Ryker
I’d rather be running into a burning building right now than entering this pub to see Freddie. It’s our favourite pub, but not my favourite. Mine is about a ten-minute walk down the road, close to the only gay club in town, Achilles. I’ll probably end up in there after this.
This is going to be traumatic for all involved and I’ll need alcohol and a distraction. There are several options for distractions on my phone within a ten-mile radius, and a few social chats suggest Achilles is the place to be tonight.
Liam goes ahead of me and pushes open the thick wooden door.
I linger before following him inside. Freddie’s in our favourite booth in the corner, the one he was sitting in when he asked us to be his best men, but this time there’s only one drink on the table.
It’s a beer, half gone, and Freddie has his hand around it.
“I’ll order,” Liam says gruffly, leaving me to approach our best friend.
He’s staring solemnly at the amber liquid in his glass, and I don’t think he’s noticed we’ve come inside.
We’re not as showy when we’re out of uniform, though we still get looks for the twin thing, but Freddie not looking up when he’s expecting us is a red flag.
“Hey.”
He startles, then gazes up at me with his big blue eyes.
They’re welcoming, excited to see me, but there’s no mistaking the heavy bags that sag his pale skin, and as I lean closer, maybe too close, I see the blood vessels seeping into the whites.
He gives me a tired grin, and I collapse down next to him, resisting the urge to drag him in for a more thorough inspection.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Freddie blows out a breath. He’s slouching, and once he notices I’ve noticed, he straightens up and stretches his arms in front of himself. “It’s been a stressful week.”
“Wedding planning?” I suggest.
“Oh, it’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
He hesitates, toying with something to tell me.
I know from the way he pokes his tongue at the edge of his mouth.
It’s effortlessly sexy, but so is any glimpse of his tongue.
He had an ice cream once, when I was sixteen, and I had to excuse myself to “fix the situation” in private, and don’t even get me started on Freddie with a banana in his mouth.
“A little bit that,” he admits. “Not the planning in itself, just . . . some awkward questions.”
“Like how many cake tiers is too many?” I muse. “Anything above twenty I’d say is excessive.”
“But nineteen is fine?”
“Nineteen is perfect. It’s my lucky number.” I nudge him with my elbow.
It’s so difficult not to touch him, but I keep it brief.
“Your lucky number is three,” he says as he nudges me back.
And he’s right, it is three. Three is an awesome number. Lose the awe and it’s the perfect number combination.
“I’m warning you in advance that Keegan wants Ben as one of the groomsmen.”
I scrunch my nose up. Ben is Keegan’s stepbrother. I’ve only met him once, and he spent the whole time leering—not at me, but at Keegan.
“And she keeps bringing up my dad.”
I stiffen, then check Liam’s progress at the bar.
It’s best we talk about this out of earshot of my brother, or else he’ll think of a reason to hunt Freddie’s dad down and arrest him.
Neither of us like the guy—in fact we hate him—but I’m more rational than Liam.
You can’t plant evidence in a man’s house to have him sent to prison no matter how much you loathe that person and all the hurt they caused.
“You’ve told her about him—”
“I’ve told her under no circumstances is he coming to my wedding.”
“Good.”
Freddie’s face drops. “She thinks it’ll make our pictures look weird, though . . .” He taps a beat on his glass with his thumb. “Do you think your parents would stand in for him?”
My parents would love to; I don’t need to ask. They’ve seen Freddie as part of the family since he first stayed the night at our place. Every time we speak to them, they ask about him like he’s their third son, which is all kinds of messed up considering what Liam and I want to do to him.
“I know it’ll be weird to have my best men and their parents in the photos, but you know how much I appreciate what they did for me growing up . . .”
Our door was always open to Freddie, any day, any time, and I hate how often he had to use it.
Hate the night he came knocking in the rain, soaked through and without shoes.
He was shaking. His bottom lip trembled.
Although we all asked him what had happened, he wouldn’t say, which was the norm.
He didn’t like to talk about it, still doesn’t, but we saw suspicious bruises on his skin.
Not a lot, they were just singular, perfect circles Liam and I have speculated about over the years.
We have a theory, but we’ve never voiced it to Freddie.
“I know,” I whisper. “And if you ask them, they’ll say yes.”
Freddie beams and lifts his drink towards me before taking a sip.
That momentary bliss at pleasing him is not worth it.
It’s made everything more complicated, more awkward.
We were meeting with Freddie to decline his best men offer, and in the first few minutes I’ve made it ten times worse by including my parents.
Liam comes over to the table with two beers and sets one down in front of me. He sits opposite Freddie who smiles brightly at him.
“You’re tired,” Liam states.
Freddie snorts. “Hello to you too.”
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
Again, Freddie hesitates. I’m not imagining it, I’m sure.
“Wedding stuff,” he says.
I frown, because that’s not what he said earlier. He said it was part of the stress, not all of it.
“I’m going to ask your parents to be part of my big day.” Freddie glances at me for reassurance.
“What big day?” Liam asks.
Freddie rolls his eyes. “Funny.”
Liam isn’t trying to be funny. No, Liam is being dismissive, simmering Freddie’s wedding down into insignificance.
It hurts him to think about it, so his solution is not to, and once we get tonight out of the way he’ll delete the memory of Freddie ever asking us from his head.
Or so he’ll try to make me believe he has.
“As my dad won’t be there—”
“Too right he won’t be there,” Liam growls, and a swift darkness descends over him. “He wouldn’t be anywhere if it were up to me.”
I kick Liam under the table. It’s not the first time Liam has threatened Freddie’s dad, and if he walked through the door right now, I’d have difficulty keeping him under control.
Going down for the murder of Freddie’s dad would be worth it in Liam’s eyes, so I’m glad he lives on the other side of the country.
“As he won’t be there,” Freddie starts again. “I thought your parents could be at the top table with us and in all the photographs. It would mean a lot to me.”
Liam turns his attention to me, and from the twitching vein at his temple, and the muscles in his jaw being plucked like strings, I’d say he’s pissed off.
“What’s that look for?” Freddie asks.
“He’s imagining how insufferable our mum will be when she starts looking for a new hat.”
I’m making this worse by dragging out the inevitable, but I don’t know how this night is going to end. I know what I have to do, but doing it gets harder with each passing second. My T-shirt sticks to my clammy skin, and I wipe my palms on my jeans out of sight.
“Keegan’s already picked the colours if that helps?” Freddie says, then unprompted, he adds, “Purple and green.”
“I’ll let my mum know.”
Liam’s nostrils practically bellow as he breaths out.
“Seriously,” Freddie says, looking between us. “What’s going on?”
Ah fuck. We talked about it on the drive over, about how I was the best option to break it to Freddie that we weren’t going to be his best men.
Liam suggested I was better with words, better at delivering them to ensure minimal damage, but we both know this is going to hurt Freddie no matter how much I try to soften the blow.
I take a deep breath. “We were thinking about the whole best man thing, and we’d like to take ourselves out of the running.”
Freddie’s eyebrows drop millimetre my millimetre until a severe frown creases his brow. His irises darken a few shades, turning a deep sapphire as he scrutinises me. “Running? There is no running,” he says. “I’ve asked you two. You’re my best friends. You said yes. It’s done.”
“We’re hoping to un-done it.” I cringe.
“Undo.” Liam rumbles, which is his only input.
“You . . .” Freddie bites his lip. “You don’t want to be my best men?”
We want to be his best lovers and his men, so there is an argument for being his best men, but not in relation to marrying someone else.
“I’m hardly reliable,” I say. “If you leave your stag party up to me, you’ll end up tied to a bed somewhere on a remote island.”
Liam touches his foot to mine beneath the table, and I think “yes, we’d both enjoy that scenario,” but it’s not the time to think about it, and no justification from Liam will make that fantasy a reality.
It can’t happen.
Kidnapping Freddie for our own benefit would be wrong on so many levels.
Freddie looks utterly unconvinced.
I try again.
“We’ll end up with huge tattoos across our foreheads and get salmonella from some cheap all-inclusive I book us into.”
“I don’t care about elaborate stag parties. I’d be happy to chill at yours, play computer games, eat snacks, and crash on the sofa. It can be like old times.”
“You still might end up handcuffed to the bed.”
I say it like a joke, but it isn’t one, and Freddie doesn’t smirk. He’s watching me intently, and I have to think fast to get out of this mess, come up with another reason why we can’t be his best men. But I can see him poised to argue against me.
“Can you really see Liam doing a speech?” I gesture to my brother. “He’ll terrify the guests.”
“He doesn’t need to do a speech.” Freddie looks over at Liam. “I’m not expecting you to. I just want you to be there with me at the top of the aisle.”
“I’m not reliable,” I blurt. “I’ll lose the rings or get the day wrong.”