I had to get control of my hormones, or this was going to make for a very long day.
I poured the waffle mix into a cup and then transferred it to the waffle maker as my parents walked up.
“Good morning,” I said, and my dad clapped his hand on my shoulder.
I glanced at my mom. She was dressed and ready for the day.
“You look gorgeous, Mom.”
She lit up and pulled me into a hug while my dad headed over to the coffee machine. “When are you getting dressed? Bridal party pictures are in two hours.”
“Probably in about one hour and forty-five minutes.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t make your sister mad today. You know how she gets.”
“How’s she doing?”
I tended to tease my sister a lot, but I loved my family. I had a soft spot for Quinn that had only deepened as I watched her fall in love with my friend. She had been through more than I knew, more than she’d ever shared with me. I was thrilled she’d met and fallen for a guy like Reed, and I was glad to be welcoming him to our family.
“She’s surprisingly calm.”
“I think that’s the effect Reed has on her.”
“Have you seen him this morning?” My mom pulled a peach yogurt out of the bowl and I shifted uncomfortably as I thought about what I’d just said to Avery.
“No. I’ll catch up with him after breakfast.”
“You’re so laid back. It drives me crazy sometimes, Grant.”
I slung my arm around my mom’s shoulders. “What’s there to worry about?”
“Only everything.”
“I see where Quinn gets it.”
My mom glared at me, and I laughed. The waffle maker beeped, indicating my breakfast was ready. I set it on the plate and covered it with syrup, grabbed a banana and a peach yogurt of my own, and sat at a table.
My dad set his coffee down at my table and joined my mom by the food to get his own plate. I slid my phone out of my pocket to fire off a quick text to Reed to check to see if he needed anything.
I had a new text from Avery.
Just thought you should know I finished both of my peach yogurts. –A
I grinned down at my phone.
Good girl. –G
I included a picture of my own empty peach yogurt.
My parents sat. “What are you smiling about?” my mom asked.
“Nothing,” I mumbled, setting my phone on the table facedown. I hadn’t even realized I’d been smiling.
My mom raised my eyebrows at my dad, who said nothing.
“What?”
My mom shrugged. “That ‘nothing.’ That smile. Is it a girl?”
Shit. She was dangerously close to the truth, but it wasn’t just any girl. This was Avery, one of my sister’s best friends.
I ignored the question in favor of a bite of my waffle.
My mom was starting to get the grandmother itch, and I was certain she had expected her son to get married before her daughter. I knew she just wanted me to be happy, and I understood her concerns considering I’d never brought home a girl to meet my parents. But I’d never met anyone worthy of meeting my parents, not since Rachelle.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes.”
“Take it how you want. I’m just enjoying my waffle.”
“Why didn’t you bring a date to the wedding?” she grilled.
“What are you, twelve?” I gave my dad, who had thus far remained silent, a look indicating I needed him to help me out.
He just shrugged and rolled his eyes, as if to say, “You know how your mother is.”
Thanks, Dad.
“I’m just curious, Grant. You’re thirty-two. Haven’t you thought about settling down?”
The funny thing was that I had, in fact, thought about settling down. I had planned on it, actually.
But that was a long time ago.
CHAPTER 6
SEVEN YEARS EARLIER
“No.”
It was the only word I hadn’t expected to hear fall from her perfect mouth in the thousands of scenarios I’d pictured when I had thought about this moment.
But it was the single word that had the ability to rip my heart out of my chest and shove it back up my ass.
That’s how it felt, anyway.
“No?” I repeated, feeling stupid and small and insecure – three things I never, ever felt. Three things only the word “no” from Rachelle in this very moment could make me feel.
“I… I can’t, Grant.”
Can’t Grant… Can’t Grant… Can’t Grant.
Her rhyming denial echoed in my mind.
“But I love you.” My voice sounded like someone else’s, not like the strong adult I’d somehow grown into.
“And I love you. But marriage?”
“If not marriage, then where do you see this going?”
She glanced away, and I felt her cold hands drop mine. “You’re not marriage material, Grant.” Her voice was soft, but it was far from soothing.
That was the single moment I knew it was over.
She didn’t want a future with me. She didn’t see a life with me even though it was all I had dreamed of with her.
That was the moment when I stopped dreaming of the future and started living for the moment.
She had broken me, shattered me into a million pieces when she’d told me no, but I had no idea what the future held in store for me.
I had no idea that one day down the road, she’d walk back into my life.
I had no idea that when she did walk back in, the pain and destruction she left behind would be far, far worse than her simple denial.
You never really hear the stories of engagement denials. You only ever hear about the good stories, the ones that work out. The ones where the woman says, “Yes.”
But my story is the one where she said, “No.”
It was awkward as soon as I realized it was a negative.
I stared at her, memorizing every millimeter of gorgeous skin she owned and knowing full well what we had was over but not willing to be the one to end it. Because as soon as this moment ended, that meant we ended, too.
The eyes I knew so well and I had imagined looking into as we grew old together wouldn’t meet mine.
I thought I had planned the evening perfectly. I didn’t want some stupid cliché engagement story to share with everyone, so I planned a huge surprise.
Shit, she hadn’t even met my family. There was absolutely no way she would have expected it.
I hadn’t been nervous going into it. I knew I wanted to spend my life with her, and based on the conversations we’d had, I was fairly certain she felt the same. I was ready to take that step and make that commitment.
She loved animals, so I did it at the zoo. We had known each other since college. I’d been her friend before I’d fallen in love with her, and our friendship first was enough to convince me we would make it the distance.
It was in front of the giraffes – her favorite animal – where I dropped down on one knee. She’d looked at me like I was insane, and then I had said, “Rachelle, I love you. I want a future with you. Marry me.”
I’ve already mentioned her response.
So I stared at the giraffes and decided I hated giraffes from that moment forward. Anything giraffe could go to hell.
Even that video of the mother birthing the baby giraffe. Fuck it. I hated it.
And the poster of the mother giraffe kissing the baby giraffe? Fucking gag me.
We walked awkwardly toward the zoo exit and back to the car. I drove her home in silence, rolling her words over in my mind. I didn’t want silence. I wanted her to explain herself. I wanted to know why she didn’t see the same future I did. I wanted to know why she had diagnosed me as someone who wasn’t “marriage material.”
I wanted a second opinion.
But what I wanted didn’t matter, because I had no idea how to break the silence filling the space between us.
I dropped
her off at her apartment, and that was it.
After that, we didn’t speak for three years.
When I walked into my house, I glanced around the place, thinking what it would’ve been like to come back and celebrate our engagement. I never once even pondered the idea I might end up alone that night. I never imagined for a second she wouldn’t be as excited as I was to start our future together.
I tossed my keys on my counter and wandered quietly through the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and peered in. After a full minute of staring at the contents inside of my fridge, I pulled out a bottle of beer.
I stared at the bottle for a while before hurtling it to the ground. Glass shattered and amber liquid spread in a soft, slow wave across my floor. The smell of yeast pervaded my nostrils, but none of it had any effect on me.
I went to my liquor cabinet and poured myself a tall tumbler of scotch. My goal was to drink until I passed out, to numb the pain from the rejection I never saw coming.
When I woke up on my couch the next morning, it was hard to look at reaching my goal as a success.
My head pounded from the liquor, but worse than that, I felt as shattered as the broken bottle of beer I’d slammed against my floor the night before… which I completely forgot about until I stepped on the broken glass.
“Fuck,” I muttered to no one in particular.
I extracted a small glass shard from my heel and pressed a wet paper towel to the wound, not really sure what to do for myself. I was hung over, miserable, and now bleeding, and I blamed Rachelle for all of it.
Fucking Rachelle. The girl who I loved was now the bitch who ruined my life.
Even as I thought it, it felt wrong. She wasn’t a bitch. But she had ruined my life.
She’d broken my heart.
I’d never known what a real broken heart was like, but I was about to.
CHAPTER 7
I shook my head to clear Rachelle out of it as I buttoned my white tuxedo shirt on my sister’s wedding day. There was no sense dwelling on the past. Sure, I’d wanted the happy ending and the future with the woman I loved, but I couldn’t change it now.
And after the last time I’d seen her, I didn’t want to change it.
I hadn’t had any idea what she was capable of, and even though I would always love her and she would always own my heart, I also hated her not just for saying “no,” not just for her vicious words to me, but also for what she did to me the last time I had seen her.
I stood in front of the mirror. I knotted my tie and tried to focus on the day ahead of me instead of the memories that consumed me.
I took a shaky breath as I stared at my reflection. I hadn’t expected the anxiety this day was causing me. I’d stood up in plenty of weddings since things had gone down with Rachelle. Shit, practically every guy I went to college with had gotten married and was having kids, and I was the eternal bachelor who they all counted on for a good time. I was the one they all came to when they needed a night away. I was the one they bitched to about their marriages. I was the one they joked with when they reminisced about their former single lives as they proclaimed how great I had it.
But they all got to go home to their wives while I went home to an empty bed or to the bed of some woman I’d likely never see again.
I liked my freedom. I enjoyed my life. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother’s words at breakfast. “You’re thirty-two. Haven’t you thought about settling down?” Add that to Rachelle’s echoing chorus of “Can’t Grant” that had played on repeat in my head for the past seven years and the look on my sister’s face the night before when she looked with worship at the man she was going to marry.
I had to wonder if I was missing out on something.
I slipped my phone into the pants of my tux and headed toward Reed’s room. The ceremony was scheduled to begin at two o’clock. We had about three hours until show time, but the men had pictures at noon.
Reed was a nervous wreck when he opened the door. His two friends from Wisconsin and his dad were in his room. It was the bridal suite, the room I’d be helping Avery decorate a little later.
Reed actually looked anxious. His eyes were darting everywhere, his hands were shaking, and his tie was crooked. He’d pull it together, but at the moment he was a bit of a mess.
“Where the hell have you been?” he greeted me.
“Good morning to you, too,” I said, grinning. I glanced at my wrist. “Am I late?” I didn’t think I was. As far as I knew, I was supposed to meet in Reed’s room around eleven. I was right on time.
“I need you to do me a favor.”
“I need you to calm down.”
He shoved an envelope and a wrapped box toward me. “Bring these to Quinn.”
“You got it, man. Anything else? A beer? Shot of tequila? Some Prozac, maybe?”
He gave me a sharp look that very clearly told me to fuck off.
“I’ll be back,” I said, backing out of the room with Reed’s adorably cliché gift.
I checked my texts to ensure I was going to the right room and knocked on Quinn’s door a few minutes later. Veronica opened it. Avery was adjusting Quinn’s veil across the room.
My sister looked like an angel.
But the woman adjusting her veil simply took my breath away.
I stopped in my tracks and stared. I couldn’t help it.
The bridesmaid dresses were simple and black, but somehow Avery’s fit her like a second skin. The dress was modest enough to be acceptable for a wedding, but it showed off just enough to leave me wanting so much more.
And that “more” was what I knew I’d get my hands on later that night.
My dick hardened almost immediately at the thought. It was alarming how much I wanted her.
I took a deep breath and forced my eyes onto my sister.
“You look beautiful, Quinn,” I said, my eyes darting over to Avery’s briefly.
Quinn smiled widely. She was glowing and calm and Reed’s exact opposite, and the funny thing was I would’ve guessed the reverse. Reed always had his shit together while my sister tended to be the anxious and reckless one.
“Thank you.” Her voice was steady, unlike nervous wreck Reed. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s great.”
“Yeah?” she asked, the first hint of anxiety showing through.
I nodded. I wasn’t about to let her know her future husband had appeared to be having a breakdown.
“He wanted me to bring you this.” I handed her the envelope and the box, and her eyes lit up.
She tore open the card. My eyes met Avery’s while Quinn read the card, and I raised my eyebrows at her and sent a secret smile her way. A faint smile broke out across her lips. Neither of us wanted to break the staring contest we were having, her brown eyes glued to mine.
Quinn sniffled and broke our trance.
“No tears, Quinners. You’ll mess up your make-up,” Avery admonished, the secret moment between us over.
“I know. He’s just… God, he’s just so perfect.”
She opened the box and pulled out a platinum bracelet with tiny diamond-encrusted owls. Her hand came up to cover her mouth.
“It’s beautiful,” Veronica breathed, coming over to help Quinn clasp it on.
“I have something for him, too. Will you bring it to him, Grant?”
“Of course. Best Man duties.”
“You said ‘duties’,” Quinn giggled, immature even in her grown-up white wedding dress as she fawned over her gift from her future husband.
I laughed, and I saw Avery watching me out of the corner of my eye. I saw the way she drew in a breath when my mouth widened in a smile. I saw her tongue dart out to wet her lips as she subconsciously leaned her head back a bit, exposing the gorgeous skin of her neck. That same skin I’d briefly tasted the night before. That same skin I wanted to taste again.
I saw the effect I had on her, and I liked it. And I already knew what sort of effect she had on me. My hard dick w
as a constant reminder of that particular truth.
Quinn pulled a gift bag out of her suitcase and handed it to me. “Thanks, Grump.”
“Anything for you, Curley Q.” I kissed her cheek. “You tell me if you need anything. I’ll have my phone.”
She nodded. My eyes met Avery’s one last time, and then I headed back to the men as I tried to repress the unfamiliar emotions I felt in Avery’s presence.
It was strange. I’d been around her plenty of times, but she was always just my younger sister’s friend.
Everything changed at the engagement party. The echo of denial was replaced with an echo of her repeating over and over that I was going to be calling out her name. I didn’t care if it had been a joke. The fact was she’d said it, and those words had stuck with me.
Her face went from an acquaintance to one I searched out in the room.
She had said she wanted a shot with me, and she was damn well going to have it. That kiss in my hotel room the night before was a mild prequel to what I was planning to do to her later that night.
I knocked on Reed’s door, trying to shake off the Avery fog I found myself under. This time Paul opened the door and Reed sat on the edge of the bed, sipping a glass of ice water.
“You okay, man?” I asked Reed.
He shrugged. He looked a little green.
“I have something from Quinn.”
His eyes snapped up to mine at the sound of my sister’s name.
I handed him the bag. He fumbled around in it and produced a card. He read the card in silence, and I saw his features relax as he read the words his future wife had written to him.
He reached into the bag and pulled out a pair of thick wool socks. “In case I get cold feet,” he explained, and I chuckled. That was my sister for you.
He took a box out of the bag and opened it. He smiled as he pulled out a pair of cufflinks. He showed one to me, and it had the letter “Q” with an owl perched inside the circle of the letter.
They really were perfect for each other.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to find a text from Avery.
Second Opinion Page 5