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I still didn’t understand, and all Bru’s grin did was lift.
“Bro, she needs an assistant, and she asked me to ask you to do the job,” he said, and I blinked, twitched. He laughed. “She wants you to help her. She knows you’re into art and stuff.”
Yeah, but I couldn’t take pictures for shit. That wasn’t my fucking medium at all, and why would she ask him to ask me? I shook my head. “Why would she want me to help?”
Bru gave me a look like it was obvious, but it wasn’t. Not to me. He leaned forward. “She wants to see you, Ares,” he said, and my mouth opened. “She’s obviously using this as a reason to. I think she feels like she needs an excuse.”
What he said gave me more hope than it should. I shouldn’t hope for this or want her to see me. I shouldn’t want to see her. After today, I shouldn’t want to.
But I did.
I was fucking desperate for that, my chest tight and aching for it. There may not be a reality in which she and I could ever be, but at least, I could be around her for a little while. I could be near her and tell her the truth she deserved.
I could say goodbye.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Fawn
“You’re a godsend for doing this, you know.” My friend Heath was in a suit and appeared rather dashing. His personal style was more scholarly, but today, he wore a formal gray three-piece suit since he was in the wedding. He grinned. “I know how you hate weddings.”
I didn’t hate weddings. I just hated shooting them. The days were long, tiring, and required an obscene amount of my mental capacity.
It was a capacity I unfortunately didn’t have as I scanned the hotel’s atrium. Heath’s cousin was getting married in one of the hotel’s ballrooms, and the reception was going to be in another. Anyway, my gaze zoomed over the atrium in a frenzy, and Heath noticed.
“You nervous or something? You always do well at these.” Heath was tinkering with his camera. He was loaning me a spare since I’d have an assistant today.
God, why had I asked Wolf to do this?
He wasn’t here yet, and I felt like I was going to be sick. I’d asked Bru to ask him to be here, and Bru had texted that Wolf would. Even still, I didn’t know what I was going to say.
I was feeling very ill, and even though the sensation wasn’t like my cold, it still sucked. My stomach was basically in my throat, and I was glad I’d already gotten pictures of the bridal party out of the way. Those had been early this morning, and my focus was shot. I scanned the atrium filled with people waiting for the ceremony to begin. I glanced at Heath. “Not exactly.”
I wasn’t nervous to take pictures. Pictures I was good at. What I wasn’t good at was Wolf and how he made me feel. He got me so in my head, and I…
“Hey, I’m not late, am I?”
I swiveled around, and in front of me stood a Big Bad Wolf. Ares had his hands in his pockets, and he was wearing all black like I’d requested. His dress pants hugged his chiseled legs like sin, and the same went for the button-up he had rolled at the sleeves. It exposed the corded muscle of his arms, and his hair was up and out of his face. I’d seen many guys dressed in full suits today, but Ares Mallick in a black dress shirt and trousers managed to outshine them all. It was the way he carried himself, I think.
Or maybe I just noticed that.
No, I wasn’t the only one to notice. Wolf had more than one set of eyes on him from both the male and female population. One set was Heath’s, but I think that was just pure shock. I hadn’t told him who my assistant would be today, but that was due to fear. I was scared that I’d asked Wolf to come meet me.
I was terrified.
Of what, I wasn’t so sure. Things had seemed so much simpler when I’d called his brother. Bru had asked my thoughts behind the request, and my reasons surrounded answers. I needed answers from Wolf. There were things that had happened between us that required them, but at the present, I wasn’t thinking about any of it. People were looking at Wolf, but he was only looking at me.
He was smiling.
He had a nice one of those when he wasn’t using it against you, and I found it so hard to forget that. He had used it against me.
“No, you’re not,” I managed to say to him, and it was an honest question he’d asked. I mean, people were moving around like things had already gotten started, and I had taken pictures already without him. Again, it was due to fear, being around him… “The ceremony is about to start in a little bit.”
I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience standing in front of him. Especially when I had to explain to Heath that Wolf was my assistant. Needless to say, that surprised the fuck out of him. At one point, he and our other friends hadn’t even been able to mention Wolf’s name around me.
That was how bad it had gotten, but I forced bravery into myself today. Again, I wanted answers, and that was why Wolf was here.
This was what I told myself when I watched Heath greet Wolf, and something that surprised the fuck out of me was when Wolf brought Heath into a handshake-hug combination. Dudes greeted each other like that, but Wolf hadn’t been Heath’s biggest fan. He’d expressed jealousy of my former roommate on more than one occasion.
