by Katy Evans
“No clue.”
I give him a sideways glance. “Really?”
He shrugs. “I mean, yeah. Obviously, you’re not my type at all.”
Oh. So that whole you’re insanely beautiful thing was just a line. “Right. Obviously you’re like Aaron. You may not want the triple D’s, but you want the Catwoman. Considering how excited you were by the outfit.”
He nods. “Right.”
“I’ll tell you what. How about I give it to you, and you can get your girlfriend to wear it? That is, if you ever have a girlfriend?”
He shakes his head. “That’s nice of you to offer. But again, big if.”
“Right. I forgot. One-night stands are more your thing. No one meets your impossibly high standards to warrant that repeat engagement.”
He narrows his eyes and growls low, “That again? Why do you care? Because you were one of my legions of hot women? You curious as to how you stacked up against the competition? Is that it?”
I freeze, speechless for a moment. Then I realize I have the perfect out. “You think I’m hot?”
“Ha. Ha.” He pulls open the door to the building and lets me go inside. “Maybe you should stop being so curious. You know what they say about curiosity.”
Clumps of snow that had been clinging to my clothing drop on the floor as I walk in.
He doesn’t wait for me to answer. He scans down to my boots. “It killed the cat…woman.”
“Oh. You’re such a comedian.”
The heat hits me hard, making my skin burn all over. My clothes are so wet, their dampness grating against my already irritated skin. I wrap my arms around my soaked cardigan and shiver.
He watches me. “Come here.”
For a second, I wonder if he’s going to offer to warm me up again, but he doesn’t. Which is a good thing, because I can’t accept. Outside, I was mere millimeters away from kissing him again. In fact, I wanted it. A couple of millimeters were all that existed between being a good wife and an awful human being.
I follow him into the ladies’ bathroom, my teeth chattering. The second I get in there, he presses the button for the automatic hand dryer and moves me into the stream of it. It’s not hugely better, but it helps.
“These boots were a mistake, I think,” I say, unzipping the long zipper down my thigh and stepping out of them. They’re not snow boots, so they’re ruined, and my feet are just as cold as if I were barefoot.
“I could’ve told you that,” he mutters.
I sit on the edge of the counter and lift my feet up to the warm stream of air. Better. “I think you did, Dumbledore.”
He chuckles. “Dumbledore?”
Oh, had I said that out loud? Well, it’s not as terrible as some names I have for him. “Yeah. Because even when you don’t know everything, you know everything. Or at least you think you do.”
“I don’t know everything,” he says smugly, leaning against the tiled wall. “Just most things.”
I roll my eyes. Shrug off my cardigan, which is heavy with the dampness, and move around, trying to get as much of my body dry as possible.
As I’m doing that, contorting my body in different ways to get close, I glance in the mirror and see him watching me.
His eyes are hot and possessive. As if nothing short of the apocalypse would tear him away.
He’s only looked at me like that once before.
The night I met him.
For a minute, I watch him, watching me. His eyes are darkened again, and they’re moving over me the same way his hands had moved over me that night, as if tracing the path they’d made, so many years ago.
And that one simple look confirms everything.
He doesn’t hate me as much as I thought, either.
3:10 AM, December 7
I threw my head back and grabbed ahold of his pillow. I brought it over my face and pushed it down so I could barely breathe. It smelled clean, like the pillowcase had just been washed.
I felt his nose bumping against my folds, his tongue eagerly exploring. No man had been where he was, right now. Instead of being embarrassed, I was burning up, seeing colors behind my eyelids so bright and vivid I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven.
I arched and my hand found the back of his head, my fingers burying themselves in his thick hair.
When he slowly added a finger, pumping it inside me, I went off like never before, panting like crazy. I pulled the pillow off my head and lifted onto my elbows, trying to glimpse this god among men.
He sat back on his haunches, his mouth wet with my juices. “What?”
“I just…” I think I was still coming. “You made me come.”
He slipped onto the futon and pulled his jeans and boxers down. “That’s the point. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, I just…” No one had ever made me come so fast or so hard.
“Come here.” He slid his hand in my hair and his mouth met mine. He nudged me back onto the futon and covered me with his body. I felt his cock between us, and I moaned. He felt so good. “You want it?”
I nodded.
He reached into a small table beside the futon and pulled out a condom. He ripped it open with his teeth and rolled it on.
He applied small pressure to my inner thighs, spreading my legs apart, and I felt his knees drop between my legs. He looked up at me, again asking permission with his eyes. Then he blanketed my body with his own, and I felt his every muscle quivering against my skin. He tangled his fingers in my hair and kissed my lips. I felt the pressure of his cock slipping against the wetness of my sex and sucked in a breath, tensing.
He hesitated there.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered, his breath hot on my ear.
“I know.” I drew in a breath and held it, waiting for something I couldn’t guess. Something world-changing.
And it was. Whatever I’d known about sex before that moment was nothing.
He didn’t break my gaze as he filled me, slowly opening me up, his every muscle straining and his breath coming hard as he moved. He concentrated, hard, as if every second meant something, and he was committing each of them to memory.
When he was buried to the hilt inside me, I felt one thing I never had with any other guy before.
Treasured.
He leaned into me, kissed the shell of my ear. “This all right for you?”
Until that moment, with him, I never knew sex would be something I could enjoy. I felt a warmth low in my abdomen that I’d never felt before. My sex gripped him, wanting to move with him, wanting more. “Yes. Oh, yes.”
He let out a groan. “God, you feel good,” he said, tangling his hands in my hair.
“Are you feeling better?”
I look up. Miles is watching me from the brochure rack, where he’s sucking down his umpteenth cup of coffee and holding a brochure for the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. Above him, on the TV, some old episode of Friends is playing. There hasn’t been a news report in an hour.
He gave me his flannel shirt as a blanket again, and I’m actually quite cozy, even though I don’t think I’ll sleep anymore. My teeth ache from all the pseudo-strawberry deliciousness of the Twizzlers. I tried to share with him, but he insisted I eat them all, “to fatten you up,” he’d said. The snow has almost stopped, but no more plows have come through. My phone only has fifteen percent charge, but I’m trying to stop myself from running outside and checking it every two seconds, since it’s the middle of the night and probably no one else has texted me.
Situation: Pretty much the same as before.
Wedding: In eight hours and counting, and still looking iffy.
Small Favor: Miles’ thermal shirt is dry now, so he’s put it back on.
Problem: After that snowball fight, the temperature in the room skyrocketed. And it’s just getting hotter, the more I entertain memories of Miles and me. The tension is now so thick I’d need a hacksaw to cut through it.
I resist the urge to fan my face from that last memory and say, “I’m good. And y
ou? How’s your hand?” trying to keep my tone conversational and not like I was just remembering us fucking.
He flattens the bandage down on his palm and rakes the hand through his hair. “Can’t complain.”
We’re both getting antsy. I can tell by his rigid posture—his spine is ramrod-straight—and the way he’s practically shaking with unspent energy. It’s the feeling you get when there’s so much to do but your hands are tied behind your back.
I eye him suspiciously. Miles looks like a powder keg, ready to blow. “There’s a shocker.”
He frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I didn’t mean to get into a fight, but my mood’s getting worse and worse by the second, the more desperate I feel, and I can’t help it. “It’s no secret. Mr. Complain-About-Everything.”
He snorts. “Yeah? You’re one to talk, Bridezilla. You’ve complained about the snow about four thousand times. Not to mention, my driving. My vending machine choices. Your—”
“Oh, stop it. You won’t shut up! Everything I do, you have to have some kind of snide comment on.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Stop!” I say, crossing my arms and facing away from him. I wave somewhere behind me. “Just go over there.”
“Fine,” he bites out, grabbing a bunch of brochures and getting out of my sight.
Yes. This is much better.
He was starting to seem human before, and that was the problem.
I have to hate him.
If we continue hating each other, there’s no room for…the other thing.
I watch a little more of Friends, but the volume is down so low I can’t hear anything but the laugh track. As I’m sitting there, trying not to be hyperaware of Miles behind me, I cross my arms over my chest and feel something hard in the pocket of his shirt.
Reaching in, I pull out the velvet pouch with the rings.
I open it up and peer at them. We’d purchased the rings at the same jewelry store where we’d gotten my engagement ring. We had the opportunity to engrave a small message inside them, so I look at the one I’d written for Aaron: “No one but you.” And the date, December 7.
I smile at that. It’s true, despite the big fucking my mind’s been putting me through. I love him, and Aaron loves me, and it’s right. We’re going to get married today, and everything’s going to be great.
Then I look at the ring Aaron planned to give me.
I squint to see the writing, but there isn’t anything there.
It’s blank.
I suck in an uneasy breath. Well. I guess I expected that. I’d told him to call the jeweler to tell him what he wanted to have engraved on it, so it could be a surprise to me, and he probably forgot. Like he forgets everything.
It doesn’t matter. What does an engraving mean, anyway? Nothing.
But maybe this is just the start. If he can’t remember this, what about when the thrill is gone? Will he forget our anniversary? Valentine’s Day?
It doesn’t matter. Like Miles said, there are five hundred people waiting to see me marry Aaron Eberhart. I’ve been over all those doubts before. I made my decision.
I open the flap on the shirt pocket and shove the pouch inside. But it won’t go in. There’s something blocking its way. I find a stiff piece of paper. A photograph, folded in half.
I pull it out and flatten it, a sneaking suspicion on my mind even before I take in the image.
It’s a tawdry picture of a long-haired, long-limbed blonde, lying naked on her side, propped up on her elbow, a come-hither look on her face, her giant tits and bald pussy on full display.
Aaron’s dream girl.
At first I think, okay, he needed an image to jerk off to, and so he tore this image from a magazine. Aaron always joked that he loved blondes, and I’m too girl-next-door. He always said that was a good thing; I was marriage material, which was way better than being a sex object.
But as I stare at it until it’s burned into my memory, until I know it by heart, I notice something hanging in the background.
It’s the painting of the Flatirons I bought Aaron last month.
My hand starts to shake.
I haven’t been in his bed in two months, because we agreed on that. Because it would make our wedding night special.
So what the fuck was this woman doing there?
I try to run my mind through possible explanations, but I come up absolutely dry.
The most plausible explanation is the one I’ve been trying desperately to avoid all night.
Aaron has been lying to me. After all this, all those thousands of promises that it would be me and only me…he’s been playing me.
My heartbeat thuds in my ears.
I need to ask him to explain himself. Just call him up and get his take. That’s what married couples do, after all. They don’t jump to conclusions. They communicate.
Even though my irrational side is dangerously close to taking over.
Irrational side wants to punch him in the nuts.
I try to force it down. Relax, Lia. No need to be freaking out until he’s explained.
But is there any explanation for this? For this, and the condoms, and the lube…
Add that to the fact he’d cheated on me before.
It means one thing.
I’m a big sucker.
Irrational side wins.
I want to scream at him.
I want to kick him in the nuts until he’s dead.
But he’s miles and miles away.
I turn, slowly, to Miles. He’s hunched in the corner of the room, where I sent him, head on his knees. Motionless. He might be asleep.
Miles, the betrayer.
I trusted him. And he lied to me, too.
He didn’t come with me to protect me. Or to help me. Or because he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t jump to conclusions about the lube.
He came to deceive me. Because Aaron asked him to.
This picture is the reason he’s here with me now.
Gathering myself together, I rise to my feet. Taking measured breaths, I walk slowly to where he’s sitting, grasping the photograph in front of me.
When I get there, he looks up. “Hey…” he says, cautious.
His eyes drift down to the picture and grow wide.
He might not be Aaron. But he’s the next best thing.
“You fucking asshole,” I grit out, ramming my foot between his legs, hard, straight into his balls.
3:30 AM, December 7
He doubles over, coughing and covering his crotch from further attack. His voice is an octave higher when he breathes out, “Holy shit! What the fuck was—”
I hold the picture in front of his eyes. He doesn’t look at it. He does everything possible not to look.
“Isn’t this what you came with me for?” I spit out, hardly able to think. My mind is whirling and my head hurts and I think I might throw up.
He straightens, pushes himself up to his feet and doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Hello?” I demand, kicking at his feet, though my bare ones do nothing on his boots.
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay. Yeah. Aaron sent me to destroy that picture before you found it. Yeah.”
I can’t even bear to look at it. I try, but it hurts too much. “Who is she?”
He shrugs. “He didn’t tell me. Maybe it’s an old picture.”
“It’s not old. I gave him that painting in the background a month ago!”
He looks just as clueless as I feel. “Shit. Really?”
“Didn’t he tell you what was on this thing?” I toss it on the ground and cover my face with my hands. “Oh, god!”
“Lia—”
I rip my hands from my face. “So tell me… Has he been cheating on me this whole time?”
“You know I don’t know that. I’ve only seen him twice in the past year.”
“And last night? For the bachelor party?”
He presses his lips together. Then he says, �
��There was a stripper. He might have…” He takes in a breath and lets it out slowly as he looks up at the ceiling. “He was smashed. You know how he gets. They went away for a little while and when he came back, he said that it was his last hurrah and he deserved to enjoy himself.”
My stomach does a somersault. Now I really am going to be sick. “He slept with a stripper. Two nights before our wedding.”
His eyes—hell, his whole face—pities me. He strokes his beard, and I can tell he’s searching for the most delicate way to phrase this bad news. “I can’t say for sure.”
He won’t say for sure, because it’s Aaron, his best friend, and he wants to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’ve been doing the same. But sometimes you just have to stop putting lipstick on a pig and acknowledge it for what it really is.
Aaron is a pig. My fiancé is a cheating swine.
Oh, god. I can’t breathe. I’m alternating between dread and anger, and all that bottled-up energy inside me is about to explode.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I shout at him, shaking. “Why? Do you really hate me that much?”
“Lia, no. I don’t. But Aaron—”
“I get it. He’s your best friend. But I have news for you.” The tears are falling now and I can’t see straight. I shove him hard, right in the chest, and he buckles from the unexpected touch. “Your best friend is an asshole!”
“I know. I know he is,” he keeps saying, over and over again, so quietly I can barely hear him.
“So why would you… I asked you, if you knew something, would you tell me…and you lied! You said you didn’t know anything.”
He nods, his face full of pain. “I know. But all I did, I swear I did it for you.”
“For me? Are you fucking kidding me?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It makes me angrier. I shove him again.
He stands his ground and scowls. “Yeah. Listen and stop hitting me for one goddamn second. You want to be married. Right? You’re so hyped up on the grand event of getting married that I don’t even think you care who the groom is, or what he is.”
I scowl at him. “What? You really don’t think I’d care if I was going to be marrying a serial cheater?”