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“You want me to look into your father’s plane?” I had made the same offer to Zax and Grey when it happened, but with all the agencies, both public and private, looking into it at the time, they told me to hold off.
To my complete surprise, she shakes her head.
“If you’re not here for that, and I already know you’re not here for me to ink your skin, then I have nothing else to offer you. You should go. Go to Zax’s or home to your fiancé.”
She laughs, but there is no humor in it. “My fiancé isn’t my fiancé anymore.”
Double fuck. That I didn’t know.
“And actually, he’s part of why I need the favor.”
“You said help.”
She tosses her hands up. “Favor. Help. What’s the difference? I need it all the same, and you are the only person who can do this, Lenox. You have to know, I wouldn’t be here otherwise. I was honestly quite content going the rest of my life without ever seeing you again.”
I grunt.
She makes a strained, nervous giggle. “Before I tell you, you’re not allowed to say no. I mean, you just can’t. You owe me.”
Another grunt because I do sort of owe her in a way.
I used her for two years. I came home after my sister’s death in utter ruins. I was shattered. Broken every which way a person can be. Suzie wasn’t just my twin. She was the better half of me. My best friend. And when she dropped dead from a stroke in the shower, I died too.
It was my fault. I knew about the headaches. I knew she was pregnant, though she hadn’t come straight out and told me. I could have prevented her death, but I didn’t. We were traveling the world with Zax, Grey, Callan, and Asher as the band Central Square. We were huge. Unstoppable, especially with Suzie as our manager.
Then it all fell apart when she died, and I came home to another nightmare that threw me into an absolute tailspin. I was unrecognizable, even to myself. So close to the edge, I was toying with throwing myself over it.
And then one night Georgia, who was eighteen to my twenty-two and studying nursing at Boston College, called to check in on me. I had never thought of Georgia as anything more than my friends’ little cousin. But when she called me, something inside me stirred. Maybe it was her voice—her sweet, melodic voice—or the way she somehow got me to smile. I still can’t say why I did it. Why I went to her dorm like a goddamn fool who knew better. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t have any fucks left to give.
Whatever the reason, I lost myself in her body.
Unleashed myself because she was willing to take it and kept coming back for more.
For two years, I did this. All the while knowing it was wrong. I kept it a secret from my best friends, her cousins, who would have rightfully killed me for touching her. She was my drug. My addiction. The only thing that kept me breathing.
Until I learned she was in love with me, and I finally forced myself to do the right thing and not only come clean to Zax and Grey but walk away.
“Just tell me what you need from me, Georgia.”
She crosses the kitchen and stands before me, staring up at me with wide, resolute eyes. “I need you to marry me.”
Chapter Two
“I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not.”
I snort, rolling my eyes in derision, my tone wrought with sarcasm. “Do I look like I’m kidding? Do you think I woke up this morning and was like, you know, I haven’t seen Lenox in like six years. Why don’t I fly to Boston from LA—getting on a fucking plane, which you can imagine is not something super fun for me right now—and play a prank on him by asking him to marry me?”
He’s not amused, but frankly, neither am I.
He falls back into his silent man routine, but I’m not very good at waiting. My patience is already thin, and being here is about as fun, desirable, and painful as having a tooth pulled.
“How long do you plan to stare at me like that without speaking?”
Lenox doesn’t even so much as blink, but that doesn’t surprise me. It’s funny, it’s not his silence that’s throwing me—hell, I’m used to that from him—it’s the way he’s looking at me with this bold, unrelenting eye contact.
That’s what’s making me nervous. That’s what’s new for him.
And the way he’s looking at me with those bright blue eyes—such a contradiction to the cold, broody man he is—has my body inadvertently humming. Undivided attention is not something he hands out idly, and when you’re on the receiving end of it, he makes you feel like you can fly.
