Preston bit my lip as he came, a hot, delicious rush inside of me, and I cried out again at the sensation. Fuck, yes. Last time we’d done this, Preston had fished a condom out of his wallet—I still wasn’t sure when, my mind had been too hazy with pleasure to recall—and I suspected there was a supply of condoms in the honeymoon suite somewhere but neither of us had thought this would happen, so neither of us had grabbed them. Feeling him completely inside of me like this was a rush that I hadn’t at all expected.
Preston had to be exhausted from making such thorough love to me, but he got up anyway and went into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a warm, wet towel to clean us up. I must have looked a mess, lying naked on top of his shirt and a bathrobe, the scattered pieces of the board game just off to the side. But Preston looked at me like I was the picture of decadence.
After we were cleaned up and I was back in the bathrobe, Preston started putting the game pieces away. I watched him. Part of me wanted to just make a joke about how he was trying to avoid the fact that I was winning the game—trying to get out of losing—to just joke around and not discuss what had happened.
But I hadn’t gotten anywhere in life by avoiding conflict or challenges. That was all that being a small business owner was, or so it felt like a lot of the time. I took a deep breath.
“What just happened… it was good, but it was a mistake.”
We led completely separate lives. I had my work, and he had his. Preston came from a rich upper-class family that had never really liked mine, and there was still the small matter of Tenor losing his mind if he found out about us. Honestly that was the least of my worries. If I’d been in love with Preston, then I wouldn’t have let Tenor stop me from being with him. But I certainly wouldn’t let myself fall for Preston now. I was older. I understood how the rules worked.
Besides, how could I possibly get over what happened five years ago? Even if Preston decided he could get over the whole Tenor thing this time. Even if he would tell his family to shove off with their opinions of my economic status. Even if we found a way to make everything else work—how could I forget what he’d done to me?
Preston sighed when I spoke out loud. “I know.” He sounded… reluctant, but resigned. “I’m still close friends with Tenor and he’ll kill us if he finds out.”
I knew that Preston and Tenor had always stayed close. Somehow Tenor had missed all the rumors about me at college, probably because he’d been a senior and busy with his band, and I’d never told him what Preston had done. I wasn’t going to ruin over a decade of friendship when Preston had only ever been good to Tenor, and I sure wasn’t going to let Tenor cause a stink rushing in to defend my honor. I’d honestly just wanted the whole thing to go away. It was why I’d transferred colleges.
“This isn’t about Tenor,” I said, surprised. That was what Preston was bringing up? Out of all the possible things? I couldn’t believe that tenor was the thing he was hung up on. “It’s that we are not good together. We live in separate cities, have wildly different lives, and until yesterday, I hated you.”
“You made that rather clear in that scathing letter you sent when you transferred,” Preston pointed out. “I still have it, actually. I’ve never been so colorfully insulted in my life, and I’m a lawyer.”
Yeah, I was sure he’d gotten all kinds of insults. But I’d been creative. I hadn’t just settled for swear words, since anybody could use those, I’d really dug into my vocabulary and descriptors.
But anyway. “You kept it?”
“Of course.” Preston shrugged. “It was clever. And it was an important part of my life, I had to keep it.”
An important part of his life?
“I would love to know why you hated me, though,” Preston went on. “You were never specific about that.”
I’d never been specific because why would I be? He knew what he’d done and why I—and why any other sensible person—would hate him. I had nothing to say about specifics.
But now it seemed like he really didn’t know? How could he not know? Had he forgotten? Had it really meant that little to him?
“You don’t know?” I snapped, drawing my bathrobe tighter around me and getting up onto my feet. “Are you kidding me?”
Preston stared up at me with utter confusion on his face. “No, I’m not. Seriously. Why do you hate me?”
Oh, boy, was he in for a goddamn storm. If he’d thought the snow outside was bad? He’d been dead wrong.
13
Preston
Lyric looked disbelieving and thunderous. “Are you really telling me that you don’t know what you did? How much it hurt? Or was it that little of a deal to you? Did you think I would just get over it? Or have you forgotten because you treated so many other women like that, I don’t even register. I’m not even a blip on the radar.”
I stood up. I was definitely taller than Lyric, but right now, she seemed towering. She sure wasn’t going to let my height affect anything. She looked like she might actually start swinging at me.
“You told everyone about how we’d had sex,” Lyric snapped. Her voice was like the crack of a whip. “You told everyone who’d listen that I was a slut, and by the next day, everyone was in my face about it.”
“What are you talking about!?” This was insane. Out of all the reasons—I’d thought she hated me perhaps because I’d chosen my friendship with Tenor over her, but how could I have chosen a possible romance with one person—a romance that might not work out—over my ten years of friendship with her brother?
“I never told anyone that we had sex,” I promised her. “I wouldn’t have. Why the hell would I do that when I’d just agreed that it was a mistake and told you that Tenor could never find out? Going around telling everyone that I’d slept with you would have the opposite damn effect!”
Somehow I had never heard this rumor that Lyric was a slut. Amherst wasn’t that big of a college. How had I missed this? I would’ve defended her, I would’ve set the record straight. What the fuck?
“Then how the hell did everyone know some pretty specific details?” Lyric fired back. “The fact that you ate me out first, the fact that you called me darling—people knew shit that only you could’ve told them! I had to fucking change schools because people wouldn’t let up about it. How the hell can you tell me that it wasn’t you!?”
“Because it wasn’t!” I did feel a bit hurt that she would think me capable of such a thing, but I was a lot more confused. How could this have happened? I hadn’t told anyone about our hook up, and there hadn’t been anybody in the hallway when I’d opened the laundry room door.
Lyric wasn’t going to appreciate my continued protests, though. The fact was—I had no way to prove that I hadn’t said anything. There was no proof, no witnesses, nothing to show that I hadn’t been the one to spread that rumor. Lyric clearly wasn’t taking my word for it—and I wasn’t sure I could blame her. What other conclusion was she supposed to come to? Hell, I sure didn’t know what had happened or how someone had found all that out and spread it around.
“I’m sorry.” I wanted to reach out and take her hands, but I had a feeling she didn’t want me to touch her right then. “I’m so sorry, Lyric. However it happened, you were really hurt. That was unfair for someone to do to you, and I’m sorry for any part that I played in it.”
Lyric nodded, looking down at the floor and folding her arms across herself. The anger in her face cracked a little, and she bit her lip. I was sure I could see hurt flashing in her eyes.
Fuck. I didn’t want her to be hurt. Anger I could handle. But this was clearly something she still hadn’t gotten over. A wound that hadn’t quite healed. And well—if it was fucking bad enough she’d had to change colleges, I didn’t blame her for still carrying a bit of a grudge. That was a huge problem.
I looked up and out the window to try and distract myself, try to figure out what to say. Huh. The snowstorm had finally stopped. There were no more flakes falling down from the sky.
“Why don’t we go on a short walk,” I suggested. “Stretch our legs?”
Lyric looked up, following my gaze, and saw that the snow wasn’t falling any longer. She glanced at me warily, then out through the window again, then back at me. “Sure.”
It was awkward as hell. Both of us were unsure what to say. I didn’t know how to apologize enough, or make up for what had happened—I still had no clue how it had happened in the first place. And Lyric was still angry but she also just looked… tired and hurt.
She put my shirt back on and then bundled herself up in her other winter layers for going outside. It would be too cold for a long walk for her but it would be nice for a short bit. I wouldn’t want us to go far from the house right now anyway. You never knew when another storm might hit.
It was eerily quiet out in the ice sculpture garden. “I’m pretty sure this is where the killer appears,” I noted.
“I’m reminded of The Shining,” Lyric admitted, the corner of her mouth curling upward. “But I thought that was just me.”
That was a hedge maze, but I knew what she was getting at. I chuckled. “It really is weird. Whose idea was this?”
“Ugh, I don’t even remember.” Lyric shook her head, laughing slightly. “They were both so full of crazy ideas. They wanted this to be a fairytale and I get that, most couples do, but… there’s a line, and it was ridiculous. Did you know what their plan was?”
“No, Chad didn’t tell me much. Probably because he knew I’d try and dissuade him. I was always doing that as kids. Trying to come up with some harebrained scheme and I would stop him, or try to stop him, and then he’d get in trouble and somehow find a way to resent me for it and blame me. It wasn’t like I ever told on him,” I snorted. “It was his own damn idiocy that’d fucking lead to his plans falling apart.”
Lyric shook her head again, smiling a bit wider now. “Well, wait until you hear this. They wanted everyone to come up here for the reception out into the ice garden, and then they were going to ski down here into the garden.”
“Ski?” I burst out laughing at the image. Chad in his suit and Bree in her dress, the two of them trying to do an athletic winter sport while wearing clothes that weren’t built for athleticism or winter.
“Yup.” Lyric sighed, but she was still smiling, so I counted it as a win. She brushed some snow off one of the sculptures. “I tried to dissuade them, tried to point out the ways that it would go wrong, but they didn’t want to listen to me. They just wanted me to do what they told me and find a way to make it work.”
“I’m almost glad this snowstorm happened,” I admitted. “They don’t deserve a crazy fancy wedding. If they’re going to make fucking ridiculous demands like this…”
“Ugh, I know. I feel bad almost, I don’t want to wish ill on people or judge them but honestly? I agree.” Lyric wrapped her arms around herself and stared out over the sculpture garden. “I do feel bad that all this hard work is going to waste.”
“Not exactly. We’re enjoying it, after all.”
“Oh, I know. And it is kind of pretty. Just out here like this with the snow. But all these people came here to enjoy the food and the view and the garden… and now nobody’s going to see it or have it except for us.”
“I get that.” Yeah, that was fair. “But at least we’re making the most of it.”
If you could call having sex and breaking out the champagne making the most of it. I made a mental note to send a thank-you to the caterers who’d made the food, it really was delicious.
“Sounds to me like they wanted their guests to go home with gift bags and hypothermia,” I noted, trying to put us on a more lighthearted subject.
Lyric laughed, bright and clear as a bell. I loved that laugh. I was sure I could turn this around. Whatever our past was and whatever craziness the weekend had thrown at us.
But this was a mistake, the other part of my mind whispered. You can’t upset Tenor, and it would never work out between you two.
Lyric had been right. I shouldn’t let myself get wrapped up in the fairytale wonderland of this whole thing. It couldn’t last. It wasn’t real—it was just the circumstances. It was just that I wanted it to be real.
“We should start thinking about dinner,” I said. Lyric would be too cold to be outside soon, and it was getting later in the day. “Before one of these sculptures comes to life and tries to kill us.”
“Like Calvin and Hobbes,” Lyric said with a grin. “The Killer Monster Snow Goons.”
I laughed. I had almost forgotten—Tenor used to read Calvin and Hobbes comics to her. They had the entire collection. “Exactly. And I refuse to die in such an undignified way.”
“And what would be dignified enough for you, O Fancy Lawyer?”
“Dramatically shot in the courtroom by a mafia hitman,” I replied immediately.
Lyric laughed again. “You know, instead of a proper dinner… I know something else that’s just going to go to waste.”
“Oh?”
Lyric turned and nodded towards the large table that was off to the side. There, completely boxed up and covered in a clear plastic container, was the wedding cake.
“It’ll get stale soon,” Lyric explained. “Why not dig in?”
Hmmm. If my family found out we’d dug into the wedding cake they were going to have a fit. I supposed because of tradition, or since it was the symbol of the wedding more than any other food, but the idea of us eating the cake was probably going to drive them nuts.
Hell yes.
“Let’s do it.”
Lyric looked delighted. I helped her carry the cake inside so that it could warm up a bit before we ate it.
While we were waiting, I retrieved another bottle of wine from the collection that was stocked up here for the wedding. I was sure there was a proper wine cellar around here—what annoying rich asshole would build a mansion without including a wine cellar—but that wasn’t ours to take, it belonged to the owner.
“How’d you get into the wedding planning business?” I asked, pouring her a glass.
“Technically I’m an event planner,” Lyric explained. “Weddings earn me a lot of money and they’re all year round so I end up doing more of them than I’d like, but I do all kinds of events, including graduations, corporate events… birthdays… the works. Brides tend to be a handful so I prefer to avoid them if I can. But this was just such a great paycheck and I had nothing else going on this month so I couldn’t really turn it down.”
“I get that.” I poured my own glass and sat down next to her. “You’ve had to deal with a lot of Bridezillas, huh?”
“Oh, my God.” Lyric sipped her wine. “Bree’s far from the first. There’s just so much pressure to make this day perfect and they build it up in their heads, they let it get to them. I had a bride run out on the wedding one time—she was in love with the guy, but she was just so sick of the wedding she couldn’t stand it anymore. I found her bumming a cigarette off a waiter for the reception out back of the event center.
“And then—there was the wedding where I had to split up three couples having sex. Three of ‘em. One was a bridesmaid and a groomsman, not surprising, but the second one was the mother of the bride and the groom’s uncle and the third was the groom with his best man.”
“Oh my God.” I started laughing, imagining everyone’s faces. “You’ve got to be kidding me. All at the same wedding?”
“All at the same wedding! The bride threw an unholy fit, let me tell you.” Lyric shook her head ruefully, smiling. “I can laugh about it now but at the time I just wanted to crawl into a hole and not have to deal with this crazy family mess.
“And I wish brides would understand—or their mothers, or whoever, honestly—that something’s going to go wrong the day of the wedding. Something always does. And they act like I’m slacking on my job and don’t care. They care so much and they don’t realize that I care too.”
“I get that. My clients sometimes feel the same way when I�
��m working a case for them. They’re often panicked or afraid, or angry, and they don’t realize that I care too and I’m really trying to do everything to help them.”
Lyric nodded emphatically. “Yes! Oh my God, I had this one bride who wanted to skydive into her wedding. I had to put a stop to that.”
“That sounds like a death waiting to happen.” I leaned in a little. “Okay. Worst bride you’ve ever had to deal with. You tell me and I’ll tell you the worst client I ever had to deal with.”
“Deal.” Lyric grinned. “I bet mine is worse than yours.”
“Oh, you are so on.” It was like our competitiveness with the board games. I loved it. “Ladies first.”
Lyric toasted me with her glass, then launched into her story.
14
Lyric
Okay, I could admit that Preston had dealt with some pretty crazy clients over the years. I had no idea that lawyers often had to deal with such batshit, ridiculous cases. But I was still sure that I’d won and that my nonsense with weddings was crazier than anything he’d had to deal with as a lawyer.
“Cake’s warm enough,” Preston announced. “I think.”
I checked. “I think so if you ask me.”
It was a beautiful cake: three tiers, decorated with lovely chocolate swirls, it was truly elegant. It wasn’t ostentatious like the rest of the stuff for this wedding. I actually liked the cake. Seemed a shame to eat it.
On the other hand, my stomach was rumbling and I wanted something besides more canapes.
Preston cut us both slices and put each one on a plate, then paused. “Hey, maybe we should give one tradition a try.”
“Which one?” I asked.
Preston grinned and held up a slice of cake. “Feeding it to each other.”
I laughed. Y’know what? Sure. Why the hell not. “Only if you promise not to smear it all over my face.”
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