Inked Ever After Read Online Free PDF

heart in her
throat, her eyes already welling.
    Somehow, she made it to the cubicle without losing her
composure. Once there, her legs buckled and she braced her shaky hands on the
mirror, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Oh no, she couldn’t lose it now. She
willed her heart rate to slow down, but it wasn’t working. Her ears were
roaring, her breathing erratic. Unable to fight it anymore, she broke down in
sobs.
    She couldn’t do this. It was so hard—so damn hard. And so
fucking unfair. They should be here, dammit, giving her shit, not dead in the
cold, hard ground.
    The more she tried to stop crying and get a grip on herself,
the more convulsively her chest heaved and her eyes leaked, and soon she was
shaking and raking in breaths as if she’d run a hundred-yard dash. And getting
no damn air in. In between her tears, she glimpsed the sparkle coming from
Grandma Rosita’s pearls, those light spheres now bricks around her neck,
choking her. She reached for them, but her clammy hands shook too much to
unclasp the necklace. Never mind how badly she needed air, she couldn’t bring
herself to yank it.
    She lifted her head and stared at the mess of a person in
front of her.
    Enough , she
admonished herself. Get your big-girl
panties on. No more breakdowns. No more crying.
    This was supposed to be the happiest time of her life, and
yet here she was, having her own—hopefully private—panic attack/sobbing fest in
the fitting room. How she was going to get through all the wedding arrangements
without totally losing it, and more importantly, without James finding out, she
didn’t know.
    “Princess, you ready?”
    Crap.
    What was James doing there? He was supposed to pick her up
from the bridal shop, but he was a good half hour early.
    He couldn’t see her like this. Tate had been hanging on by
her last thread for a while already, but she’d been hiding it, soldiering on,
not showing how wretched she felt inside. There had been some sticky situations
lately, but she’d managed to muddle her way through without too much damage.
Except two days ago in the shower. That hadn’t gone too well. Still, if he saw
her now, he’d definitely know something wasn’t right, and there was only one
thing that terrified her more than the wedding, and that was James getting the
wrong idea. Or worse, hurting him. She was madly in love with him, no two ways
about it. Long gone were her early doubts and fears. James was the real thing,
and no day passed that she didn’t count her lucky stars he was in her life,
because really, at this stage of the game, nothing made any sense without him.
Not a single thing. Whenever she was feeling off, all she had to do was search
for him. He’d look at her, smile, and everything was right in her world again.
    She did want to marry the man. It was just the getting married part that was doing her
in.
    But telling James would mean worrying him, and she didn’t
want to, especially with stuff he couldn’t do anything about. Besides, it
wasn’t his fault she was still so broken.
    “Coming,” she heard him say, his voice and his footsteps
getting closer and closer.
    “You can’t come in,” she all but shrieked. “I’m…I’m…wearing
the wedding dress.”
    His cocky chuckle came through loud and clear. “Well, you
better get undressed fast then, princess.”
    Shit. Shit . She
looked around in panic, madly wiping the tears on her face, trying to slow down
her breathing and fix her smudged mascara. With no time to change or properly
cover the dress, and more worried about using those last seconds to slip her
happy mask on, she did the only thing she could: she let the garment drop to
the floor and stood in her underwear, one arm covering her bare breasts, just
in time for James to open the door. Hopefully the cute lingerie would distract
him from noticing the dress—or the blotchy face.
    His approving gaze roamed over her body. “That’s my girl,”
he murmured as he reached for her. “Told