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“Lucas.” Graham turns back to him, and Lucas is practically batting his eyelashes. “You can imagine how eager I was to come and find Apollo. This is a damn lucky coincidence—you being here at this very hotel on my very first day in the Big Apple.” He gives me a knowing look. Graham’s in his full-blown, Southern charm mode that makes whomever it’s turned on feel like they are the most important person in the universe.
But I’m not fooled by it. Not for a second. He’s nervous. He’s cracking the knuckles of his right hand, and his smile doesn’t come close to reaching his eyes.
This is no coincidence.
My stupid heart is doing the Dougie when it should be tripping over itself with terror.
“Oh! Where are my manners? Please, sit down.” Lucas pulls out his chair and bows as he offers it to Graham like he’s the Sultan of Brunei.
Graham claps him across the shoulder like they’re old friends as he drops into Lucas’s abandoned chair. I sit down, too, because “it would be weird for Apollo,” Graham grumbles.
“Gra—” I clear my throat when my words come out in a croak. “Graham, hi.”
I’m trembling, and my head is spinning. My entire body is alternating between flushes of heat and cold prickles of anxiety as I try to figure out what to do next.
If this fund-raiser wasn’t so important to me, I would get up and leave.
Out of nowhere, a server runs up with an extra chair, and Lucas points to the space between Graham’s chair and mine. He drops down into it, and Lucas smiles broadly as he looks between us. Graham eyes him with an air of cool disdain.
“So, how do you two know each other and how come I had no idea I was living with the best friend of the coolest guy on the planet?” I give him a weak smile that wobbles when I look at Graham to find him grinning happily at both of us.
“Well, I know all about you, Lucas. I had to make sure my best friend wasn’t dating a sociopath or anything.”
He punches Lucas in the shoulder playfully, but with enough force that Lucas tips over in his seat. His smile only widens as he rubs his shoulder and bursts out laughing.
I pray for some sort of divine intervention.
I’ve always hated Lucas’s laugh. The first time I heard him laugh out loud, I prayed it was an aberration. But it wasn’t. The only thing more disturbing than his laugh was that he was laughing hysterically at The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, aka the stupidest movie ever.
I should have known then. But he was so nice.
He supported my endeavors at the gallery, and I knew he’d never break my heart.
He couldn’t. Even if he tried. Because my heart was and would never be his to break. That honor belongs to Graham.
Lucas was an anchor when I really needed one. Now, I just feel weighed down.
I ended things a few days after my call with Graham. It wasn’t fair to him to keep dangling on. He took it very well. He just asked that we keep it quiet until after we’d fulfilled some public engagements where my absence would be noted.
But he’s moved out of our apartment and into one across the hall already. He said he wanted to be close by when I changed my mind and let him come home. But, I know he’s already at least fucking seeing someone else.
I have no idea who she is, but I’ve seen the back of her blonde head as she’s walked out of his apartment twice in the last week. I knew I’d made the right decision when seeing her evoked not even the slightest amount of jealousy or pain.
I hope he’s happy.
Right now, though, I wish I’d never agreed to the charade. Then, I could be at the table with the rest of my gallery staff instead of at his hedge fund’s table.
“So, are you here on business? Pleasure?” Lucas asks, grinning up at Graham like he’s Santa Claus and he’d been a very good boy this year.
“I’m enrolling at NYU,” Graham says, his eyes on me. Every synapse in my body is responding to him, and I’m hyperaware of the pull between us.
“Oh, wow. That’s amazing. I’ve heard you’re in talks with Volta to front their new line of soft drinks,” Lucas chirps.
Graham’s eyes narrow slightly, and his jaw tightens, but his tone is pleasant when he says, “No business tonight.”
“Oh yeah, sure man. We can meet up, have lunch. Maybe talk about it later,” Lucas says. I know he’s not this clueless. He just doesn’t know that Graham is about five minutes away from asking him to shut up.
“Maybe,” Graham says. Then, he glances over his shoulder at the empty dance floor. When he looks back at me his smile is nothing short of diabolical.
