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Chapter Thirty-Five
Malcolm
Hunter marries Isabel in a church filled with flowers and people.
I’d say it was corny, because I never imagined my best friend putting on a monkey suit and standing at the altar where the crucified Jesus is literally everywhere, grinning like a madman while he waited for his bride to walk toward him. But then I watched it—watched my own girl walk toward me in her green dress any idiot can see Isabel chose for her husband’s eyes—and I realized just hownot cornyit was.
And how much I wanted to be the one standing there waiting for my own girl to put her hand in mine and pledge her love, and life, to me. Except, it wouldn’t be in a church, but on the beach—our beach, where the rocks kept people from sunbathing and spending too much time, and the waves crashed unapologetically on the sand any damn time they wanted.
Nala will be in one of those sexy-as-fuck white dresses she owns, her curls swirling loose around her, a band of flowers in her hair, and her eyes on mine. The only people there will be our family.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Sweat trickles in a cold line down my back, despite the intense heat generated by the sun beating down on me, the three layers of clothing I’m wearing, and the constant feeling of being choked. Shit, women complain about high heels, but they’ve never willingly tied some noose around their neck and worn it for everyone to see.
I make it through the mass—as in, consumption of blood and body, lots of crossing, and a lot of sweating on my part—and the pictures at the beach. When the limo holding the wedding party finally makes it to the reception sight, I’m out before anyone else. I tug my tie out of its knot and pop open the top three buttons of my shirt until I can finally drag in a full breath of air. And then I step up to the bar and order a beer, gulping it down before the guy even has time to take the tip I place in front of him.
“Make it two more of the same.”
I look over at Brooks, who’s undone his tie and shirt as well. He’s even removed his jacket, so he’s wearing a vest over his dress shirt, large-ass shoulders near to splitting the material of both. His hair is pulled back from his amused face, a smirk that has me itching to put my fist in it. Christ, I could literally crawl out of my skin right now.
“You look a little pale. Leg bothering you?”
I barely register the walking cast anymore. I have no pain—and as predicted, I’m supposed to be ready to start training at twelve weeks. “No.”
The bartender puts two fresh beers down, and I pick mine up immediately, gulping down half. “Then what has you so pissed off?”
I shrug, turning to rest my back on the bar, beer in hand. “Nothing. Just not a model like Jacks, so having someone tell me to smolder gets old fast.”
Brooks doesn’t buy it. “Sure, it’s that and not the fact that you just watched Jacks take a step you’ve been thinking about taking with Nala since you came home?”
Down goes the rest of my beer. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Brooks shakes his head. “You’re a bad liar, always have been.”
“You don’t know a fucking thing about it.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
“Because I don’t know how,” I hiss. Blowing out a breath, I turn to the bartender and order one more. Leaning on the bar top, I take one deep breath and then another. “I was so fucking sure that once we were friends again, once she stopped hating me and saw how much I loved her, how much I wanted her, that everything would be easy. We would sleep together, be together, the end. And now…” I scrub my hand over my face, thinking of how hard it’s been knowing what happened to her. How hard it’s been to lie next to her at night, not knowing how to touch her, not knowing if I can touch her, if she even wants me to. And not knowing if I have it in me to walk away, when that might be what she needs. “Fuck, now I don’t know. But somehow, it’s too much and not enough at the same time.”
And I’m planning my wedding. Did I mention that? Me, a guy who didn’t even believe in long-term relationships let alone love, has begun planning the rest of my life with the one girl I swore never to touch. How the fuck do I deal with that?
“Remember what you told me when I left Jordan last year?” Brooks stays with his back to the bar, his eyes focused over the people all trickling in and milling about.
“That you could run, but you couldn’t forget her. That you would never be able to forget her.”
He nods. And then he turns his head and pierces me with a look that tells me he knows what I’m scared of, because he’s been here. “You’ve been running your whole life, Mal. Since the day I met you way back when you were a little punk asshole who used the high school halls and stairwells as your skatepark, you’ve been running away to prove that you didn’t need anybody. That nobody could hurt you.”
“Fuck you,” I say, but there’s no heat to it. He ignores me.
“Until Nala. Until now, when you look at the family you have, and the families they’re making, and you realize that maybe, just maybe, there’s something different than what you knew growing up.” That slices deep, and I hate that it shakes me even more.
“What if I can’t?”
Jesus, I hate asking, hate that I sound like such a pussy, but Brooks knows; he understands what it’s like to love someone so much you’re afraid you don’t deserve them, that you can never be what they need.
“What if I can’t hold onto her? What if I fuck up again, and she leaves?”What if I can’t get past the fact that I once left, and she got hurt?
