My back lowered when I exhaled. Thinking back, I couldn’t exactly remember what had been going through my head when I stepped into my brother’s tux. Not a lot, since time hadn’t been a luxury I’d had.
“I just . . . couldn’t stand to watch her heart get broken again, you know? I couldn’t stand there and see her hurt by my brother one more time. I can’t stand to see her in pain.” My eyes closed, trying to chase the images from my mind. I’d come here to drink her away, not drink and talk about her.
“Ah, if that wasn’t so pathetic, it might be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”
My teeth ground together. “Not helping.”
“So you thought you’d marry her, take off on her honeymoon, and what? You’d both get the happily ever after you deserve?” Maggie’s voice was soft now, her hand covering my forearm.
Maggie had gone to the same high school as all three of us and witnessed all the highs and lows of our relationships. She and I’d gone to the same med school and worked at the same hospital now, so she still got a first-row seat to the Matt in Love With the Wrong Girl Show.
“I wasn’t really thinking more than five minutes into the future when I decided to pose as my brother in front of the altar.”
“And I’m going to take a stab at it and say you weren’t thinking more than five seconds into the future last night when you and her . . .” She took another sip of her beer.
“Maggie . . .”
“Don’t lie to me. You can lie to her. Your brother. Yourself. But you better not even think about lying to me, because I will call you out so fast your head will spin.”
Drink still in hand, I dropped my head into the web of my fingers, feeling like I could barely hold myself up anymore. What had I done? Where had things gone so wrong? What the fuck was wrong with me?
“I slept with her,” I whispered. “I slept with Cora. I slept with my brother’s girl.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. She didn’t yell or huff or shake her head at me. She just sat there quietly, like she was as out of explanations and answers as I was.
“I’m going to tell you a secret. Something I suspected a long time ago, and something I realized a few years back. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure you had the heart to accept it, or the balls to do something about it, but after what you just admitted . . .” She blew out a low whistle and slid into the empty stool between us. She took the drink out of my hand and set it down beside her beer. Then she leaned in. “Cora’s not your brother’s girl.” When I shook my head, she continued. “She never has been, though I know that’s what he thinks and that’s what she does her best to make others believe.”
“What are you talking about? I’m swimming in booze over here, so I’m going to need you to spell it out for me.”
She leaned in even closer, like the words she was about to speak were dangerous. “Cora’s always been your girl. Yours.” Her hand squeezed my arm tighter. “It’s not Jacob she wants. It’s you. It’s always been you.”
I’d never wanted to believe anything more in my life, but just because a person wanted to believe something, that didn’t make it real. A lie could never become the truth because a person wished it so.
“She doesn’t know what she wants.” I picked up my drink again and drained another sip before Maggie could pull it away from me.
“Oh, she knows what she wants. She’s just afraid to say it out loud.”
Maggie nudged my arm, waiting for me to say something, but what was there to say? She was my good friend. She felt obligated to say what she was. She was trying to lick my wounds so when I returned the loser and my brother the victor, I’d have something to cling to. Some positive memento of Cora’s and my time together—that she wanted me over my brother.
Just thinking that made me laugh.
“And if what you’re saying is true, why is she so afraid to say it out loud?” I turned my head to look at her.
She blinked at me, but she looked like she wanted to smack me over the head instead. “Because our whole life, dummy, a girl’s told to use her brain to get ahead in life. She’s told not to be too emotional or sensitive and all of that kind of lame advice.” Maggie clinked her bottle against my glass when I went to lift it to my lips. “Cora’s been using her brain when it comes to her love life. Jacob was obvious about the way he felt about her. He’s the one who asked her to marry him, he’s the one who’s been open and honest about the way he feels about her, shoddy and weak as it all is. She picked him with her brain.”
My head was starting to hurt. I guessed it had more to do with what Maggie was saying than the booze.
“But it’s you she knows is the right one in her gut. She knows it’s you, but you haven’t given her anything in return. You’re a risk, the other brother, the off-limits territory.” This time when I lifted my drink, she tore the glass out of my hand and threw it over her shoulder onto the beach. “She picked you years ago, you dumb fuck, you were just too blind to see it.”
Maggie’s words were messing with my head, but my head was already messed up enough. I didn’t need anything else adding more confusion to the mix.
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better, and I appreciate it, but there’s nothing you can say that will change the way Cora feels about me.”
“This isn’t about Cora. This is about you. This is about you being my friend and me wanting you to be happy.” Maggie made a face then washed it away with the last swig of her beer.
“You never liked her,” I stated, because it wasn’t a question. Maggie had never been pro-Cora. Not that Cora had ever been a big fan of Maggie’s either.
“It has less to do with me not liking her and more to do with me liking you. She just so happened to rip your heart out every other week, so yeah, I wasn’t exactly her biggest cheerleader. Kind of hard to cozy up to the chick who makes mincemeat out of your friend’s internal organs like it’s her favorite pastime.” Maggie waved her empty beer at the bartender, but he was still busy with the brunettes. Didn’t look like his schedule would free up anytime soon either. After a minute, she just leaned over the counter and pulled another beer from the ice cooler.
“She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She didn’t know I liked her.”
“Yeah, well, you could have been a little more forthcoming with your feelings. We women can’t read minds either, you know?”
Maggie sighed when I grabbed another glass, but she didn’t stop me. She must have resigned herself to the fact that I was intent on getting drunk.
“I was plenty forthcoming last night. I couldn’t have been any more forthcoming,” I said, thinking of how many things I’d said to her last night, how many times I’d told her I loved her with my words while my body made love to hers. “And her being up in her hotel room with my brother right now pretty much answers how she took me opening up to her.”
Maggie’s beer slipped away from her lips. “You’re shitting me, right? She’s with him right now, up there?” Twisting in her stool, her eyes ran up the length of the hotel tower looming behind us.
I kept my eyes aimed out at the ocean. It was dark, but I could still make out the stirrings of a storm. The wind was picking up, more gusty than breezy. “I wish I was shitting you.”
“What a bitch,” she snapped.
“Maggie.”
“What?” She gave me a look, unfazed by the warning in my tone and face. “She is. If she’s boning him after boning you, that’s the very definition of a bitch. I never understood what you saw in her.” She shook her head and stopped looking at the hotel. “You know, other than her being pretty and perky and all of those shallow things you seem way above, by the way.”
I found myself almost smiling when my mind traveled back in time. Way back. Back to when I first started to realize I loved Cora Matthews. “You didn’t know me until high school, so you don’t know I had a speech issue growing up.”
Maggie’s forehead lined. “Like what? You had a lisp or somethi
ng, because let me just enjoy that mental image right now.”
My face flattened. “I stuttered.”
“Well, shit. I’m an ass.” She took the bottle from me and poured some into my glass.
“It started when I was little. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t stutter. When I started school, it got worse. Kids laughing, teachers telling me to just slow down and speak up, all that kind of stuff that only makes a stuttering problem worse.” I shook my head, thinking about those awkward years. “Jacob stood up for me at school, so kids would usually back off eventually, but he gave it to me just as much at home when we were alone.”
“Big surprise,” Maggie mumbled.
“Yeah, well, he was my brother. He could kick my ass, but he’d kick anyone else’s ass if they made fun of me.”
“Wow. What a hero.”
I lifted my glass at her and took a sip. “Dad refused to see it as a problem, so he wouldn’t get me help. No son of his could have a speech impediment because, by God, he only bore strong, perfect offspring.” My eyes rolled at the idiocy born of machismo. “My stuttering problem wasn’t that bad, as most go, and probably could have been worked out in a year or two with a speech therapist, but since I didn’t have a speech problem . . .”
Maggie and I took a drink together, filling in the blanks.
“Cora hated the way the other kids teased me. She hated the way Jacob and my dad laughed. She wanted to do something to help me, so she went to the library, checked out every book she could on stuttering, and read them all.” When I realized I was smiling, I wiped at my mouth, trying to erase it. “Then she sat down with me, every single night for a solid year, and we worked together. She had me read books out loud to her. She taught me to pause and take a deep breath when I felt myself getting nervous, to recognize which words were triggers for my stuttering. She helped me, Maggie. She was the only one too.” My shoulders lifted. “All it took was a year and my stuttering was pretty much gone. Shit, if it wasn’t for her, I might still be that same stuttering, red-faced kid who couldn’t get a sentence out without choking on it.”
“You? Matt Adams? A stuttering problem?” Maggie’s eyes were narrowed as she looked at me, like she couldn’t believe it.
“True story.”
“Good thing the shaky voice didn’t translate into shaky hands, Dr. Surgeon.”
She nudged me, still shaking her head like she was trying to convince herself of the story I’d just told her. “I guess Cora going into speech therapy wasn’t a big surprise to you then.”
“Not even the slightest.”
“Well, shit.” She blew out a breath. “Now you’ve gone and given me a reason to like the damn woman, and I was really determined to spend the rest of my life loathing her.”
“Cora did a lot more for me than just that, Mags.” I twisted my glass around in my hands. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“So you’re saying you like her for more than her looks?”
“Far more than her looks. Although her looks are rather wonderful too.” My phone vibrated in my pocket then, and I nearly fell off of my stool trying to get to it. The alcohol made me feel like a two-year-old trying to do papier-mâché.
When I saw the number on the display, not even close to the one I’d been hoping to find, I ground my jaw and stuffed the phone back into my pocket.
“Call girl? Mail-order bride?” Maggie tapped her fingers on the counter. “Rebounds R Us?”
“My dad.” With that, I finished what was left in my glass. I needed more.
“What does he want?”
“Oh, probably just to yell, emasculate, and humiliate me. You know, before threatening to write me out of the will.” I waved the bottle in the air before pouring a little more than I’d intended into my glass. If I didn’t slow down, I was going to owe the bartender for the whole damn bottle.
“What? And be forced to live off your paltry surgeon’s wages? That’s just cruel.” Maggie made an appalled face, which got a chuckle out of me.
My world was in ruins, but at least I could still see the humor in some things.
“So, Matthew Adams?” Maggie made a clicking sound with her mouth. “What are you going to do to fix this mess?”
My head tipped. “Not a damn clue.” I chased that down with a nice big swig. “Sweep it under the rug? Let my brother kick my ass? Have the parts of my brain Cora’s in surgically removed? Unless you have any better ideas?”
My head fell into the cradle of my hand again. I felt lost. I was lost. I felt like a ship on that big ocean out there, not sure where I was or what direction I needed to go. I didn’t have a destination because I’d lost my compass. I was starting to wonder if I’d ever had one to being with.
Maggie must have sensed something was wrong. Well, really wrong. She scooted her stool over so it was right up against mine, and she draped her arm and half of herself over me. Her head tucked over my shoulder as she gave me a squeeze. “Listen, I know your brother has his good points.” When I huffed my doubt, she added, “He’s related to you.”
“Maggie,” I exhaled.
“And he can drink a sailor under the table.” From her tone, she was amused with herself, but she cleared her throat and tried to get more serious. “You love him, I get it, and you want to do what’s right, but is that worth three people living a lie their whole lives?”
“You mean everything to me, baby. Everything. I’m so sorry I missed the wedding. I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll never stop trying to make it up to you, I swear.”
Jacob hadn’t stopped repeating the same phrases he’d first said to me in the lobby, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that with every repeat, they sounded less and less sincere. I wanted to believe him. I wanted so badly to believe him, but I couldn’t ignore what had happened. I couldn’t ignore the past, and I couldn’t ignore the warnings going off in my head, questions as to what he’d been doing to miss what should have been one of the biggest days of our lives.
I couldn’t ignore the way I felt.
I’d been doing that for years, and it had done me no favors.
As evidenced by the one person I was thinking about right now—and it wasn’t the one with his arms around me, his mouth close to my ear as he repeated his promises and apologies again and again.
Matt.
Where was he?
Where had he gone?
What did he think?
Matt. Always Matt. I was so exhausted by my secret thoughts of Matt that I felt ancient inside, like my conscience had lived an eternity while my body wasn’t even thirty.
“Please, let me make it up to you. Let me make this right, baby. There’s nothing you and me can’t get through, I know it.” Jacob’s mouth moved lower, tasting my throat, making me stiffen. “We’re meant to be together.”
The way he touched me, the way his mouth moved against me, the way his hands felt . . . why did it all feel so wrong now? For years, I’d known nothing but his touch, and now, it felt uninvited. Unwanted. It felt wrong.
All I could do was compare it to the way Matt’s touch felt—how his hands had moved over me, his lips touched me, his body fit against mine.
“Jacob, stop.” My voice sounded small, insignificant.
When his hands kept pressing into me, pushing me farther into the corner of the elevator until I felt like all of the oxygen had been drained from the car, I pushed him away. Harder than I’d intended. He staggered back into the opposite corner, looking at me like he didn’t recognize me.
“You’ve been drinking. And I’m not going to have this conversation with you until you’re sober.”
He’d recovered and was already making his way back to me. “Who said anything about talking?”
A slow smile pulled at one side of his mouth. I remembered a time when my heart would do crazy, erratic things whenever I saw that smile aimed my way. Now, it made me sad. Sad for what had been, what could have been, and everything that had been lost.
“I?
??ve missed you, Cora. I need to feel close to you.”
My fingers tightened around the handrail. “You didn’t show up to our wedding. The event we’d been planning for a year, the one that five hundred people attended. I’m not okay with turning my head and forgetting it ever happened. So don’t even think about it.” I pushed his hand away when it went to form around my waist.
His eyes flashed, his face turning red. “Yeah, and I’ve already apologized for that a million times. I’ve promised you I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. What more do you want from me?”
When the elevator doors opened, I couldn’t move fast enough. Jacob followed me, half a footstep behind, waiting for me to say something. Waiting for me to forgive him the way I had a thousand times before. It wasn’t happening. Not this time. Not until he disproved my theory for why he’d missed our wedding.
“Cora, stop.”
I didn’t.
“Baby, please.”
No way.
“Enough.” With that, his arms roped around me and he pushed me up against the hall wall, fitting himself against me so I couldn’t move, let alone keep walking away from him.
Jacob and I had fought like crazy over the course of ten years together, but it had never gotten physical. He’d never exerted his physical force over me like he was now, and it made me go blind with anger. Partly because he was using his strength to mold me to his will, and partly because I wasn’t strong enough to fight back. Like Matt, Jacob was big and took care of his body. He was strong, fast, and he knew it.
I’d never felt more like a puppet than I did right there, shoved against some hotel wall by the man I was supposed to marry yesterday.
“Cora, I’m sorry. I just need you to stop and listen to me for a minute. I need you to slow down and hear me out.” His breath was hot against my cheek and smelled of Jacob’s favorite brand of scotch. I was used to the smell of it on his breath. More used to it than I was its absence. “Let me make it up to you. Let me explain. Let me. . .” His mouth was on my neck again, more frantic this time, his hands moving with the same kind of urgency.