Chapter 13
SIMON
“But I want Simon,” Delilah said, pouting at Corey over the breakfast table.
Breakfast was outdoors this morning, everyone around the same table, which was covered in pastries, fruit, and individual cups of plain Greek yogurt.
The weather was beautiful, a handful of cotton ball clouds floating across the otherwise clear, bright blue sky. Birds were singing.
I was clutching a mug of black coffee to my chest like a life preserver on account of the looks Theo and I had gotten when we arrived.
Intending to make everyone think we’d had loud, enthusiastic sex last night was all well and good until we had to face a dozen people who thought they’d overheard us in the morning.
“Sweetheart, he’s my best man,” Corey said, shooting a glance at me. “We’ve got things to discuss. Guy things.”
Today was bachel-or-slash-ette party day. Apparently, the festivities were starting early on account of the Fourth of July fireworks scheduled for tonight, when there’d be yet another cocktail party—with all the wedding guests in attendance—so we could watch them together.
I didn’t get the obsession with cocktail parties, which I was sure was yet another serious failing that marked me out as an outsider. Give me a board game night any day.
“Then I get Theo,” Delilah said, whipping her head to look at him. Theo, who’d been half-asleep beside me, straightened and stiffened.
“I’m not sure—” I began, only to be stopped by, of all things, Theo’s knee knocking deliberately against mine.
I looked at him in surprise. He wanted to hang out with Delilah?
No. No, he didn’t want to hang out with Corey.
That made sense. I could hardly refuse, though, having agreed to be his best man.
I realized now that I’d been ambushed, and it probably was some kind of scheme—whose, I wasn’t sure, but my money would be on Mrs. Hargrave—to upset things between me and Theo.
It’d take a lot more than that. One thing I was sure of in my life was that Theo would always be part of it, if I had any say. I wouldn’t give him up for anything.
Corey raised his hands in defeat. “All yours,” he said, flashing me a wolfish smile. “Sorry to split you up.”
Theo’s hand was on the breakfast table, tapping nervously. I curled my fingers around it, slow and showy so no one would miss what I was doing, then raised it to my lips to press a kiss to the knuckles.
His breath hitched, which was a nice touch of realism. Theo was a better actor than I’d realized. His performance in the shower after me had been…
Well…
I’d had to turn the lamp down as far as it’d go, curl up, and pretend to be fast asleep so he wouldn’t see how hard I’d gotten listening to him. The sounds he’d made would be stuck in my head for the rest of my life.
I’d overheard him before, when we’d still been sharing our apartment. He’d brought people back plenty of times, and our rooms shared a wall that wasn’t all that thick. I’d laid in bed, curled up on my side, eyes closed, trying not to listen.
Failing, more often than not. I’d heard him gasp and whimper and moan, brain tuned into his voice even when I wished it wasn’t.
Occasionally, I’d given in. Shoved my guilt aside and my hand into my sweatpants, stroking myself as I focused on Theo’s voice, his gasps and hitched breaths, the gorgeous little broken sound he made when—I assumed—he came.
Last night, I’d listened to him make those same, guiltily familiar sounds, but louder and more deliberate. I didn’t know if he’d ever tried to be quiet when we’d lived together, but he hadn’t last night. He’d let me—and everyone else in the house—hear it all.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Worse, I’d had to stand in the same shower this morning, burning with arousal, one fist in my mouth to keep me quiet and the other wrapped around my cock, stroking myself to the thought of Theo making those sounds for me.
I knew what it felt like to kiss him, now, and all I could think of was pinning him to the tiles, mouths sealed together, skin pressed to skin as I touched him, touched him all over like I’d always wanted to.
Made him whimper and gasp and moan under my hands, my mouth.
Made him come with that gorgeous little broken sound and looked him in the eyes after, pupils blown and unfocused, cheeks flushed and lips parted as he panted for breath, hair plastered over his forehead—a satisfied, happy mess.
Right now was not the time to be revisiting thoughts like that.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, moving Theo’s hand away from my lips again. “We’ve got forever to be together.”
Corey raised an eyebrow, lips twitching into a different smile. This one, I couldn’t quite read.
“You and me are gonna have a great day, Simon,” he said.
I was not having a great day.
My lungs burned as I skidded behind a stack of hay bales, a projectile whizzing past my head.
A jolt of pain shoot up from my knees as they hit the hard ground and I swore under my breath, scooting over to make sure my back was covered.
Tears stung at my eyes, my whole body aching as though it was all one giant bruise.
I was not cut out for paintball.
A cackle of laughter, a whoop, and another skid heralded Corey’s arrival, collapsing next to me behind the hay bales. His overalls were a lot less paint-covered than mine, almost pristine.
I didn’t know why I was surprised he was apparently a paintball prodigy. It was his bachelor party. Of course he’d pick something he enjoyed.
The rest of the wedding party—his side of it, anyway—had met us at the paintball place.
I’d caught about two names before everyone was wearing identical overalls and helmets, so Corey was also the only person here I actually knew.
Well, except Cameron—who’d tagged along on the groom’s side at Corey’s enthusiastic invitation—but knew was a stretch with him.
I would have been able to put a name to his face, which I couldn’t guarantee with anyone else.
Especially as most of them were models—male and female—so they all looked basically the same. Glossy magazine beautiful.
As though I hadn’t felt like the odd one out enough already.
“Havin’ fun?” Corey asked, grinning from under his helmet.
The look I gave him must’ve said it all, because he chuckled and patted me on the thigh with the air of an over-enthusiastic gym teacher trying to convince me I could love the sport of the week if I just gave it a chance.
The only sport I’d ever enjoyed in my life was ping-pong, and I still wasn’t good at it. Hand-eye coordination was not my strong suit.
Someone in black overalls—our team’s were blue—rounded the corner at that moment. Corey got off three shots, all of them landing neatly grouped mid-torso. The enemy team member sighed and walked off, shoulders drooping. Corey had barely moved and definitely hadn’t broken a sweat.
“My daddy used to take me hunting,” he said. “Some things stick.”
I was clearly also not cut out for hunting.
Not that I cared to. I had absolutely no desire to shoot any animals—or people, even with paintballs—at all.
“I thought you’d be thrilled to be my best man, y’know,” he spoke up again.
I gave him another look that I hoped communicated just how baffled I was, because I was still too out of breath to trust my voice.
Corey shrugged. “This way you get to make sure I marry someone who isn’t Theo,” he said.
What?
“I’m not stupid,” he continued, craning his neck to look around the hay bales as though he was discussing paintball tactics. “I may not have a master’s degree in… information science or whatever, but I could always see the way you looked at him. And me.”
How the fuck did he know what my degree was in? I couldn’t imagine him being interested enough to find out.
Theo might’ve told him? I wouldn’t have thought he’d remember, though.
“I—”
Don’t know what you’re talking about, I stopped myself from saying at the last second. It was so automatic a response that two days of pretending to date Theo didn’t stand a chance of changing it. I’d been denying how I felt about Theo to nearly everyone for almost as long as I’d known him.
“It’s fine,” Corey said. “Happy for y’all.”
He leaned over the hay bales and let off four shots—either covering fire, or there’d actually been someone there and I just hadn’t heard them.
I wasn’t sure if I was more grateful for the break or wary of the conversation. I neither liked nor trusted Corey.
Theo would’ve been surprised. He thought I perceived everyone as sunshine and rainbows with the best of intentions at heart.
I just liked to give everyone a fair chance.
I’d given Corey his, and he’d plunged my best friend into a breakdown I wasn’t sure he’d come out the other side of. That, as far as I was concerned, was unforgivable.
“Uh huh,” I said, wary about where this was going. My impression of Corey was that he always had an angle, that nothing was ever straightforward with him. “Delilah wants to go to school,” I tried, wondering if that would edge us closer to what he wanted from me.
To my surprise, Corey’s face lit up. Not the way a fox lights up when it sees an unguarded chicken, but...
The way a man in love lights up when the person they love comes up. I knew that look. I’d been feeling it on my own face a handful of times a week for over a decade.
“She wants to be a vet,” he said, as though no one had ever had a nobler desire.
“For horses, yeah. She told me.”
The sound of running made me sit up, paintball gun at the ready. I hadn’t hit anything I’d aimed at all day, but there was a first time for everything.
I fired as soon as whoever it was came around the corner of the hay bales.
And missed by maybe a foot and a half.
Luckily, the overalls on my target were blue.
Corey laughed and waved Cameron off in an unmistakable private conversation gesture, and he jogged away with a lazy salute.
“They pull to the left,” Corey said, patting the barrel of my paintball gun. “You gotta take that into account when you aim. About five inches.”
I’d missed by more than five inches, but I appreciated the attempt at advice I hoped I’d never need again.
“Y’know how Theo’s dad was a miserable misogynistic, homophobic piece of shit?” Corey asked, as casually as he would have about a fond shared memory.
He hadn’t been at the funeral. He had been dating Theo at the time, so I’d thought that was a little weird. I’d been too glad he wasn’t there and I was the one wrapping my arm around Theo at the graveside to think too much about it.
“I do,” I agreed. “He once told me… well, he once said some things about Theo to me that I’m not going to repeat but I kind of wish I’d slapped him for.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Corey said. “But he would’ve put you on the floor before you connected. Better that you didn’t.”
I huffed, but Corey was right. I’d never actually hit anyone in my life.
He… seemed to know a lot more about me than I’d expected.
“Anyway,” Corey said. “Because he was a miserable, misogynistic, homophobic piece of shit, Delilah can’t get her hands on her trust fund.”
“Until she’s thirty, right.”
“No,” Corey corrected. He paused, straightened, then lunged around the corner of the hay bales and fired three, four, five shots in quick succession.
A woman’s voice called out, “Fuck you, asshole.”
“Too late, I’m getting married tomorrow,” Corey called back, sitting back down beside me.
This was in the running for weirdest conversation I’d ever had. Top five for sure.
“No,” he repeated. “She can’t get hers ‘til she’s married.”
A moment of perfect understanding dawned over me as the puzzle pieces all fell neatly into place.
“So, the whole Hargrave family except maybe Theo himself thought I was only dating him for his money—which wasn’t true, by the way—and Delilah got in touch with me and said, basically, that she was up for an arrangement if I was.
We get married, she pays me off, we go our separate ways, she goes to college, I do whatever I’d do with more money than a sane person could spend in a lifetime. I agreed.”
This sounded more like the Corey I knew. If Delilah was in on it, though, good for her. Her father had been the worst of all of them, hands down.
“Problem is,” Corey continued with a wry laugh. “I love her.”
He meant that. The way he said it was too raw, too real to be faked. He did love Delilah.
“I love her,” he repeated. “I’m terrified she doesn’t love me.”
Something pulsed painfully under my ribs. I knew exactly how he felt.
I knew Theo loved me in the sense that he was my best friend. I didn’t doubt his affection, I didn’t doubt he wanted to be around me.
I also knew he’d never want me the way I wanted him.
Much as I didn’t particularly want to empathize with the man who’d broken Theo’s heart, here I was. Feeling his pain.
“She likes that you take her seriously,” I offered. Delilah hadn’t said anything about being in love with him, but she did definitely like him. Admire and look up to him, even.
It wasn’t necessarily love, but it was a start. It could’ve been love, one day, maybe.
“And she said she was only getting married once,” I added as I thought back over the conversation. “And that the two of you are moving to a ranch when she’s done with college, so…”
Maybe she did love him. Or wanted to.
Corey’s brows rose, his eyes widening and the shy, tentative beginnings of a smile unlike any I’d seen on his face before turned up one corner of his lips. “I’ll—”
The blaring of what I was fairly sure had once been a literal air raid siren cut him off.
The final round of the game—thank whatever higher power was apparently looking out for me—was over.
Corey patted me on the shoulder, rising with grace I couldn’t hope to match and offering me his hand.
I hesitated.
“I’m not gonna snatch it away,” he said. “Scout’s honor.”
I wasn’t sure I believed he’d been a Boy Scout, but neither had I. In any case, I reached for it, and he didn’t snatch it away.
“Truce?” he asked, still holding my hand once I was on my feet. “Sorry about the fight with Theo. Believe it or not, I’m not actually tryin’ to break you two up.”
I did believe it. I believed Corey wanted Delilah, that he’d moved on from Theo. He’d hated me, once—some of the looks he’d given me had been sharp enough to kill—but I got the impression he’d mellowed there, too.
I didn’t hate him anymore, either. He was right—I was glad he was safely getting married to someone else. He was the one person Theo had ever dated that I’d actually worried I might lose him to.
Selfish as it was, I was glad I hadn’t. I was glad I wouldn’t.
“Truce,” I agreed, squeezing his hand as I shook it. “As long as you never make me do this again.”
Corey laughed, loud and bright and good-humored. “Think of all the bruises you’re gonna have for Theo to kiss better.”