Emmie Morgan woke up from heart transplant surgery, saw her best friend Brandon Tan sitting by her bedside, and promptly asked him to marry her. If there was a faster way to ruin a friendship, she didn’t know it.

One year on, Bran has returned home and Emmie adds trying to make amends to her already chaotic life. She’s busy running her own music venue, battling survivor’s guilt—oh, and secretly tending a wedding obsession she can’t explain.

Bran needs answers. But all Emmie has are problems. Hating that he couldn’t help her last time, he resolves to ease the trouble in her eyes. He sets aside their attraction and awkward past and tries to focus on being friends again.

If she would just stop trying on wedding dresses…

Reviews for The Wedding Obsession

“Ash has the most unique story lines and characters… The subject of transplants and how the recipient is affected by the changes was magically written.”
– Anima, Goodreads Reviewer 

“The story is beautifully written. Madeline Ash has a gift for digging deep into a character and drawing out the emotion, and in this story emotion is everywhere.”
– Shelagh, Goodreads Reviewer 

“If you’re looking for an emotional, unusual romantic read, you might want to try this. It’s not always easy, but it is very thought-provoking … Madeline Ash rarely disappoints, and this is one of her most memorable. I look forward to whatever she writes next.”
– Book Gannet, Goodreads Reviewer

“Man, oh, man! This is quite a book! The writing blew me away and drew me in completely. Ms. Ash has a fabulous way with her words in describing the thoughts, doubts, insecurities, and emotions of the characters of Emmie Morgan and Brandon Tan. It is a not-to-miss book and one that I will definitely reread.”
– Paula Pugh, Goodreads Reviewer

Prologue

It wasn’t the first time Brandon Tan had entered the cardiac ward to be accosted by his best friend’s family. This evening, Emmie’s sister Lizzy stood literally half a step around the corridor corner, writing on her palm as she waited.

“Liz, hey.” He pulled up short, startled.

She gave an apologetic wince before tugging him into step beside her. The hospital corridor smelled too familiar. The sharp scent of antiseptic clung to the back of his tongue. As he walked, exhaustion slowed him like a sandbag on his shoulders. Sleep had long refused to acknowledge him. Grit lined his eyes, his muscles ached, and a hard day at the restaurant topped off what had to be the most significant week of his life.

“She’s stable and adamantly alert.” Lizzy’s tone was focused as they approached room seventeen. In her surgeon scrubs, she’d evidently come straight up from surgery and was still in the zone. “And every time she wakes up, she wants to know where you are.”

Her words flared in his chest, but he kept his expression easy. “Did she say why?”

“Not exactly, but I’m thinking in the realm of—she just survived a heart transplant and wants to see her bestie.”

He gave a nod as the flare expanded. Emmie wanted to see him. She had a new heart, new hope. Anticipation burned away his fatigue. Could this be it?

Lizzy stopped outside Emmie’s room, facing him. “Bran,” she said, pulling a hairpin from her pocket and jamming it near her bun. As far as he could tell, it just added another component to the disaster of her hair. “When you’re in there, remember she’s weak. She’s talking like she wants to march out the door, but we’ve got to keep her realistic. Maybe distract her by talking about her venue idea?”

“Sure,” he said.

“I’ll be back in a bit.” Then she beamed with suddenly wet eyes.

There’d been a lot of that this week.

He found Emmie asleep. Her dark hair was braided and tucked behind her shoulders. She wore her hospital gown backward and parted down her chest, concealing her modesty while avoiding contact with the heavy-duty dressing running down her sternum. Her parted lips looked soft, no longer cracked and dry. Color had returned to her light skin, but she was still a paler wash of the girl he’d first met at school six years ago, straight-backed and somber, offering to help with his literature essay.

She wasn’t alone. Her mother Vera slept in a chair on one side of the bed, head against the wall, her neck at an unfortunate angle and features slack with the weight of exhaustion. Emmie’s eldest sister Carrie sat on the other side of the bed. She glanced up from her book, met his gaze, and resumed reading. She wasn’t into small talk, and the past few days had evidently emptied her supply of public displays of recognition. Sleep deprivation puffed her eyelids—she looked as worn out as he felt. She wasn’t wearing a suit, and her short hair lay flat against her scalp. For nearly three months, she’d traded her executive office for a place by her sister’s bedside.

Bran placed his bag on the floor, a gentle lowering so as not to wake Emmie.

Her eyes sprang open anyway. Her brown gaze fixed on him.

Nerves locked his abs at her attention. With a half-smile, he motioned for her to go back to sleep. He even pillowed his hands by his ear, then closed his eyes briefly.

“Wow.” Her voice was husky, scratchy. “Be careful with those powers of persuasion.”

He lowered his hands, expression wry.

“I’m done with sleep.” Her eyes seemed to disagree, sagging to half-lidded. “I feel like I’ve slept my life away.”

“Just the boring part,” he said. If only that were true. More like the traumatic part, the terrifying part, the part where they’d all had to face the reality that she might not survive the long wait for an organ donor. The part where they’d sat silently around her bed and stared down the barrel of that possibility. Even then, she hadn’t slept through enough of it. She’d been on bed rest for months and low activity for an age before then. Sleeping had been something for her to do. A retreat away from the uncertainty of her future and the precariousness of her present. He understood. A python of fear had slithered into his gut as things degenerated, coiled cold and heavy, and he’d rarely been able to shake its presence.

Sleep had been his only relief, too.

“Bran,” she murmured, smiling his name. “Stop thinking sad things.”

“I’m just saying goodbye to them.” He dug a hand in his back pocket, swallowing around a familiar knot. “Today is a better day.”

“It is,” she answered on a happy breath.

Readiness overcame him. Waiting for this moment had been as torturous as her time on the waiting list. She’d known the likelihood of her health’s decline when she’d transferred to his school at sixteen—living closer to a city hospital had been why the Morgans had moved to San Diego in the first place. With an uncertain future, Emmie had decided her life would be complicated enough without romance, and she’d held firm—even as their friendship undertook a fragile evolution involving new glances that made him unusually aware of her eyelashes, fleeting yet intentional touches to the face, the hair, and something else, like a promise embedded deep that was beginning to stir.

They hadn’t spoken about it, but both knew everything would change when their attraction had the freedom to flourish.

This was what they’d waited for—their future had arrived.

Her hand flipped, palm up, on the covers.

He moved around Carrie to the vacant chair closest to the bedhead. He took Emmie’s hand, smiling when she squeezed his fingers.

“Go,” she whispered before lowering her gaze a little too slowly. His stomach jerked upward, trapped in a snare net. God, he loved those lashes.

“The San Diego sun continues to shine. I taught another parkour class this morning, then went out for lunch, like you said.” He stretched his legs out under the bed. She’d ordered him to eat somewhere new every day, because if hospital food had taught her anything, it was to enjoy meals wherever possible. “The tacos were appalling. Way too much lime juice, unless I accidentally ordered a palette cleanser, in which case, way too much salt.”

She closed her eyes, features warm. “You’re funny.”

“I passed a bulldog on the street. It had rolled onto its back and was refusing to get up—apparently, its walk was almost over.”

Her eyes opened, groggy but expectant.

Grinning, he pulled out his phone.

“How many photos of random dogs have you got on there?” Carrie eyed him, brow arching.

As many as Emmie wanted. He swiped to show her the labradoodle that lived in his apartment building, and again to show her a pug sitting in a washing basket at the laundromat.

“Oh, its face.” Emmie chuckled, a low sound. Looking briefly dazed, she squeezed his hand tightly. “Bran, I can laugh again. And talk. And breathe. It’s amazing.”

“So amazing,” he said, because if he tried to describe the true power of her transformation, his eyes would fill, his throat would close over, and he wouldn’t get another word out.

“I’m not in ICU anymore.”

“I know.” He smiled. “The minimal look suits you.”

“We can’t say the same for you, Bran.” This came from Vera, woken by their talk. Wincing as she stretched her neck, she gestured at his wrist. “Is that a new tattoo?”

He nodded, ignoring the dull heat circling his wrist beneath the bandage.

“Must have hurt,” she said with a cringe.

“Temporarily.”

Emmie’s frown was bleary. “What’s that one?”

He lowered his hand to his lap, out of sight. “You’ll see.”

Carrie’s nose stayed in her book. “You’re the most inked-up chef in California.”

“Not a chef yet,” he said, but he was working on it.

“I think the ink is sexy.” Vera winked at her youngest daughter. “It outlines his rough edges.”

Rough. He wasn’t rough. Just—quiet and kind of serious. Yeah, and tattooed, and okay, he owned the streets practicing parkour. He’d dropped out of school; he wasn’t an intellectual like Emmie and her sisters. He lacked the subtle polish of the Morgan women, so maybe that meant rough to someone like Vera.

“Mom,” Emmie said. Despite the morphine in her system, she managed to put a clear-cut warning in the word.

“What?” Her mom feigned confusion.

“Don’t call my friends sexy.”

“But he is, love. No point lying about it.”

“I’m not asking you to lie. I’m asking you to not say it.”

Bran’s gaze slid to Emmie. She hadn’t disagreed…

“The moment you’re healthy again, the rules rush in.” Vera mocked indignation as she raked her long ash-blonde hair into a ponytail, but delight lit her eyes. Her daughter’s spark was glowing with new life.

Emmie turned her head on the pillow, looking back at him. Her eyes were huge and dark, as if in this moment, he was all she saw. All she cared to see. The hospital room faded away, an unnecessary distraction when he had Emmie like this—awake, alert, her attention pouring into him.

“Thank you for reading to me. I could listen to you talk all day.” Her words were fuzzy around the edges. Painkillers clouded her system, though her consciousness seemed to rise like a spire through the fog. She was tenacious in mind and body. “That said, it was a unique kind of torture to listen to you adlib Harry Potter using chapter titles as your only plot guideline.”

So she had stayed awake that day. “But Harry defeated the Ghastly Button in time for his secret rendezvous with a certain Slytherin.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You know I ship Harry/Hermione.”

“Draco’s not that bad once you get to know him.”

Her derisive exhale disagreed.

“I thought enemies were hot.”

“I prefer friends-to-lovers,” she said.

He grinned. She blushed. His grin softened, his face warming with a blush of his own.

It was happening. The unexplored energy that had waited in the sidelines—patient, aching, enduring—was finally stepping forward. Their eyes met. Attraction opened between them, pushing everything else aside. His upcoming trip, her recovery. It all led to them being together.

He had a question to ask her. An innocent, timeless will you go out with me question that would have to keep until they weren’t surrounded by her family.

“I’ve missed your face,” he said quietly.

She managed to arch a brow. “Face specifically because…?”

“You’re—occupying it again.” He wasn’t good with words, not like she was, and he frowned, wanting to phrase this half-decently. “You look alert. Present. You’d retreated before, kind of like you didn’t have the strength to come right to the front of your face. But you’re here now, where I can see you again.”

“Bran,” she said softly. Then her affectionate smile faded. “You’re right. I’m back. And I’m ready to get going. No more sleeping, no more idling. You said you’d teach me parkour, right?”

“Sure.” He leaned back, a hand behind his head as he surveyed the room. “We’ll start with vaulting over the bed.”

“Don’t,” she said, tugging on his fingers. “I’m serious.”

Smiling, he tugged her fingers back. “I know. I promised I’d teach you.” A promise his fear had devoured, alongside the certainty of her future. But now, he promised it anew. “So I will. Give it a month or two and we’ll get out there.”

“Months?” Emmie’s wounded stare almost got the better of him. But her sternum-long bandage kind of helped him stay grounded in reality.

“Time will fly. You got your new heart on Tuesday. It’s already Friday. See?”

“But I’ve missed so much, wasted so much time. There are so many things I want to do,” she said, catching his eye. She dragged his hand closer to her side. “And need to do.”

He nodded. Over the years, she’d shared casual words of disappointment and furious outbursts at her inabilities. The rare tear-soaked depressions were worse than fury—they’d resented nothing and resisted nothing. And he’d felt just as powerless.

“I’ll help you,” he said.

“Help me now. Please, Bran.” Her tone was desperate. “It hurts to be and not do.”

“Hey.” He scooted the chair farther up the bedside before leaning his forearms against the mattress. Then he gave her an easy smile and his undivided attention. She stared back, her brown eyes grave. “Please note I’ve catalogued your begging for future reference. I know it’s frustrating. But lying here isn’t wasting time, okay? Healing your body is lesson one. Parkour is all about giving your body strong foundations.”

“I’m not your young grasshopper,” she muttered.

“You’re the one trying to leap all over the place.”

She grunted in irritation, but then said, “I was not begging.”

“Already catalogued.” He raised a shoulder.

A smile battled against her frown, and she covered it by saying, “You smell like garlic.”

“I’ve come from work.”

“Bring me anything?”

“I’m experimenting with a new sauce. Alex says it still tastes too much like Napoli—it’s nothing like Napoli—but when it’s right, you’ll be the first to try it.”

One of their pastimes. Emmie’s cardiomyopathy had restricted her activity by late high school. While he’d spent free time sprinting and leaping and running up walls in athletic playgrounds, she’d been forced to limit her exercise to walking the block. She’d been adamant that he not give up his activities to hang out with her, but as she’d worsened, she’d lacked energy to leave the house, particularly in the evenings. It had been an easy call to bring entertainment to her.

“Guilt company is worse than being alone,” she’d accused the first time he’d arrived with bags of groceries.

“Good thing I don’t feel guilty,” he’d answered while assessing the equipment in the Morgan family kitchen. At home, his mama had taught him every secret of Filipino cuisine, the various influences, simple dishes and complex, and he’d nailed it all. He was thirsty to expand his skillset, so any setup that included timbale molds and a dehydrator blew his mind. “This is next-level amazing. If you make me leave now, our friendship is over.”

She hadn’t asked him to leave. Instead, she’d turned harsh critic and pushed him to his budding-chef limits. Around the time he’d come close to perfecting the five signature sauces of French haute cuisine, she’d changed the course of his life by suggesting he leave high school for culinary school. She believed in him. After that, she’d convinced him to apply for a stage with one of the city’s top chefs—and he’d been granted that internship. She hadn’t let him quit. Not when his hands had burned from endless cuts and scalds, nor when the hours ran late, pressure mounted, and doubt circled.

He’d come out the other side, and he owed it to her.

“Liz said you wanted to talk,” he said.

Her features grew serious. She shifted her head on the pillow, turning her face toward him, bringing her fractionally closer. Her voice was a whisper. “I do.”

He waited, hand still in hers.

“I want to ask you something.” Her gaze was intent on him, but lacked focus. “Come closer.”

A noise came from the doorway—the telltale bang of someone walking into the half-open door, then Lizzy saying, “Ow.”

Emmie didn’t break eye contact, so he didn’t turn away, but easily caught the whispered information exchange behind him.

Lizzy: “They’re holding hands.”

Carrie: “We’ve noticed.”

Vera: “It’s cute.”

Lizzy: “So soon?”

Vera: “Why wait?”

Carrie: “Because morphine.”

His jaw flexed. This had nothing to do with opiates and everything to do with a long time coming. He raised his brows at Emmie to prompt her.

“You are sexy,” Emmie murmured.

Her family’s presence ceased to exist.

“You’ve never treated me like I’m sick,” she said, words soft and thick. “You’ve never left my side. I knew you were there, even when I didn’t have the energy to move. You visited almost every day.”

“You’d have done it for me.”

“Yes.” She shifted again, sliding her head just that little bit closer across the pillow. Her grip was tight. “Bran,” she whispered. “Can you marry me?”

The question sucked at his heartbeat.

His pulse stuttered at the base of his throat, thin, hollowed out.

Marry me.

His response was mostly exhaled breath. “What?”

“I want you to marry me.” Longing widened her eyes. She didn’t look away. “Can I marry you?”

Shock had snatched him in a tight clasp. He couldn’t move, couldn’t answer. For so long, he’d endured their unspoken attraction—lingering glances, secretive smiles, and thrumming silences. He’d waited, understanding she was in no position to enter a relationship.

And now, she was offering a lifetime.

Confusion overrode what should be buoyant, chest-thumping joy. Marriage would springboard them over the natural progression of relationships. Skip the anticipation, excitement, and significance of sliding from kissing to touching, dating to exclusivity, and one day to one day soon.

They were young. Only twenty-two. This rush was needless, uncomfortable, like she’d moved them a space backward on a board game to the finish without even playing.

“I—uh…” He cleared his throat. “This is sudden, Em.”

She blinked slowly. Sadness pulled down her features. “You don’t want to.”

God. How could he explain what he wanted? The way he felt for her was an ache trapped inside him. A pressure fit to burst his ribs apart. Yet, the ache would ease from a kiss or a hug that meant more than friendship. The ache didn’t need a ring on their fingers, not already.

“It’s not that,” he said, feeling the hard and unforgiving chair beneath him. “But we’re not even in a relationship, and you’ve never wanted marriage. You’ve always said it’s antiquated. That love is no less valid without matrimony.”

“I know.” Confusion dug between her brows. “I do think that. But I feel like—urgent—to marry.” Her eyes widened. “I don’t know. I think…” She frowned up at the hospital room ceiling. “I didn’t give love a chance before. I didn’t have the capacity. And now it’s like I’ve realized how lucky I am to be here, to experience the best of life. I think this is love speaking louder than reason.”

Stunned, he said, “Love?”

Her smile was gentle with longing.

He staggered around the thought that they’d both been hiding more than attraction behind friendship. She’d always believed in him, in his cooking, his companionship, and his decisions, more than anyone. She’d never doubted why he wanted to store memories on his skin—imprinting the things that had strongly shaped his identity—and never told him he’d regret it. She was the only person who’d respected his goals; the only person who fully committed to him and what he wanted to achieve in life. He loved her for that—for a lot more than that. “Do you really feel this way?”

Her thumb brushed over the back of his hand. “Of course, Bran.”

The suddenness of it spun his head. “Okay, yes,” he said, lightheaded. They could do a long engagement. They didn’t have to skip anything. “I will—marry you.”

“Oh,” she breathed, a long happy sigh, and smiled at him with such relief that his heart swelled. “Yay.”

“Yay,” he said, grinning.

Then she closed her eyes, her mouth curved up in a smile—and he became aware of the screaming silence behind him.

Swallowing, he turned. Vera sat with a hand over her mouth, eyes wide and brows high. Lizzy was blinking in shock. Carrie’s stare was hard, accusing, and it dawned on him that she’d excused her sister’s proposal on drugs and post-surgery disorientation.

Emmie still held his hand.

He squeezed it. She’d meant every word. He knew it. The sincerity in her eyes hadn’t lied. She’d spoken from the spire, not the fog. She loved him.

“You know I love her, too,” he said firmly.

Vera uncovered her mouth, then spoke into the silence. “Yes, goodness, but what a surprise.” She gave a too-bright smile, cringing at the shoulders. “Welcome to the family.”