Chapter 1
Max
NOW…
“Todd?” I called as soon as I saw his tux hanging off the bathroom door. “What the hell…” I ripped the hanger down and tore off the plastic, opening the door to the grunt of his acknowledgment.
Shit.
My oldest friend sat in the tub in the bathroom of his hotel room, drinking what looked like the last bottle from the minibar. The others spread like confetti inside the basin. Or maybe like hollow graves inside a porcelain tomb.
“Dammit.” The metal hanger clanked on the shower rod as I crouched and ripped the nip from his hand.
“Hey!” Todd’s protest died on a deep groan as he tipped forward and hung his head in his hands.
My best friend looked like shit, and it was his wedding day.
His hair was a mess, tangled in every direction. He reeked of the unholy union of fresh and stale alcohol. And the circles around his eyes made it look like he hadn’t slept a wink.
A second glance over him, and I confirmed he hadn’t. He still wore the same clothes he had on last night at the rehearsal dinner at his parents’ house.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I growled and dumped the last drops of liquid down the sink, tossing the bottle in the trash.
“Me?” His head shook, defeated. “I don’t know, Max. What the hell is wrong with me?” He started plucking through the other empty bottles, searching for another drop.
“Come on, Todd.” I swiped my hand through the tub, taking away the rest of his litter. “Talk to me. What’s going on? You were fine last night…”
Fine was a relative term when it came to time spent with his parents. Time hadn’t dulled the weight of the McCormicks’ expectations on their one and only son, and neither had it dimmed the consequences.
“I was…I don’t know who I was last night. Not a McCormick, apparently.”
“What are you talking about?” I grabbed a washcloth and went to the sink, dousing it with ice-cold water.
“My dad…”
I slapped the cold cloth on his neck, marginally enjoying his flinch and hiss of shock.
“Fuck your dad, Todd. How many times have I told you that?” I opened the cloth and laid it over his head. Moving back to the sink, I filled one of the glasses with water and took it back to him. “Drink this.”
“I thought he’d understand,” Todd muttered before downing the whole glass, probably wishing it were vodka.
I wished I understood why he still listened to—revered—his parents like he did. For all the time I’d known him, they’d either been absent or made him feel inadequate, and still he kept trying. Trying and failing and drinking. Trying and failing and drinking. And drinking and drinking and drinking.
“Todd.” I put my hand on his shoulder, filled with equal parts fury and pity.
“Listen to me. Forget your dad. Whatever he said…forget it. Today isn’t about him.
It’s about you. The future you’re making.
You decide what happens after today. What kind of life you’re going to make with the person you love, the person you want to spend your life with. ”
These blow-ups with his dad were a tale as old as time.
They started when we were in school and continued when Todd didn’t do as well as was expected.
When Todd decided to help me open a start-up business.
When Todd started dating Daisy, rather than one of the wealthy socialites on his mother’s marital menu. When Todd got Daisy pregnant.
Every time Todd tried to be himself—do something for himself—they argued until legacy inevitably pulled Todd back in line. Legacy, or the fear of not having one.
“Come on. Clean yourself up and get ready,” I said, giving him a little shake, his head bobbing like it was attached by a single tenuous tether. “Daisy deserves better than this.”
She deserved better than my troubled friend, who remembered her birthday but asked me to send her a birthday bouquet of daisies every year because he was too busy—and never remembered that peonies were her favorite.
Better than my friend, who would’ve forgotten their anniversary if I didn’t say something, if I didn’t line up plans and gift suggestions like I was his butler rather than his best friend.
Better than my friend, who got annoyed when Daisy continued to work at the Stonebar Country Club, where he’d met her, to pay for school.
Who continued to get frustrated, no matter how many times I explained Daisy’s reluctance to rely on him, given how her father had abandoned her mother.
And who refused to understand why she wanted to get her degree in chemistry when, as his wife, she wouldn’t need to work.
And so much fucking better than the man who knocked her up and made her drop out of her master’s program, proposing to her and promising to take care of her, and then had cold feet every step of the way.
But it was a whole hell of a lot of guilt that kept me from telling her that.
No matter how I’d helped Todd over the years, Daisy loved him, and it wasn’t dependent on whether or not he remembered her favorite flower or their anniversary. Or whether he fully understood or appreciated her need for independence. At least, that was what I told myself.
“Daisy…” Todd said her name like he’d already forgotten who we were talking about.
“Your daughter deserves better than this.” An edge sliced into my voice.
“Better than me.” He corrected bitterly and pulled out of my hold, swaying as he rose. “Better than a McCormick.”
There were plenty of people who would hate Todd McCormick at this point, but knowing him for as long as I did—knowing the trauma that apathy and constant disapproval can do to a person—I didn’t fall for the bitterness aimed at her, but instead heard the bitterness aimed at himself.
Todd wanted his parents’ approval, but the only way he’d learned to get that was to fit himself into their picture of who they expected him to be, even though it wasn’t what he wanted. And that meant dragging Daisy along with him.
“Come on, man.” I tucked my arms to my sides with a deep sigh. “You deserve better than this too.”
How many times over the course of our lives had I watched him get to this point? To this fork in the road that split what his parents wanted from him and what he wanted for himself? How many times had I watched him reach this split and let it tear him in two?
The last time, he hadn’t ended up drunk in a hotel bathtub but in a venture capital presentation for MaineStems. It almost cost us the investment, but Todd fixed it because his father was a senator.
And that was how he was raised to fix all of his problems. Money.
Connections. Power. Rather than thinking before acting.
But the more I pushed him, the more he pushed back.
The same way he did with his parents. I learned the hard way that people only change when they want to, and Todd didn’t want to.
That was why, as soon as I was able, I’d bought out his shares of MaineStems, and he hadn’t protested.
He looked at it as proof that the only path he belonged on was the one laid out by his parents.
But he didn’t want to change that either. Not enough.
“I don’t have a choice anymore, Max. Dad already has everything lined up. All the steps. All the players. I’m going to have a wife and a kid. A house. Be a second-generation senator, and that’s the end of it. That’s my story.”
I hated that he’d lumped Daisy in with the rest of it like he hadn’t picked her, like he wasn’t in love with her. And he was. He was just struggling. That was all. How many times had I told myself that over the last six months? How many more times would I continue to believe it?
I didn’t know what he had argued with his dad about last night, but it didn’t matter.
It probably had something to do with the massive party his parents announced at dinner that they were going to host at the country club to celebrate the wedding.
They’d been furious when Daisy stood her ground on a small, intimate ceremony.
But in the end, they figured out how to get their way.
“You always have a choice,” I said and filled the cup again from the sink, handing it to him.
Todd downed the second glass the same way as the first, like he’d been stranded in a desert for the last twenty-seven years, and finished it by setting it on the counter with a thunk.
“You don’t need them, Todd. You have Daisy.
You’re going to marry the woman of your dreams this morning.
” And mine. The thought no longer stabbed my chest, the knife perpetually buried there, but twisted it instead.
I wished I were a worse man. One who would let this spiral happen and separate him from Daisy.
But I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—do that to him.
Or her. “And in a few months, you’re going to be a father.
It’s never too late to be better. To pick a different path. To walk away from your parents’ plan.”
I caught the hard flex of his jaw. “You don’t understand,” he muttered and gripped the edge of the counter.
“Me? How long have I known you?” Sometimes, it felt like I understood Todd’s demons more than he did.
Especially the ones that made him drink.
“I understand this—the baby wasn’t part of your plan.
Or your parents’ plan. But Jesus, man, do you know how lucky you are?
” I turned away and raked a hand through my hair, feeling my own demons start to claw up my throat.
“Daisy is smart and funny and genuine and gorgeous. Do you understand just how fucking lucky you are that she picked you? That you get to have forever with a woman like her?”
I bit into my tongue then, tasting the coppery tang of a confession about to go too far. For a beat, I wondered if I already had.
There were so many times over the course of their relationship that I swore he had to see it.
He had to see the way I looked just a little too long at his girlfriend.
His fiancée. That I knew all her favorite things to help him grovel when he came up short.
But that was Todd, perceptive only to the perimeter of ignorance.
He noticed only his best friend having his back, the way I’d done for the entirety of our friendship.
But right now, the way he looked at me…the haze in his eyes…Did he realize? No. He was drunk. He could hardly follow the tether of what we were talking about. There was no chance he could hear all the things I wasn’t saying.
I cleared my throat, and whatever clouded his expression was gone in an instant, convincing me I was right. He had no idea I was in love with his soon-to-be wife.
“You’re right.” His shoulders slumped.
“Come on.” I patted him on the back. “Shave. Rinse off. Fix the rat’s nest on your head.”
His gaze found mine in the vanity mirror. “She deserves better.”
“So get ready and give her a better man.”
Todd stared at me for long enough to make me question what I’d said—to make me question what was going through his mind—but then he nodded.
“Get dressed and brush your teeth. I’m not letting you be late.” Todd reached for his toothbrush and rinsed it in the sink. I let out a slow exhale of relief. We’d made it through the storm. “I’ll be outside.”
“Max.” He stopped me.
“Yeah?”
“I need a favor.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “Name it.”
“Daisy’s bouquet…”
“You didn’t drop it off this morning?” I looked over my shoulder. The bright pink peonies I’d hand-picked for Daisy were still in the vase on the small table in his room.
“No.” Todd scratched the back of his neck, looking guilty but not apologizing. “Probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.”
“I’ll handle it,” I told him, feeling my throat grow tight. “Get dressed. I’ll be back for you in an hour.”
I didn’t want to see Daisy before the wedding.
I didn’t know why I was afraid I’d do something stupid like confess just how much I loved her—how much I’d always loved her—when I’d had the better part of four years to do so.
I guessed there was something about the finality of her and Todd getting married.
Something that gave me the same instinct I’d had at the Brew Bar the day we met—the one that screamed to get up, to do something before I missed my shot.
But now, like then, I buried the instinct and the way I felt about her, and did everything I could to make sure my best friend’s wedding went off without a hitch.
The town of Friendship started to get quiet this time of year. While Stonebar Harbor still drew in visiting crowds through September, the smaller seaside town to the south had already begun to shed the dregs of its tourist season.
My car rumbled over the cobbled, aptly named Maine Street and pulled up out front of the Lamplight Inn. My cousin, Elouise—Lou—had bought the historic landmark of Friendship last year, renovated it back to its bed-and-breakfast glory, and officially opened the inn to guests early this year.
When Todd told me he and Daisy were getting married, he’d said they were just going to go to the courthouse, and I could’ve punched him.
I understood he thought this was just an inevitability.
That Daisy got pregnant, and therefore they had to get married, and the courthouse was the most efficient way to do that.
It was logical, but it was also incredibly stupid.
“Daisy said the courthouse was fine.”
“Of course, she did. She’s the most easygoing person on this planet. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve more than the courthouse.”
“But what’s the point? No one but us is going to be there. My parents are going on vacation, and Daisy doesn’t have family.”
“You’re her family, Todd. You’re going to be her family. That is the whole point.”
“Max?” Wade climbed down off the ladder where he’d been hanging the pink and purple peony garland—also provided by MaineStems—over the entrance.
Wade Stevens was Lou’s fiancé and older brother to the infamous Hollywood heartthrob, Blaze Stevens. Blaze had stayed at the inn earlier this spring, and after taking a fall down the main stairs, Wade had come up to check on his brother. He met Lou, and he’d never left.
I grabbed the bouquet from the front seat, holding it up as I approached. “Special delivery.”
Wade smiled and nodded. “They’re upstairs in the first suite.”
“Thanks.” I ducked inside, wondering how questionable it would’ve been to ask Wade to deliver the flowers.
My hand tightened around the stems. I couldn’t do it. I was a glutton for punishment—for the torture of giving the woman of my dreams her bouquet so she could marry my best friend.