May the Best Man Win (23 page)

The Under Armour shorts he wore in the morning before they figured out what they were going to do and he got dressed for real.

“I can't believe how much I leave around here. Em, you gotta tell me to clear my crap out when I go.”

His toothbrush. A razor.

Leaning against the bathroom door, she caught his eyes in the mirror. “Jase, they're just a few things. I don't mind.”

He laughed, but it wasn't the laugh she loved. This one sounded strained. This one made her nervous.

“Yeah, but it's not like we're living together, right?”

“Right. No, of course not.” But then she had to ask. “Is everything okay? Are we okay?”

Pain flashed through his eyes. Muttering a curse, he pulled her into his arms, holding her the way she was used to. The way she loved.

“We're good, sweetheart. Of course we're good.”

She wanted to believe him. But even in that perfect hold, she couldn't shake the sense that Jase wasn't just trying to reassure her; he was trying to reassure them both.

* * *

“Just settle down, man,” Jase said, watching Romeo wear a hole in Jase's office carpet.

The guy had shown up twenty minutes earlier, sporting the kind of shell-shocked expression that had Jase clearing his calendar on the spot. He'd barely been able to breathe when he asked if something was wrong with little Gloria, the month-old baby girl who'd stolen everyone's heart. But nothing was.

“You're overreacting,” Jase promised. “It can't be what you think, because Sally would never… She just wouldn't.”

“She admitted it.” Romeo covered his eyes. He sucked in a breath, his back quaking once before he fisted his hands against his brow. “Not at first. But then, yeah, she told me. It's true.”

Jase was sick. Too stunned to speak, because… No. Just no. Sally couldn't. She loved Romeo. Jase had seen it. Felt it. Knew it.

He wasn't wrong about her. There was just no way.

Only the kind of twisted agony coming off the man breaking in front of him said that it was. Jesus, he'd seen this before. In his father's eyes… Fuck, in Eddie's eyes.

Though as soon as the thought crossed his mind, he felt a stab of guilt and shook his head. No, Eddie was different. What happened with Eddie was the kid's own doing.

Not like with Romeo and Sally.

Sally.
He couldn't wrap his head around it. Yeah, they'd had some bumps, like any couple. And yeah, the engagement had come up pretty fast.

His stomach knotted.

Maybe he should have seen it. Maybe he'd let Romeo down by not pushing him to give the relationship more time.

Maybe that's what his friend had needed when he first came to talk to him about popping the question.

But the guy had been so sure. So certain. So…blindly in love, and once again Jase had just wanted to believe.

Damn it.

Twenty years ago, there was nothing Jase could have done to help his dad. Not the first time his wife cheated, or the second, or the third. Not when she left. And hell, as much as he might wish it were otherwise, not even now that she was back.

But Romeo… Hell, Jase didn't want his father's past to become Romeo's future. Romeo didn't deserve this.

“It's going to be okay,” he said gently, knowing better than to try to touch the guy. “Let's sit down, and we'll talk this out.”

* * *

Emily was late meeting Jase. With the rain, it seemed every cab in the city had been snatched up, and when she'd finally caught one, traffic had been moving at a slow crawl, giving her too much time to worry. To think.

Maybe she should have canceled dinner and seen if he'd be up for staying in instead, but she hadn't wanted to risk him suggesting they take a rain check. Not with what she needed to talk to him about tonight.

Inside the restaurant, she found Jase at the bar, rubbing a weary hand over his face and looking almost as bad as she felt.

He leaned in to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Man, are you a sight for sore eyes.”

Pretty much what she was thinking. And now she regretted not staying home even more, because one look at Jase and all she wanted was to curl up with him on the couch. Feel his arms around her and rest her head against his chest.

“Em, you look like you're about to cry.”

She felt like it. But then Jase was holding her hand, and somehow that made things better.

“Have you talked to Romeo?”

Jase's face changed, his jaw tensing as he leaned back on his stool. “I was wondering if Sally would have the nerve to tell you.”

Maybe it was his cool tone or the hard look in his eyes, but either way her shoulders tensed. “I spent the afternoon with her. She's a mess. Do you know Romeo is talking about moving out?”

Jase nodded and threw a couple of bills on the bar before grabbing his coat. “Yeah. I told him to.”

Five minutes later, they were in the back of a cab, Jase in one corner, Emily in the other, the warmth and comfort she'd begun to associate with this man nowhere to be found.

“She slept with another man!” he roared, glaring at her from across the seat. “You bet your ass I'm going to get behind my guy when he finds out.”

The wipers slapped across the windshield and a horn blared.

“Believe me, you getting behind your guy is not a surprise, Jase,” she snapped back, too many old feelings she'd thought she put aside rushing to the surface. “But don't you think you
owe it to your guy
to consider that there's more to this than just—”

“You're damn right there is. Because it wasn't just some
random
she took home to screw. It was Aiden Mickey, her ex-fiancé, who Romeo fucking hates and has had the shit luck of working down the hall from for the last three years. The dickhead who's probably been laughing his ass off for the last year over what a chump Romeo is.”

God, Sally's choice of rebound hookup couldn't have been worse. There was no denying that.

“Two weeks, Em,” he went on. “Two weeks before she took Romeo's ring and put it on her finger, she let Aiden put his—”

“She thought they had broken up! She was devastated. Romeo hadn't spoken to her in five days, after telling her he ‘wasn't doing this anymore' and walking out. He wasn't returning her calls or texts. From where she was sitting, she was well within her rights to do whatever she wanted with whomever she wanted.”

Jase looked like she'd slapped him. “Jesus, Emily, how can you defend—”

He shook his head, then raised his hands in a calming gesture. For her or himself, she didn't know.

All she did know was her stomach felt like the floor had just dropped out from under her.

“The only reason Romeo didn't call her back was because he dropped his phone in a toilet in Mexico. Which he told her when he came back. Which he apologized for. Which was when she should have explained that she'd had sex with Aiden
the night before
, instead of hiding the truth and hoping Romeo never found out.”

If Sally had come to Emily for advice, that was what she would have told her to do. But that wasn't how it had happened. Sally had been too afraid to tell anyone. So when the truth came out, it was thanks to an acquaintance's off-the-cuff comment leading to a whole lot of questions and one devastating confession.

“She didn't want to hurt him. And she didn't want to risk losing him because of one night with a guy who just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. She loves Romeo. They're married
with a month-old baby
! How could you tell him to leave her?” Emily demanded, on the brink of tears. “If you give them a chance and get out of Romeo's head with this talk about him moving, they can work it out.”

Jase balked. “That's what I'm afraid of! Romeo already tried to end it with her once and ended up putting a ring on her finger instead. Emily, some guys just can't see straight where women are concerned. They get caught up in all that soft and sweet, and they don't even recognize what else is there.” Shoving a hand through his hair, Jase blew out a long breath. “Romeo deserves better than a lifetime of waiting around for whatever betrayal his wife has lined up next. Wondering how many people already know. Asking himself what happened to the life he thought he was going to have.”

Emily couldn't believe what she was hearing. “Jase, this is
Sally
we're talking about. You're making her out to be some praying mantis, just waiting to devour her mate.”

“I know she's your friend, Emily, and you want to believe the best, but she screwed another guy. And while I believe she was hoping it would stay quiet, it didn't. People know. But even if they didn't, what does it say that she chose
the one guy that would hurt Romeo worse than any other on the planet
.” He looked out the window. “She
broke
him, Em.”

Her heart ached, thinking about what was happening to this new, fragile family.

Reaching for Jase, she squeezed his arm.

“He's hurt. It's terrible what they're going through. But they can get through this, Jase. Sally loves him. They love
each other
. They're a
family
.”

Jase turned back to her with haunted eyes. “Eddie loved you. He was sure of it.”

Her stomach churned, the breath leaking out of her in a rush.

“I can't go back and protect you from it, Em. I think about it every day, what I could have done. What I should have done.” Gently, so gently, he brushed his thumb over the place on her wrist that Eddie had once bruised. “What I could have stopped.”

“It's not the same,” she whispered.

“I couldn't help my dad twenty years ago. Hell, I can't even help him now. But Romeo? I can help him through this. I can be on his side, Em. And if that means supporting him getting out now—while he's still got a chance to recover and little Gloria doesn't have to spend years watching some screwed-up dynamic tear her dad down to nothing—then I'm all for it.”

She crumpled into her corner of the cab. “It was a mistake, Jase.
One
mistake Sally will regret for the rest of her life.”

“It's never just one.” Jase sounded exhausted. “It might be Sally's
first
mistake. But women like her… Cheaters cheat, Em. They don't just do it once.”

Women like HER.

Maybe it was something about the way Jase said it, but suddenly Emily was taken back to that horrible night so long ago. To Jase glaring down at her outside the emergency room, firing one accusation after another.

“You think you can play with people like dolls. Like the consequences don't matter.”

The cuts on her hands and arms from trying to get to Eddie weren't bleeding anymore. The bigger one at her wrist had been stitched and bandaged, and a sort of numbness had replaced the pain and shock of what she'd just witnessed.

The crumpled metal, the broken glass. The blood. Eddie's blood. So much of it.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, the words sounding slow and slightly muffled. “I've spent the entire summer trying to be there for Eddie. Me. I called you again and again. I told you there was something going on with him. There was something wrong. You're the one who didn't—”

“Bullshit, Emily. This is on you. I know about the other guys. I know about the head games. I know the reason my best friend is in surgery right now, and it's you.”

Everything he was saying was wrong. All of it.

She ought to defend herself, to say something. The sort of fog she'd been walking around in began to clear.

“You think I was messing around on Eddie?” she half whispered. “Did he tell you that?”

Of course he had. But how could Jase believe him? He knew her. How could he even think—

“How could you, Emily?” Jase shoved his hands back into his dark hair, fisting them at the sides of his head. “He loves you.”

She took a step back, slowly straightening her shoulders, because she had nothing to be ashamed about.

She would never have betrayed Eddie that way. Yes, she wanted out of their relationship—but she wouldn't have used another guy to get there. She'd told Eddie it was over. That's why he drove into the divider, and that's why he was in surgery.

“I wasn't… Jase, I was trying to help him.”

Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, Jase bowed his head. “I thought you were different, Em. Shit, I
needed
you to be different. Girls like you, you have no idea the damage you can do to a guy.”

Emily stood there a moment, silent. There was nothing she could say. Jase wouldn't believe her, so why bother?

Slowly she turned back to the ER, squinting into the overhead light.

Her parents were inside with Eddie's, and hopefully the Gainers would be ready to hear what she'd been trying to tell them for months about their son. Hopefully, her parents would support her this time.

Hopefully, Eddie would get the help he needed.

The only thing she knew for certain was that it would be without her. She wasn't what he needed. Tonight proved that.

She was finally going to be free. No matter how much everyone hated her for it.

Now, Emily rubbed at the faint scar on her wrist from that night and looked at Jase, the man she'd been quietly, helplessly falling in love with. “When you say ‘women like her,' Jase, do you mean
women like me
?”

He didn't still believe it. He'd been upset that night, but he'd had years to think about it. And he'd told her that he'd realized a long time ago how unfair he'd been. He had to have meant about this too.

“This isn't about us.”

The nonanswer tore at her, ripping open old wounds, the hurt she'd tried to put behind her.

“I don't know,” she said quietly. “It seems like maybe it should be.”

“Em, don't be like that.”

She waited, breath held, for him to tell her he knew her better
now
. That he'd been wrong to think she would ever be unfaithful. That maybe, after all these years, he finally understood.

But instead, he turned to the window, cocking his jaw to one side as he stared out at the night. “Eddie did a number on you. I get that now. So whatever you did, I'm not judging.”

She almost laughed, but the tears pushing at the backs of her eyes got in the way. “But you don't totally trust me either, do you?”

And then it hit her.

“Jase, is that what's been going on this last week? Did you suddenly realize things were progressing further than they should with
a woman like me
? Is that why you've been pulling back, putting a distance between us where there wasn't any before?”

“Don't do this,” he warned, as though there was any stopping what had already begun. As though he hadn't just given her his answer.

An answer that knocked the wind out of her, it hit her so hard.

“Then why?” she asked when she finally found her breath. “I get those first few times. The sex. It was hot and intense and…” She closed her eyes against the memory of his lips at her ear, his body moving with hers, the words that had chipped at her defenses until they were nothing but rubble. “I get it. But you could have left it at that. Why ask for that first date?” she demanded. “Why push? Why spend weeks trying to sell me on something that
doesn't even exist
?”

“Don't say that,” he shot back.

“Tell me why!”

“Because I couldn't fucking help myself! Is that what you want to hear?”

No, it most definitely wasn't what she wanted to hear.

Jase swore, his expression a mix of fury and agony, looking like he wanted to take the words back.

But it was too late. They'd already become a part of her.

“Emily, I couldn't walk away and then I didn't want to.” He reached for her hand, leaning into what he was about to say next. “I don't know why we're even talking about this. Sally and Romeo are the ones with the problem. What you and I have is good. It works.”

“How can you say that?” she whispered, wiping at a tear. “If you don't really trust me, Jase—if you don't really know me, and you're putting up walls where I've just knocked mine down, then no. What we have is not good.”

* * *

They'd broken up in a cab.

Riding the elevator up to her floor, Emily contemplated who to call. Which of the girlfriends she'd been there for so many times to ring up and invite over for a couple of bottles of wine and a shoulder to cry on. A hug. A rousing speech about independence and finding the right man.

But by the time she got to her floor, she knew she wasn't going to call anyone. Because the only person she wanted to talk to was the man who'd just broken her heart.

She couldn't believe what had happened. It didn't make sense. She'd wanted to talk to Jase about Sally because somehow over the past months she'd come to see him as the man capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound. He could handle anything, cared about everyone—and saw things with the kind of clarity that had made him her go-to guy in sorting out complicated situations.

She'd been wrong.

But even knowing that, a part of her still wanted to run to his place so she could feel his arms around her and, for just a moment, lose herself in the security of that hold.

But that warm blanket of security she'd been snuggling up in wasn't any more real than the trust or the friendship, or any of the other fairy tales she'd been stupid enough to start believing in again.

God, how long would it take her to get over him this time?

Inside her apartment, she dropped her coat and bag by the door, too tired to put them in their place. She kicked off her heels and undid her hair. Unzipped her dress and left it in the wake of her despair. She wanted her pj's, but first things first.

Standing in her bra and panties, she opened the fridge and pulled out the stopper on the nice bottle of white she and Jase had opened two nights before. Without bothering with a glass, she took a long, forlorn swallow.

Let the pity party begin.

* * *

“Hey, man, wasn't expecting to see you here tonight,” Brody said from behind the bar where he'd been talking with a buddy. Then being Brody, the observant one, his face turned serious as he gave Jase the once-over. “Okay, my office.”

They walked to the back, a space Jase seldom visited because Brody usually preferred a table by the front window so he could keep an eye on both the inside and out. But Jase must have looked almost as bad as he felt.

“Jesus, you look like shit,” Brody said, dropping into his office chair.

Suspicion confirmed.

Jase sank into the black leather couch and folded forward, holding his head above his spread knees. “Insider tip: I'm not the next one getting married.”

Brody opened his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle with a handmade label and two thick, stubby glasses.

* * *

“I'm telling you, it's all part of the dysfunction running core deep within me.” Emily stabbed her warm nacho chip, laden with sour cream and guacamole, toward Lena and watched a glob drip onto the vinyl table cover, adding, “It's textbook.”

Two days into her breakup with Jase, and she was pretty sure it was, anyway. It had been a while since her Psych 101 class, and now that she thought about it, it had been a while since that cute waiter had promised to bring her a fresh margarita too.

Leaning back in her chair and looking way too entertained, Lena waved her hand in invitation for more. “Explain.”

“I planned this from the start. Subconsciously sabotaging myself by picking the one guy to ‘risk' getting serious with—who I know, deep down, isn't any more capable of committing than I am. Then I get to be all surprised and hurt and look-how-I-put-myself-out-there—which, handily enough, totally validates my future avoidance of all things relationship—because
he
let me down. I am the mastermind who got exactly what she wanted. Which is why there will be no boo-hooing out of me and we are here to celebrate.”

Being the good friend that she was, Lena didn't point out Emily's still tear-swollen eyes or the blotchy redness around her nose that no amount of concealer had been able to conquer.

The waiter returned with their drinks, and Emily offered up her firstborn if he'd make sure she had another on the table before she made it down to the ice.

“So you're happy?” Lena asked, clinking their glasses with a gentle smile. “Relieved to be free?”

Emily nodded with a professional-grade smile. “I am. I really, really am.”

Or at least she would be once she convinced herself she hadn't actually fallen in love with Jase. That she hadn't let herself believe in something she'd been denying for too many years to count.

The sympathy was there in her friend's eyes as she scooped up her own heaping chip. “Okay, then we'll celebrate.”

* * *

“Bull's-eye.” Jase crossed to the board and pulled out his darts, realizing only after that he hadn't bothered to check what he'd scored.

Sean would know. Even deep in conversation with Max and Brody back at their table, the guy was like Rain Man when it came to keeping tallies, counting anything really. One of the reasons they
never
played cards with him. A fact that had Emily screwing up her face when he'd told her. She'd laughed in disbelief, her eyes crinkling at the corner, her mouth…

Shit.

Handing the darts off to Brody, Jase stepped aside.

Three sets of eyes followed him and he grimaced. “What?”

Sean cleared his throat uncomfortably, that pitying look of his causing the muscles along Jase's spine to tighten. He was sick of that look. It was almost as bad as the one he'd been facing in the mirror every morning and night for six damn days now.

“Game's over, Jase,” Sean said, then clarified. “Actually, Brody won before your toss.”

Molly stopped by their table to clear a few empties, cutting Jase a no-nonsense look. “You talk to her yet?”

He had to give the girl credit. None of the guys had had the balls to ask what he was pretty sure was on all of their minds.

“No. There wasn't a whole lot of uncertainty about how we left things. And honestly, it was probably for the best.”

It had taken a couple of days for him to get to that way of thinking. Days of trying to come up with a solid reason to call, and then cursing himself for having been such a thorough fuck in clearing his stuff out of her place toward the end. Wondering if he should just check in and make sure she was okay—only to remind himself that even if she wasn't, he wasn't the guy she was going to want to chat with about it.

Molly set her tray down.

“The best?” she coughed out, her arms crossing over her chest in a move that was eerily similar to her brother's and had Jase edging into the seat farthest from where she was standing. “Have you even seen yourself, Jase? You're a mess. Minus the hot.”

Max gave a single-shoulder shrug beside him. “She's right. You look like hell.”

“Week-old roadkill,” Sean chimed in with a grin, stretching back in his chair.

“It's this business,” Brody offered, sort of circling his hands around his head as a whole, before splaying his fingers wide and making explosion noises.

Molly scowled at the guys and then turned back to Jase. Snapped her fingers in his face. “Get your hands out of your hair, for crying out loud. It looks like you've been yanking on it for days.”

Jase lowered his hands. “Guess I've been…stressed some.”

She raised an accusing brow. “Janice texted that you showed up at work on Monday looking like some kind of Sasquatch.”

Et tu
, Janice?

“I was trying something new. Beards are in these days.”

A sad, sorry, disgusted little huff of breath was his answer. Well, his first answer.