Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Jeremy
“ W hy are you booking the Presidential Suite at the Fairmont for the night of my wedding?”
I whip around in my office chair at Ben’s voice, slamming my laptop closed. Ben and Jordan stand shoulder-to-shoulder behind me, twin smirks on their faces.
Shit .
I am, in fact, booking a suite at the Fairmont. It’s the only thing I’ve accomplished in the six hours I’ve been sitting in my office at the Foundation, other than mentally slapping myself every time I turn to my computer to Google the name Brian Simpson. I couldn’t bring myself to do a single thing on my to-do list. Everything bores me to tears, and I can’t stop thinking about that damn email that’s probably a prank or some guy trying to get a payday from the former NHL player. But also, maybe it’s not, and I have a brother out there somewhere and I still have no idea what the fuck I’m supposed to do with that.
“No reason.”
“Tell it to someone who believes you,” Jordan says, as he flops down on my office couch.
“Are you booking it for Hallie and me? That’s nice of you, man, but…”
I cut him off with a baleful look. “As if. Book your own hotel room.”
He sits down next to Jordan, spreading his arms across the back of the couch and crossing his legs at the ankles. “Not necessary. We want to go home after the wedding.”
“Seriously? You don’t want to have hot hotel sex on your wedding night?” asks Jordan. “Hotel sex is awesome.”
Deflect, deflect, deflect .
No need for everyone to know you’re booking a hotel room to spend the night with Emma. No need at all.
Ben shrugs. “We’re going to the Amalfi Coast for a week. We can have plenty of hotel sex. After our wedding we want to go home. Home sex is good too.”
Never have I ever met two bigger homebodies than Hallie and Ben. It makes me wonder what it would be like to love your home so much you rarely want to be anywhere else, even the night you get married. I’ve never had a home I wanted to be in that badly.
Even the one I live in now.
“So, if the Presidential Suite isn’t for me, who’s it for?”
“Who’s booking the Presidential Suite?” Asher saunters in, flopping down next to Ben, shoving Ben’s arm off the back of the couch.
“No one,” I mumble, wishing fervently for a sinkhole to open up and swallow my entire building and take me with it.
“Jeremy,” Jordan and Ben say together.
Asher looks positively gleeful. “You’ve been getting in her way, haven’t you? Man, when I’m right, I am so totally right.”
“Getting in whose way?” Ben asks.
“Emma’s.”
“Fucking Christ, Asher,” I mutter.
“Hooooly shit.” Jordan lets out a low whistle. “Is it finally happening? Are you shooting your shot? After all these years?”
I choose my words very carefully. “I’ve been…working on it.”
“Uh, a hotel suite seems like a little more than just working on it,” Jordan says with an appraising look.
Fuck, why do I have smart friends? The hotel is kind of a wild hair, and I don’t know if she’ll even like what I’m planning. I was kind of hoping to ask her before I tell these idiots, but I guess we’re doing this.
“Okay fine. We’ve been spending a bunch of time together over the past few weeks.”
“Naked time?”
“Are you ever serious?” I ask Jordan.
“Dude, I cut kids open for a living. My entire professional life is nothing but serious. That’s why I don’t want any other part of my life to be.”
“Fair point. And no, not naked time. Running time. Cooking dinner time. Hanging with her and Maddy time.”
Asher points a finger at me. “There has to be more than that. Even I didn’t jump straight from hanging out time to booking the Presidential Suite time, and I pretty much fell in love with Julie on sight.”
I chuckle because Asher might be president of simp-town but at least he’s self-aware.
“There’s been kissing. Lots of it.”
“Fuck. Yes. Tell us everything.” Jordan leans forward, elbows on his knees like a little kid getting ready for story time.
“That is everything.”
Ben has been curiously silent, but he finally speaks up.
“It isn’t everything, Jer. Like I said a few weeks ago, you don’t have to tell us, but there’s much more between you and Emma than a crush and a few kisses. You’ve had feelings for her for a long time. It’s okay to say that.”
I blow out a breath, itchy at the thought of talking about feelings, dread pooling in my stomach at the thought of revealing too much. Feeling like I might explode if I don’t release the pressure valve, just a little.
“My feelings for her are…not casual. I’ve had them for a long time. Like, years long. And the past couple of weeks…” I trail off, wondering how to put the past few weeks into words.
“They’ve been special. We’ve been spending the kind of time together I’ve always wanted to spend with her. Talking the way I’ve always wanted to. And Maddy? Jesus, she’s something. I’ve never really hung out with a kid before, but I like hanging out with her and teaching her how to cook and listening to the things she says. She’s sweet and funny and curious, and watching her come out of her shell has been really fucking cool. And seeing Emma with her? Fuck, it’s beautiful. It’s like she was born to do this. And now I get to kiss her and touch her and it’s better than I thought it would be and I just want more but I don’t know if she would ever even want more with me and why would she?”
I stop talking, chest heaving. Turns out when I released the pressure valve just a little, I blew the top clean off and now all three of my friends are frozen on the couch, staring at me.
Asher recovers first.
“You’re in love with her.”
“I’m not.” My reaction is knee jerk, the word love making me want to get up and run.
“You are. You’re in love with both of them.”
I shake my head, trying to dislodge the word love, but now that it’s out there, it tumbles around my head, searching for a place to dig in.
“Why wouldn’t she want more with you?” Ben has a concerned look on his face as he studies me, and fucking hell, I need a save because I really don’t want to go there right now.
As if by divine intervention, my phone dings with a calendar reminder. I glance at it and jump up immediately.
“As fun as this has been, I have somewhere I need to be.”
“Yeah, you need to be at happy hour with us. That’s why we’re here,” Jordan says.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, I completely forgot about happy hour. Emma is taking the afternoon off to take Maddy to the first day of the fall afternoon hockey camp. She wants to learn to skate and I’m meeting them there.”
“You’re meeting them there?” Asher asks.
“Yeah.”
“At the ice rink?”
“That’s where the camp is.”
He looks at me strangely. “You don’t go there. I didn’t know you even knew where the ice rink was.”
“I practiced at that arena for more than three years. Of course, I know where it is.”
“I’m just surprised is all. You seem to avoid the hockey camp for some reason.”
Fucking smart friends.
Deflect again, Jeremy .
“That’s what I hired you for. I’ve been focusing on other things.”
“Leave the guy alone, Ash. He wants to go kiss the girl,” Jordan says.
Ben is quiet again, but his face tells a different story. The one where I know I’m going to have to sit down with him at some point and tell him all kinds of things I’d rather never tell anyone. But that’s a problem for a different day. Right now, I have some red-haired girls I need to see.
“As much as I’d like to stay here and keep talking to you guys, I do, in fact, have to go kiss a girl. We’ll reschedule happy hour, okay?”
I don’t even wait for their response. I just grab my phone, wallet, and keys off my desk and hightail it out of my office, feeling Ben’s gaze burning into my back with every step I take.