought of the idea of letting go of me. I wasn't surprised, he'd barely left my side in the last four days, I doubted he'd consent to do so at our own reception.
Not one to let cake go to waste, I let the boys have their staring match, leaning forward to close my lips around the bite of cake.
"It's time for you to throw the bouquet," Lester said, pulling a spare bouquet I'd never seen before from his back pocket like it was some kind of magic trick, and reaching for my hand. When he continued speaking, I realised I probably should have let the cake go to waste afterall because I nearly choked on it. "Just remember, these aren't the flowers off your coffin, so I don't think you'll be wishing death on whoever catches them. Last I checked whoever catches the wedding bouquet is destined to have good luck and get married next, so maybe keep that in mind when you're lining up your shot."
It took me a few seconds and a gulp of the water from the glass Carlos passed me to get myself back under control after realising that Lester was making a reference to the frustrated line I'd sprouted when he'd refused to go through with my initial plan to rescue Carlos. What had started as a coughing fit as my gasp caused cake crumbs to hit the back of my throat, ended as choked laugh that had my husband looking at me concerned.
"Babe?"
"I may have come up with a slightly suicidal mission to save you from those two thugs," I explained quietly, feeling my cheeks heat with the admission that I was willing to die for him. "And when Lester called me on it I suggested that at my funeral he should take the bouquet off my coffin and throw it into the crowd to see who's next."
The mixed emotions in his eyes let me know that while he could see the humour in the situation, we were going to have a heart to heart about my willingness to send myself to an early grave to him. I just hoped we had a deck of Uno cards on hand when he brought up the topic, so I could lay a reverse on him, because there was no way I would tolerate him sacrificing himself for me.
Lester's heavy sigh at the intensity sizzling between us drew my attention back to the fact that we were still in the middle of a celebration of our marriage. "I talked her out of it, Primo," he pointed out. "Just like I talked you out of it last time she was kidnapped. Now can you pair please put your death wishes away? Bobby's finished rounding up all the single ladies, and if we don't get this show on the road soon, I'm pretty sure Grandma Mazur is gonna start demanding a strip tease instead."
Rather than release me, Carlos pulled me closer, claiming my lips in a bone melting kiss, like the thought of being separated from me for even a minute had him already mourning my absence.
"This is the last tradition," I promised him a little breathlessly when we came up for air a few moments later. "After this we can leave whenever we're ready and I'm all yours for a whole month with no interruptions."
"You're all mine for the rest of eternity," he corrected quietly against my neck, the fingers of his cast-clad hand playing with the rings on my left hand.
"True," I agreed. "But neither of us can guarantee no interruptions with this clown hanging around." I hiked my thumb at Lester, smiling cheekily between the two men before hopping off my husband's lap and making my way back out onto the dance floor one final time.
Lester positioned me in front of the small assemblage of women and handed me the bouquet he'd procured. I took a moment to scan the crowd under the guise of teasing the women with the bouquet before turning my back to them. One final glance over my shoulder confirmed that my target hadn't shifted, and I lobbed the flowers over my right shoulder, spinning on my heel the moment they left my hand so that I could watch as they sailed clear over the women's head and landed in Bobby's hand just as he was reaching out to steady my grandma.
A minute of silence passed, everyone frozen and staring wide-eyed at the bouquet in Bobby's gasp, Bobby included. Just as I could sense the moment about to break - the resolve to be civilised about to break - I called out merrily, "Luckily this isn't a traditional wedding, and the bouquet toss doesn't discriminate. Looks like it's time for Bobby and Lester to start planning their nuptials!"