CHAPTER ONE #3
Doesn’t seem to matter how much time goes by or how many times I tell myself to let go of the past, it continues to insist on surfacing in my present.
Honestly, sometimes I think fighting it only makes it worse.
Like some small part of Matti is permanently attached to me and every time it senses my desire to squash it, its survival instinct kicks into overdrive.
Like now, when I’m with a man, one I’m apparently perfectly suited for, and all I can do is think about how he’s not like my ex-husband.
“Huh.” I stare into the bedroom intended to house us. “Looks like we get the master suite.” It’s certainly convenient due to space but entirely inappropriate given the only place for sleeping is a king-sized bed, a romantic canopy bed with flowing lace drapery at that.
“Makes sense.” Oliver grins. “Having it isolated up here, away from the other rooms.”
“Guess that makes us the parents on this trip.” My humor may be a bit off as well.
I take another step into the suite and drop my bag.
After scanning the space a second time and still coming up short of a sofa or bench or secret stashed cot to sleep on, I try to come to terms with my fate.
“Be honest. How uncomfortable are you with all of this?” Because he has yet to suggest this is even remotely weird.
And judging by his expression, the thought hadn’t even occurred to him.
“I’m not uncomfortable.” He looks almost hurt. “Are you uncomfortable?”
“With sharing a bed? No.” I have a crapload of siblings and even more cousins. I’ve been bunking with people my entire life. That part doesn’t faze me. “But I know all I intend to do in that bed is sleep. And it may get uncomfortable if your intentions or expectations differ from mine.”
No point in beating around the bush any longer. We’re here. It’s done. Time to address the elephant in the room and let him know that I’m not a willing participant in this setup.
For a second, he seems taken aback. Then, I think he starts to put things together for himself. “You didn’t know I was coming on this trip, did you.”
I shake my head, biting my lip. Now I almost feel bad for him. “My sisters are crazy. I’m sorry.”
He shrugs, laughing it off. “Don’t be. I’m sorry if I’ve been making all of this awkward for you.
I kind of thought maybe something was off when you looked so surprised to see me at the airport this morning.
” He starts to back up toward the door again.
“The couch downstairs looked plenty big. I can just sleep down there.”
“What?” I shake my head. “No way. That’s totally unnecessary.
Besides, with so many people in this cabin, there’s no way you’ll get any sleep right there at the center of everything.
” I move toward the bed, assessing it. “This thing is huge. There’s no reason we can’t share it.
” I turn back toward him. “Now that we’re both on the same page with things. ”
He nods, a small smile resting on his lips. “We’re definitely on the same page.” He places his suitcase and bag in the closet near the door. “Alright, roomie. Let’s do this.”
I roll my eyes. He’s cheesy, but I’m starting to warm up to him. “Good.”
I’m about to ask him if he has a bedside preference when I hear Vale shouting from downstairs.
“Nessa!” he calls my name a second time when I don’t react fast enough after the first shout.
I hurry for the open doorway and yell back, “What?”
“You have company!”
What? How? Everyone I know in Hawaii arrived here with me, so I don’t see how I could possibly have company.
But since I’m not interested in continuing this conversation at the top of my lungs, I start for the stairs. “If you guys arranged for a backup blind date for me, heads will roll,” I grumble when I near the bottom and my sisters are within earshot.
“Trust me,” Tori answers, nodding toward Vale whose fingers are still wrapped around the door handle, an odd sort of expression on his face, “we had nothing to do with this one.” She gestures for my brother to open the front door before I can respond.
Holy shit .
“Matti.” I stop dead in my tracks, just a few feet short of the doorway. “What are you doing here?”
Matti starts strolling in to meet me where I stopped, but he doesn’t have a chance to answer.
“Who’s Matti?” Oliver’s voice rings out, his footsteps following me down the steps until they come to a stop behind me.
I’m about to explain when Oliver and Matti’s eyes meet. After that, Oliver doesn’t need an introduction anymore.
“You’re Matthias Benning!” He brushes past me to reach my ex-husband. “You play bass with The Wilds. Wow!” He looks back at me. “Do you know who this is? He’s a member of Knox Marley ’s band.”
I twist my mouth uncomfortably. Apparently, my being in the dark about our being set up for this trip wasn’t the only thing my sisters neglected to mention to Oliver.
“I know who this is.” I leave it at that and address Matti instead.
“Why are you here? Is everything okay at home? Are the kids alright?”
Out of my peripheral vision, I can see Oliver’s face scrunch up in confusion, but I ignore it for now. Matti wouldn’t be here for no reason. Something is going on.
“The kids are fine. Still in Charlotte visiting my sister and her kids as planned,” he assures me quickly. His mouth opens to say more, but the words seem to stick in his throat.
“Then what are you doing here?” I laugh. I can’t help it. Things were already nuts. But this, Matti, standing here, in Hawaii, on a dude ranch with horses , is absurd. “Surely, you didn’t come all this way just to see me .”
“Of course not,” he laughs too, like he’s trying to brush it off as an utterly ludicrous suggestion.
But something about the way he says it and the way his complexion seems to dance back and forth between pale and flushed, makes me wonder.
“No, as it turns out, I'm staying here for a quick bit of R & R myself.”
“You are?” Even if I didn’t know the man was terrified of horses, I’d find this hard to believe.
Taking off to Hawaii during the four days he has off while on the east coast portion of their U.S.
tour doesn’t exactly sound like the obvious or most convenient option for a quick dose of R & R. “By yourself?”
“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “No, no. Not by myself. We’re all here. The whole band.”
I’ve never known Matti to ramble, but that’s definitely what he’s doing. So, I repeat his statement to him. So he can hear for himself how unlikely it all sounds. “The whole band is staying here. On the ranch.”
“Yeah.” He nods, gaze drifting back and forth like he’s listening to his own words to rate their level of believability. It’s low. It’s non-existent. “Everyone. Knox. Cass. Jason. Oh, and Kenley.”
Kenley? Who the fuck is Kenley? She can’t be coming with Jason. He and Cass have been together for two years now. And I just talked to her a couple of weeks ago. Everything was going great between them. And obviously, Knox isn’t bringing a woman.
Which just leaves...no. Can’t go there.
“And you just happened to come and knock on my door?” I continue, mostly just to push past my onslaught of panic, but also to see how far he’s willing to take this story.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I saw you. Outside. Unloading.” He’s grasping, but he’s committed, which I suppose is commendable even if it is all bullshit.
“And you thought you’d just come by and say hi.”
“Yes.” He nods, smiling with the relief of someone who wasn’t sure they would make it out of their lie alive. “Exactly.”
“Great.”
“Great.” He starts to fidget, his initial relief passing again now that we’re still standing here, and nothing real has been said. “So, hi.”
“Hi.” I refuse to help him out of the hole he’s digging himself into. “Was that it?”
“I guess so.” He peers past me, curiosity and discomfort growing in his eyes the longer they linger on Oliver still standing next to me. Finally, he bites the bullet and reaches his hand out toward him, “I’m sorry, we haven’t been officially introduced. I’m Matti.”
“Oliver.” Oliver looks torn between being delighted and painfully confused. So, I add to the mess.
“Oliver’s here with me,” I blurt out. “We’re here together.” Because two can play the bullshit game around here. And if there’s a Kenley, I’m damn sure letting him know there’s an Oliver.
Matti looks like he just got two shades paler. An impressive feat while on a trip in sunny Hawaii. “That’s so great.” He practically chokes on the words. “Wow. I had no idea you were seeing someone. The kids never mentioned it.”
“The kids don’t know.” I dare a glance in Oliver’s direction just to make sure he’s not on the verge of outing me.
Mostly, he still seems too stunned by his proximity to a rock star to say much of anything.
So, I go on, “ Yet . This is our first big trip away. I figure if he can survive my siblings, he’s solid enough to meet the kids.
” I hook my arm around Oliver’s. It feels weird but no weirder than anything else I’ve experienced in the last twenty-four hours or so.
“Obviously, I was planning to talk to you about it first.”
Matti nods. “Of course.” We agreed when we split. We’d always share serious relationships with each other before telling the kids. “How convenient then, that I just happened to be here as well.”
Convenient wouldn’t have been my choice of words but fuck it. “Yeah, convenient.”
“Did you want to come in and sit down?” my brother offers from back inside the cabin where he’s been standing in the hallway just watching this shitshow unfold.
“Um, no thanks.” Matti starts backing up toward the door again. “I just thought I’d say hi. Last thing I want to do is intrude. Especially since this is a couple’s thing. Ex-husbands make for terrible third wheels and all.”
“You’re never an intrusion, Matti,” Tori chimes in. I can’t tell if she’s being sincere or is simply thrilled at the prospect of further torturing us all.
“You’re family,” Anna adds. And Anna is all sweetness, so that one was entirely genuine.
“I appreciate that,” Matti smiles at her, notably skipping over Tori. Clearly, he wasn’t sure about her intentions either. “But I better get going. I’m the first one here from my group, so it’s up to me to make sure everything is ready by the time the rest of the crew arrives.”
“Which will be?” I ask, walking with him until we reach the front step.
“Tomorrow.” He seems to still be thinking about it even as he says it. Then, apparently, he likes the sound of his answer because he repeats it. “Yeah, they’ll be here tomorrow.”