Chapter 1 #2
He smacks my shoulder and goes back and sits down at the table, stealing the cards from Grey so he can shuffle.
One by one, the other guys and Aurelia come over to say goodnight, and when I fist-pound Zax and Grey, part of me wonders if I should tell them that Georgia broke into my house.
That she’s even in Boston because I don’t think they know that either, but I don’t.
Telling them she’s at my place would draw questions. Questions like how does she still know how to get into your house and why would she seek you out and not us ? Questions like are you secretly going behind our backs with her again ?
I need to figure out why she came to me first when I already know I’m the last person she’d ever want to see.
I throw my friend’s women and their kids a wave and head out the door into the cold Boston night, hop in my car, and drive to my house in Cambridge—the house I grew up in. The house surrounded by neighbors who know me and don’t question how I come or go or even what I do.
They know what I’ve been through, first with losing my twin sister, Suzie, and then my parents.
I pull into my driveway and straight back into my garage, where I turn off the car, already dreading going inside.
Dreading having to face her and learn why she’s here and why she came to me specifically.
I enter through the backdoor and flip on lights as I go, walking straight for her, not even bothering to pretend I don’t know she’s here.
She knows me. She knows I have cameras everywhere. She knows I don’t fuck around with security.
A point she proves when she says, “I was wondering how long it would take you to leave Zax’s.”
Her sweet, melodic voice and the faint hint of her fragrance in my house are an immediate sucker punch.
I hold my breath as she stands and turns to face me, and I force myself not to think about how fucking beautiful she is when I finally get a good look at her.
Her emerald-green eyes immediately lock on mine and narrow into slits, as if she too has to mentally prepare herself for seeing me for the first time after six years.
Still, her visible hatred of me is more than apparent, and that’s what I cling to.
For a moment, we’re both silent, simply staring at each other, unable to stop. My blood thrums, and my breath quickens. The sight of her still manages to knock me sideways, even after all this time.
“What are you doing here, Georgia?”
She steps around the sofa she was sitting on and approaches me with a familiarity that has my pulse spiking.
The last time I saw her, she had tears in her eyes and her broken heart all over her face.
She called me a thousand awful names, all of them I more than deserved. Still, I don’t regret walking away.
It’s everything before that I regret.
“You never changed my code.” She points over my shoulder toward the door I came in. The door she came in.
“An oversight. I never thought you’d use it again.”
“I hadn’t planned to. Not ever.”
And yet here she is. I raise an eyebrow at her, wanting her to cut to the chase and go.
But then sadness takes over her face, her expression crumpling before me, and I feel like an asshole.
She’s been through a hell of a lot in the last six months.
She was set to get married—to a total douchebag, I might add—and three days before the wedding, her father’s plane blew up over the Atlantic Ocean. Not just went down.
Fucking blew up.
Foul play was most definitely considered, but without a black box and most of the plane unable to be recovered since a hurricane came barreling through the waters the next day, no one knows for sure.
She postponed her wedding, and then the media started relentlessly crawling all over her.
Everything from tabloids to news networks.
The celebrity heiress of Monroe Securities and a former child star, who happened to inherit fifty-four percent of her father’s company. I watched it all from the sidelines. I didn’t go to her father’s funeral, though I was insanely tempted to.
She sniffles and wipes at an errant tear. “Sorry. I didn’t expect to cry. Certainly not in front of you. It’s just…”
I nod. I know. It’s been impossible for her.
She’s a midwife now after having walked away from acting, not a businesswoman, but she’s also smart enough to hold onto her father’s company with both hands.
Especially since she still doesn’t know why her father’s plane blew up.
Her mother is an actress and was the reigning queen of Hollywood.
Georgia wasn’t too far off, starring in movies until she decided to go to college and step away from it all.
She sucks in a shaky breath. “Anyhoo, I need your help. That’s why I’m here.”
I sigh, shake my head, and leave her standing there, walking into my kitchen for a glass of water. She follows me. I expected that from her, but I still need a second after the way her words hit me. After the way seeing her and watching her cry hits me.
I take a sip of my water, keeping my back to her. “Why didn’t you go to Grey or Zax? They’d help you. They’d help you with anything.”
“What? And ruin poker night? And no thanks, I didn’t want any water, but your offer is appreciated.”
I turn back to her, unamused.
She sets her hands down on the island counter, palms flat, fingers splayed as she levels me with an unrelenting determination I hate on her. Fun, flirty, sexy, sweet, playful—Georgia was all of those things. This is a different woman before me.
“They can’t help me with this. Only you can.”
Fuck.
“You want me to look into your father’s plane?” I had made the same offer to Zax and Grey when it happened, but with all the agencies, both public and private, looking into it at the time, they told me to hold off.
To my complete surprise, she shakes her head.
“If you’re not here for that, and I already know you’re not here for me to ink your skin, then I have nothing else to offer you. You should go. Go to Zax’s or home to your fiancé.”
She laughs, but there is no humor in it. “My fiancé isn’t my fiancé anymore.”
Double fuck. That I didn’t know.
“And actually, he’s part of why I need the favor.”
“You said help.”
She tosses her hands up. “Favor. Help. What’s the difference? I need it all the same, and you are the only person who can do this, Lenox. You have to know, I wouldn’t be here otherwise. I was honestly quite content going the rest of my life without ever seeing you again.”
I grunt.
She makes a strained, nervous giggle. “Before I tell you, you’re not allowed to say no. I mean, you just can’t. You owe me.”
Another grunt because I do sort of owe her in a way.
I used her for two years. I came home after my sister’s death in utter ruins. I was shattered. Broken every which way a person can be. Suzie wasn’t just my twin. She was the better half of me. My best friend. And when she dropped dead from a stroke in the shower, I died too.
It was my fault. I knew about the headaches.
I knew she was pregnant, though she hadn’t come straight out and told me.
I could have prevented her death, but I didn’t.
We were traveling the world with Zax, Grey, Callan, and Asher as the band Central Square.
We were huge. Unstoppable, especially with Suzie as our manager .
Then it all fell apart when she died, and I came home to another nightmare that threw me into an absolute tailspin. I was unrecognizable, even to myself. So close to the edge, I was toying with throwing myself over it.
And then one night Georgia, who was eighteen to my twenty-two and studying nursing at Boston College, called to check in on me.
I had never thought of Georgia as anything more than my friends’ little cousin.
But when she called me, something inside me stirred.
Maybe it was her voice—her sweet, melodic voice—or the way she somehow got me to smile.
I still can’t say why I did it. Why I went to her dorm like a goddamn fool who knew better.
Perhaps it’s because I didn’t have any fucks left to give.
Whatever the reason, I lost myself in her body.
Unleashed myself because she was willing to take it and kept coming back for more.
For two years, I did this. All the while knowing it was wrong. I kept it a secret from my best friends, her cousins, who would have rightfully killed me for touching her. She was my drug. My addiction. The only thing that kept me breathing.
Until I learned she was in love with me, and I finally forced myself to do the right thing and not only come clean to Zax and Grey but walk away.
“Just tell me what you need from me, Georgia.”
She crosses the kitchen and stands before me, staring up at me with wide, resolute eyes. “I need you to marry me.”