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“I will be damned!” Benji exclaims. “You dick! You took me for a ride.”
Nate grins. “Now who has the best poker face?” He scrapes the pot toward him like a greedy troll. “Technically, the best face, period.”
“If you’re into the crooked nose thing.” I toss my cards on top of the chips he’s scraping in.
“I don’t need to be into it, but Vivian is.”
Heaton and Benji make a show of saying, “Aww!”
“Shut up, both of you,” Nate says. “Benj, you guys decide if you or Archer is going to be my best man?”
“He refuses to choose,” Benji tells Heaton before raising his glass of bourbon. “Obviously, the best-looking one of us should be best man.”
“So, me,” I conclude.
“You two are ridiculous.” Nate grabs a red chip. “Winner is the best man. No arguing. Ready?”
“This is how we’re deciding?” Benji asks, affronted.
Heaton folds his arms and sits back in his chair. “This I gotta see.”
“Just pick your favorite brother.” I pull my hands across my chest, watching as an angry storm cloud forms over Nate’s head.
“Unless you want to cage fight each other for it,” he growls, “I’m flipping a chip. Aside, cage fighting could permanently change the outcome in the best-looking-face contest.”
“Fine.” Benji narrows dark eyes at me. “Ready to lose?”
“Heads or tails?” Nate shifts his gaze between us.
“Heads,” I say at the same time Benji says, “Tails.”
“At least that wasn’t a struggle.” Nate flips the chip, letting it land on the pile of chips he’s accumulated from his winning hand. It hits with a plink! Heads.
“The universe is wise,” I brag.
“The universe is against me for taking years to realize I was in love with Cris,” Benji grumbles. “Be forewarned.”
“You’re a slow learner,” I throw in. I’m helpful like that.
My younger brother’s laugh brings his smile back like it never left. Nate joins in, stacking his chips into neat columns on his side of the table.
“Guys. It’s been real. I have an early day tomorrow, so I’m going to head out.” Heaton stands, shaking each of our hands. “Benji, we’ll do it again. At my mansion the next time.” I can’t tell if he’s kidding about the mansion. He slaps my shoulder and congratulates me on the best-man win, and then he leaves.
“You think I’m a slow learner?” Benji lifts thick eyebrows in challenge, picking up where we left off.
“I know it’s hard to believe with your smarts and all, but yes. It took you nearly ten years to realize Cris was your perfect other half.”
“He’s got you there,” Nate agrees.
“It didn’t take the entire ten years,” Benji argues, stacking his small pile of remaining chips as I scrape the cards toward me. “And once I realized how I felt, I wasted zero time telling her. Nate, same way. He admitted to Vivian he was a goner. You, not so much. You’re standing there with your dick in your hand.”
“My dick is not in my hand.” I give him my best fuck-off look and flat-out refuse to admit I’m in deeper than I expected. Bottom line, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to do what Nate did: drop an I-love-you bomb and end up screwed over when she tells me she doesn’t feel the same way. It worked out in the end for Viv and Nate, but what are the odds of that happening twice?
“You two are neck-deep in the ocean of love,” I continue as I shuffle the cards. “You’re not seeing things clearly. Talia and I have a shared attraction. That’s it. Sometimes relationships are temporary.”
“We know,” Nate and Benji both answer, and the bitch of it is, they do know. They used to date women with expiration dates before they each found women who were perpetual.
“Don’t wait too long, Arch,” Benji says, looking serious for a change. “I love Cris with everything I am. Denying it meant wasting years.”
