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So he hatedme.
What the hell did it matter? I was never going to see himagain.
As soon as the wedding was over and my brother and his new bride headed off on their rock star honeymoon, I was getting the hell out of here. And nothing would reallychange.
Okay, so Brody would hate me instead of liking me. But for all I knew, he’d hated me for a while now; I just didn’t know it yet. So now I’d beawarethat the only man I’d ever loved couldn’t stand me—couldn’t even stand for me to say hisname.
But so what? I’d begone.
And this time, I was never comingback.
CHAPTERTWO
Brody
The floatplane landedin the calm waters of Cathedral Cove just as the sun was setting at our backs, the light fading over the seemingly-boundless waters of the Pacific Ocean. The cove, a tiny inlet lined with towering spruce, hemlock and western cedar trees, was tucked up along the coastline of Vancouver Island, accessible only by water andair.
Even I could admit it was an epic location for awedding.
The main lodge building, where the ceremony would take place, appeared through the trees on a rocky promontory, overlooking the water with its towering front walls of glass and what I could only assume were heart-stopping views of the cove and the Pacific beyond; it wasn’t called Cathedral Cove Resort for nothing. I could already see why Katie choseit.
And why her best friend, Devi, had sent flowers and steak dinners to my house for a week after I called a guy I knew, who knew the owners of the resort, and twisted a few rubberarms.
Really wasn’t all that difficult to convince them to book out the entire place for Jesse Mayes’ rock star wedding on semi-short notice. Turned out, they were fans. But I enjoyed the steakanyway.
As the plane growled up to the docks, it occurred to me that I really hadn’t been out of the city, into nature, in far too fucking long. This wedding would be a great excuse to—mostly—forget about work for a couple of days, unplug, and breathe some clean, greenair.
I should really be happy rightnow.
Or at the very least, looking forward to spending the next couple of days with my best friends, my friends who’d become, over the years, my family, at what was sure to be one of the best parties of the year, probably the best party of Jesse’s life—because we were celebrating his marriage to Katie Bloom, a woman who made him ridiculouslyhappy.
But I wasn’thappy.
I was far fromhappy.
Fortunately, the loud drone of the plane and the distractingly stunning view made convenient cover for the fact that I couldn’t manage conversation with Amanda, much less look her in the eye. But as the plane settled and we climbed out, the crisp, cold wind off the water smacking me in the face, I knew I had to get my head together. I couldn’t exactly mope around like some adolescent asshole for the next twodays.
If you don’t know me now, you neverdid.
Jesus, that girl knew what to say to piss me the fuckoff.
No; not girl.Woman.
No mistake, she was a woman now, and didn’t that just drop-kick me right in the guts. Because I’d missed it. All ofit.
Everything Jessa Mayes would become… she’d gone and become it withoutme.
And now, with one shitty little comment, she thought she could just wipe away the years I had known her? All the time we’d spent together as kids, and then, as we got older… She could just take that all away fromme?
Well, fuckher.
Maybe it meant nothing to her, but she didn’t get to decide what it meant to me. She didn’t get to tell me what I knew or didn’t know, and she sure as shit didn’t get to tell me how I felt aboutit.
You’re angry withme.
Yeah. Noshit.
I was also more than a little pissed at myself for losing my cool. But I just couldn’t fucking handle it. Being that close to her… every caveman urge I’d ever had rearing up in violent protest that I had her,thatclose, again, and she was gonna slip through my fingers,again.
