Our Parents Wed in June, So I Spent the Winter Claiming My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Toast
The riverside park in Salida was strung with paper lanterns, and three hundred people had come to eat cake at four in the afternoon.
It was the fourteenth of June, a year to the day.
The river ran green and loud beside the lawn, and the pavilion where my mother had married Ray was hung with the same white ribbon.
The pastor was there, and the hardware clerk, and the woman in the purple fleece.
My lemon cake stood on a table by the water with a sparkler in the top layer.
Reeve stood beside me in a pressed blue shirt and no tie.
He kept touching the pocket of his jacket.
I had asked him to stand next to me when it was time, and he had said yes, and had asked no questions.
Ray tapped a glass with a fork.
"Toast," he said. "Sonja's got the first word, and then I'm going to cry."
My mother stood on a folding chair in a yellow dress and told them about the year.
She said she had gone to Arizona for a husband and come home with two children.
Everyone laughed and drank.
Then she looked at me and said, "Page, you've got something to say."
I climbed up on the chair beside her.
The whole park turned to face me, three hundred faces in the late sun.
I had practiced it on the drive, and I forgot every word.
"I'm going to keep this short," I said. "Last June my mother married his father, and I danced with my stepbrother once."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Our Parents Wed in June, So I Spent the Winter Claiming My Stepbrother are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend