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“Everyone always focuses on that part of it,” Quinn grouses. “The only one woman part. What no one ever says is that you’re going to have the best sex of your life every night of your life for the rest of your life. If they billed it that way, men would be signing up in droves.”
“So true.” Take that, Rhys. I’m in character, and that’s what a guy about to get married would say.
But even as the words leave my mouth, I’m thinking about Ivy’s couch. Ivy’s mouth. The heat collected at the seam of Ivy’s shorts, the softness of her rubbing against me, the whimpers and moans and?—
My self-control has waxed and waned like the moon on time lapse camera since last Sunday.
I want her.
Even my best self might not be good enough for Ivy Scofield.
I want her.
She’s a small-town girl, and I’m bright lights, big city all the way.
I want her.
I suppress a sigh. I don’t want my brothers to hear it and demand to know what’s on my mind.
“You’ll back me up, right, Pres?” Quinn demands. “Married sex—the best sex, right?”
I turn around to look at Pres. I’m expecting the same expression I see on Quinn’s face—faintly self-satisfied, the look of a man who’s getting some regularly—but instead, he pales.
I remember my impression on the day of Eloise’s christening that something was off with him and Kali.
I count back in my head, trying to calculate the last time I saw Preston with his wife. Not when my letter was read. Not when Eloise was born. Not when Quinn’s letter was read, not at the funeral, not at the reading of the will.
Huh.
I need to ask Hanna when the last time was that she saw Kali.
As if Preston knows I’m circling some truth he doesn’t want revealed, he says, “Let’s ask Shane! How’s it feel to get the best sex of your life, every fucking day?”
Bastard.
I open my mouth to dish it back at him. Shiny and glib, just some more good acting. Something like, Really fucking good or Best sex of my life for sure.
But then I can’t do it.
I can’t play the game right now.
Maybe it’s that Rhys and Pres flew themselves out here from New York to spend the day with me. Maybe it’s that it’s been so good to spend this day with all my brothers. Maybe it’s the way we’ve slipped back into old rhythms. Only Tuck, with his dark silences, is not his old self.
I mean, my brothers used to be my whole life. I made a blood oath to them, and even though I broke the oath, I never stopped feeling the connection.
But I think it’s something else. It’s not just that I can’t lie to them—because they deserve the real me.
It’s that I don’t want to lie about how good it could be between me and Ivy.
Not anymore.
Which means I already know what I’m going to do.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I think I might be about to find out.”
26
Ivy
