Read Online Smoke Signals by Catherine Gayle - Free Book Online

people, though. He quickly masked his shock and hurried his squirming son up to the altar with the rings, and I doubted Tori would have realized there was anything amiss with him. While that was going on, Brenden “Soupy” Campbell picked up one daughter with each arm and carried them like footballs, but the one who’d been in the aisle next to Tori was pitching an absolute fit over it.
    Soupy delivered one of his girls to each of the bridesmaids and wished them good luck in keeping things under control. Jonny handed Connor over to me, telling him, “Remember, we don’t use Mommy’s words in public,” before heading back down the steps. Connor giggled, and Jonny stopped at the main aisle and turned to me. “You watch your mouth, too.” Then he rejoined his wife and daughter in the second row.
    The strings switched over to the wedding march. One of the twins—the aisle sitter—twisted herself free from Dani’s grip and darted down the stairs. I expected her to run to Soupy or her mother, or maybe to one of her older siblings. She streaked past them and stopped at Tori’s side.
    Tori looked up at me with panicked eyes.
    The little girl brushed her hand over Tori’s hot pink dress. “Pretty.” The next thing I knew, she climbed into my dazed and confused wife’s lap and made herself at home.
    Soupy shrugged. “At least she’ll be still and quiet now,” he mouthed at me.
    He was taking it far better than Tori, who hadn’t taken her wide eyes off me.
    I nodded encouragement, but that was all I could do…because the double doors opened, and Webs walked Katie down the aisle toward us.
    She was beaming, her brown hair in a short pixie cut, a shimmering tiara resting on her head. Her dress looked like it belonged to a princess, which seemed fitting. Lord knew Babs thought she was one.
    He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He was blushing like a fucking stoplight, and his dimples were going haywire, but he wasn’t looking anywhere other than at Katie.
    For a moment, I couldn’t look away from her, either. It was only right. She was the bride, and it was her day. Everyone was watching her.
    But then my eyes strayed to Tori. Webs and Katie had just slipped past her.
    I was just in time to see her bolt up from her seat, deposit the toddler on her chair, and take off like the frightened rabbit I knew her to be.
    “Fucking hell,” I muttered.
    “Fucking hell,” Connor repeated so loud it echoed all around us.
    Everyone burst out laughing again, including Katie. Everyone except Jonny, who gave me the look he always gave a guy right before he busted a few teeth loose. And except for Babs. Babs wasn’t laughing. He took a long look at me while everyone else was in stitches.
    Then he said, “Go.”
    So I went.

 

     
     

    “ WHO IS SHE? Why is Soupy letting his daughter stay with her? Why on earth would she wear something like that to a wedding? What’s she doing here?” Those questions and a thousand others were whispered all around me. Maybe they thought I couldn’t hear, but I did. I heard it all, as loud as fireworks going off beside me, ricocheting and reverberating inside my mind.
    That only proved I’d been right, and Razor had been wrong.
    And I had to get out of there.
    Now.
    I didn’t belong at this wedding, no matter how much Razor might try to convince me otherwise. I didn’t belong in his life. I would never fit with those people—Hollywood stars, professional athletes, and their glamorous wives. The couple who’d sat next to me had been proof enough of that. He’d been big and strong, like Razor, with long hair and a scruffy jaw. But the woman with him? A tall brunette who was flawless in every way. She looked like a model from a fashion magazine, if not for her enormous baby bump.
    “Y’all, quit being ugly and hush your mouths,” she’d hissed as the bride and her father had gone past us. So she’d heard it all, too. Telling them to stop talking about me only magnified the fact that