Waking up in Vegas

by Natasha Preston

  “You want to dance?” Emma questions.

  “Yep, so come on; drink up.”

  There’s a lower level, only a couple of steps, which houses the DJ and dance floor along the far wall. It’s only the start of the week, but there’s a decent amount of people dancing away the Monday blues.

  We drink up in record time, and I’m instantly met with a welcome buzz.

  “Let’s go!” I say, tugging on Emma’s arm.

  Felicity is up, but my sister is being slow.

  “All right.” She laughs, slipping off her stool. “To the dance floor.”

  I don’t need to look over to know that Brody’s eyes are on me as we walk past. I feel the electricity of his heated gaze all over my body. But fuck if I give him the satisfaction of meeting said gaze.

  Felicity, Emma, and I dance. We don’t care what song comes on; we dance to the next and the next and the next. I close my eyes, moving to the beat and not caring that Brody is a tosser.

  I sway to Sweet but Psycho by Ava Max.

  A heartbeat later, a pair of hands circle my waist. I know by the possessive cut of his fingers in my flesh and the rock-hard abs in my back that it’s Brody.

  His breath brushes my ear and sends a shiver down my spine. “What the fuck are you doing?” he growls, his grip tightening.

  Can you say vagina on fire?

  Felicity and Emma freeze, as do I. Only I’m the one in Brody’s death grip.

  “Brody!” Felicity’s eyes fly behind us, scanning the bar area for Luke.

  I turn in his arms. Or I try to. I can only manage to twist my torso and look at him over my shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  His eyes are wild, like he’s not remotely in control anymore.

  “Brody, let go of her!” Emma snaps.

  He doesn’t.

  “If Luke sees…” I say, trying to reason with him.

  Brody stares at me, and everything else falls away. My heart races a million miles an hour.

  Dear Lord, do not fuck him in one of the bathrooms!

  Brody closes the distance, his mouth melding to mine as he twists me round so we’re chest-to-chest.

  I almost explode as his tongue grazes my lip.

  Mayday!

  I know we should stop. He knows we should stop. Yet here we are.

  My hands find his chest, and I work my way up, feeling the bump of every carved slice of muscle. Brody moans my name against my mouth and pulls me closer, so my arms are wedged between us. I don’t care that I can’t move.

  “Wren!”

  “Wren!”

  Someone tugs on Brody’s arm, and the spell is broken. He lifts his head up, glaring at whoever is there. I’m going with my sister.

  Backing away a fraction, I look over. Emma is not a happy bunny.

  “What the fuck was that? Luke is around here somewhere. Have you lost it?” she screeches.

  Felicity looks on, a little bit worried and a whole lot smug.

  Brody straightens up. “Have a nice evening.”

  Have a nice fucking evening!

  Forty-One

  Brody

  “Whoa!” Wren catches my hand as I’m walking away.

  I need some air and some distance. And her lips back on mine.

  Luke could have seen, but she was dancing. Her body… I couldn’t help myself. It was like she was dancing for me, teasing, challenging.

  I took the bait.

  “What the hell?” she says, her eyes wide, lips still swollen. She has never looked so perfect.

  “You should let go.”

  She deadpans. “Did you actually say that to me after your performance?”

  “Wren…” How do I explain this one?

  “Brody, talk to me. Please. I thought I was getting the old you. That was most definitely not old you.”

  “That was the plan, but whenever I see you, it’s new Brody all the way. You’re driving me crazy.”

  Behind us, I hear Felicity aww.

  Emma grabs hold of my arm. “Luke has just come onto the dance floor with a girl.”

  Wren stares at me, both of us ignoring her sister. Now, here is her challenge. What am I going to do with Wren now?

  I know what I want to do in this moment, but that’s not necessarily what’s right.

  Kissing her again in front of her brother is not something we can forget. Once that’s done, there is no going back.

  You don’t know how to be in a relationship!

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask her.

  All she has to do is say the word, and I’ll open that can of worms. Hell, I’ll chuck them all over the fucking place.

  “Wren, let him go,” Emma tells her.

  “I don’t want to ruin your friendship over…”

  Over what? What are we?

  She looks away and bites her lip. The indecision is etched onto her forehead. It’s a struggle between what you want to do and what you need to do. I understand that fully.

  “Wren?” I prompt.

  “Not here,” Felicity says. “Do this later when we’re not in the middle of a club.”

  Time stands still as Wren considers everyone’s fucking opinion on what we should do.

  “Where are you going now?” she asks me.

  What she’s really asking is if she tells me to do one, will I go back to Kayley?

  With a small smile, I tell her, “Home. Alone.”

  “You don’t need to leave.”

  “I do, Wren. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  I walk away from her with my heart in my stomach. We’re on the edge of something, and it’s scary as hell. A part of me wants to leap. The other part wants to bury myself in someone else and forget all about her.

  Luke is busy, so he doesn’t see me walk out.

  Tomorrow night, I have to go to my parents’ for dinner, and of course, Wren will be there with her family.

  I used to love having her family so close to mine, but now it’s a curse. I can’t escape without it seeming weird if I suddenly miss all these events. There are only so many times I can be ill or busy.

  When I get home, I kick off my shoes and collapse on the sofa.

  I unlock my phone and send Mase a text.

  Brody: I’m fucked.

  Mase: Wren?

  Brody: Yeah.

  Mase: What are you gonna do?

  Brody: No idea.

  Mase: What do you want?

  Brody: No idea.

  Mase: Are you copy and pasting? You’re not making it easy for me to help you.

  Brody: I can’t stay away from her, but I’ve never wanted a relationship.

  This is Wren we’re talking about, and as hot as she is, she’s never been on my radar in that way.

  Mase: Figure it out before you act because if you hurt her, I’ll be right behind Luke to kick your arse.

  Brody: Thank you for your help.

  Dropping my phone down on the sofa, I shake my head. He’s bad at advice, I knew that, so I don’t know what I expected.

  He’s right about one thing: I need to get my head straight before I pull Wren deeper into this.

  Whatever this is.

  Forty-Two

  Wren

  I didn’t feel much like dancing after Brody left. Emma, Felicity, and I finished our drinks, made small talk with Luke for two minutes, telling him we had no idea where Brody went, and then moved on. Luke assumed Brody had met a girl and left.

  Now, we’re sitting in a quiet Italian restaurant, waiting for pasta, and I’m drinking a killer strawberry daiquiri. We’ve already eaten earlier, but there’s not much pasta can’t fix, right?

  Two pairs of eyes watch me from the other side of the table. I feel like I’m at an interview.

  “What?” I ask.

  Emma has been surprisingly quiet, but I can tell by the hunch in her shoulders that she’s holding a lot in.

  She blows out a breath. “Wren, what was that?”

  “You guys are crazy. Luke was right
there!” Felicity says, overlapping Emma.

  I lean back in my seat. “I don’t know. It just happened.”

  “Like the wedding?” Felicity asks. “A lot just happens between you and Brody.”

  “The wedding was because we were drunk and went to watch Kaci and Jayden’s. Tonight was… inevitable, I guess. We say that we’re going to stay away from each other, but that never seems to last long.”

  “But what does that mean?” Emma asks. “Are you going to have sex whenever you feel like it and nothing else? Do you want to be with him? What will you tell Luke? You can’t keep this secret forever. What does this mean for the divorce?”

  “Take a breath,” I tell her, blinking at the sheer amount of questions. Then, I realise I don’t have a solid answer for any of them.

  Felicity puts her drink down on the table. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. How do you feel about Brody? Set aside the marriage and divorce. Man, saying that will never not sound weird. Do you like him?”

  “Of course, I like him.”

  She rolls her eyes. “How much, Wren?”

  I want to tell her we’re just friends, but there’s more to it. “I like him. But I don’t think we’d work. I mean, you don’t jump into a relationship with every person you fancy, do you?”

  “You don’t usually have sex with them against a tree and kiss them like that in clubs either,” Felicity replies, grinning.

  “Yes, thanks for that.”

  “Look,” Emma says, “there is a lot going on here with all the legal stuff.”

  The legal marriage, she means.

  Leaning in, she adds, “Maybe you should go on a date and see what dating each other would be like. All you’ve done is get… married and have sex.”

  “Emma’s right. You don’t have the most conventional situation going on, and that’s making this whole thing extra messy. Maybe you should strip it back and find out if you like each other or if you just have good sexual chemistry.”

  “I don’t even know where Brody’s head is at.”

  “Really?” Emma exclaims. “After tonight, you don’t know? We could substitute you for him right now and be having this exact same conversation.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I mutter, “I hate it when you’re right.”

  Brody scares me. Or rather, the way he makes me feel does. He’s already made me stupid enough to marry him. I don’t think straight when I’m around him, or I wouldn’t have started drinking the tequila that led to the marriage in the first place.

  Not only that, but we either argue or have sex. There is very little in-between. How do you make something out of that? Something lasting, I mean. Because if Brody and I were to be more, we’d need to make it stick.

  It’s not like we can avoid each other if it doesn’t work. Even if we manage to miss or alternate joint family dinners, there will always be the bigger events that we couldn’t miss.

  “You remember when we were younger, and we vowed never to be the kind of women who constantly obsessed about men?” I ask.

  Emma laughs. “Yeah, we’re tragic.”

  I don’t want to be only about the boy.

  “Okay, boy talk done,” Felicity says, taking a sip of her martini.

  “Wren?”

  I recognise the deep voice immediately.

  My ex, Niall.

  Slowly, I turn my head, and there he is. Right in front of me and not burning in Hell like he’s supposed to be.

  We all have that one wanker ex, right? Niall is mine. We were together for about eleven months when I was sixteen. I gave the bastard my virginity, and he gave me a broken heart. I suppose it could be worse. He was cheating and could have given me crabs.

  I feel the hostility radiating from Felicity and Emma. They were the ones, along with Indie and Mila, who listened to me cry for months. I thought I’d been head over heels in love, and my world was over.

  Sixteen-year-old me was dumb. Not as stupid as the dickhead standing before me though.

  I stand up, super glad that I dressed nice. “Niall, hi.” My jaw hurts with the effort it takes to smile at him.

  “It’s really great to see you, Wren. You look incredible.”

  Tonight, I do. All hail Emma who spent extra time curling my hair.

  “You, too.”

  He looks over my shoulder at my sister and Felicity, who I imagine aren’t giving him a very warm welcome.

  Fucker doesn’t deserve one.

  Man, what a shit evening. First, a fight with my accidental husband, and now I run into my ex.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  He moved a few hours North with his family shortly after we broke up. I was not sorry to see him leave.

  “Visiting friends. I might stay.”

  “Stay and do what? Don’t you have a life in Liverpool?”

  “My family is there, yeah, but it’s never felt like home.” He shrugs. “I grew up here.”

  I do not want him to move back.

  “Hey, look, do you think we can grab a coffee and catch up sometime?” he asks.

  There is a massive part of me that wants to tell him to fuck off, another part that wants to agree and stand him up, and another that needs answers.

  All he told me before was that he was an idiot—no arguments here—and he was sorry.

  He’d told me that I was his first epic love, but he threw it away to sleep with a girl he’d met at a club. I was too young to go with him. Fucking someone else doesn’t sound hugely epic to me. It makes no sense.

  “Sure,” I find myself saying. “I have the same phone number.”

  He nods. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye, Wren.”

  I turn around and sit back in my seat. Ready to face the music.

  Emma and Felicity stare at me with the same round eyes and what the actual fuck expression.

  “You’re going to have coffee with that prick?” Emma squeaks in disbelief.

  “I’m not getting back together with him, Em. I have a lot of questions. He didn’t give me much before, and to be honest, I didn’t let him do a lot of talking.”

  She shakes her head. “What can he say that will make it better?”

  “Nothing. But it’s not like it’ll hurt. I don’t have any feelings for him anymore.”

  “Don’t get back with him, Wren,” Emma warns.

  Tilting my head, I scowl at my sister. “You know me better than that. I want nothing from him but answers.”

  I feel like old, brokenhearted sixteen-year-old me deserves that much. I thought, stupidly, that he was the one. It would be nice to hear him tell me why he changed his mind.

  I pick up my drink and take a fucking long sip, determined to forget both train-wreck relationships. If Brody can even be classed as that.

  Forty-Three

  Brody

  My head kills.

  I didn’t drink that much at the bar, but the half-bottle of Jack back home really did the trick.

  My phone dings with a text.

  Luke: You okay, man?

  Brody: Sure. Hungover.

  Luke: That it? If you need to talk about anything…

  Fuck. My shoulders hunch. He’s concerned, and I don’t deserve an ounce of it. What has he noticed? Luke could have caught me and Wren last night. All he had to do was look up.

  He’s been a mate for my entire life. Literally.

  How have I repaid his friendship? By marrying and shagging his sister. I’m the worst friend in the world. Bile hits the back of my throat, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the Jack.

  A loud, thudding knock hits my door, and I wince.

  Pushing myself up, I rub my forehead as I open the front door.

  Luke lifts his eyebrow. He’s holding takeaway coffees and a brown bag of food. “Morning, dickhead.” He pushes past me and heads into the living room.

  Shit. My stomach coils into a knot as I shut the door. “What’re you doing here, Luke?”

  We texted minutes ago.

&n
bsp; He looks up over his shoulder. “You’ve been weird, and I want to know why.”

  I run my hands over my face. “It’s fine, Luke. Work stress.”

  That’s a legit reason for stress, one of the top reasons in fact. And I didn’t directly say that I’m stressed at work.

  I’m a bastard.

  He shoves a cappuccino at me. “Since when? What’s been going on?”

  “You want to talk about work?”

  “If that’ll make you less of a moody bellend, yeah.”

  I’ve not been called that in a while.

  “Nah, it’s all good, mate. We’ve had a lot on, but it’s almost done.”

  If Luke is starting to notice something is wrong, I need to up my game and sort my head out. He’s not going to accept work stress for long.

  He sits himself down on my sofa and flicks the telly on. Looks like I’m not getting rid of him for a while. I never used to want to kick him out but being around him and knowing what I’ve done is like a kick to the stomach.

  “Mase is loved up,” he says, shaking his head. “He’s known her for minutes, and he’s talking long-term. Can you imagine Mase living with someone?”

  I take a seat. “He’s thinking about moving in with her?”

  Luke shrugs. “Not right now, I don’t think.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  Luke’s pale eyes snap to me like an accusation. “I don’t know why anyone would want to do that. Girlie shit everywhere. No, thanks.”

  Luke’s a bit old school—and yes, that’s code for a bit of a dick. I think if a girl asked him to pick up tampons, he would have a panic attack. I can’t wait to watch a woman change all of that. Out of all of us, getting a girlfriend will be the biggest leap for him.

  “You plan to be sad and alone forever?”

  “No part of my life is sad, Brody.”

  No, Luke is perfectly content with going to work and then going out to score. No commitment and no compromise. I don’t think he has ever passed up a night out. He’s a regular Hugh Hefner. I get the impression that having a girlfriend wouldn’t be so scary to him if he could have more than one.