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Obviously, none of them had a problem with tonight’s main event. Nor did my siblings. I didn’t want to have a problem with it, but I didn’t seem to be able to shake off the… whatever this was. I was starting to piss myself off.
“Dad’s noticed something’s off with you tonight,” Cash said. I’d say he could read my mind, but he couldn’t. We didn’t have a lot in common, and I’d never list empathetic or understanding as traits Cash possessed. “You need to let it go, whatever’s making you act like a jerk.”
“If I could, I would,” I grumbled.
“It’s weird, huh?” he said, surprising me.
“Yeah.”
He nodded, and I nodded as we watched people dance, but neither one of us said anything else.
When I pulled myself out of my thoughts, I noticed Seth with his arms around Chloe, dancing in the middle of the dance floor. I frowned.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, then I tipped up my drink and finished it, set it on a table as I walked past, and headed out toward them.
Chloe and I might be here as just friends, but my brother needed to find his own damn date.
CHAPTERFOUR
HOLDEN
When I cut in on Seth and Chloe, my brother gave me a smug grin. I restrained myself from flipping him the bird and kept my reaction to a mental eye roll. What the hell did he think was going to happen? I was suddenly out of nowhere going to fall in love with one of my best friends?
When I offered Chloe my hand, she peered up at me as if she could see right through my facade, tilted her head, and said, “Can we get some air instead?”
“Sure.”
Weirdly, getting out of here for a few minutes sounded like a relief. Normally I was all about mingling and socializing and shooting the shit with as many people as I had time for, but tonight it just sounded exhausting.
I took her hand and led her through the small but crowded dance floor and directly out of the reception room. The hotel atrium was still alive with people as well, so I kept on walking until I spotted a door to the outside. We went through it and found ourselves in a quiet courtyard with evergreens, a fountain, and a bench.
The March night was a little brisk, so I offered Chloe my jacket, and she swung it around her shoulders with a thank you. Without needing to confer, we headed to the bench and sat.
“Are you doing okay?” I asked her, fully aware that peopling drained her energy.
She let out a quiet laugh. “I am. It’s you who isn’t.”
Denial crossed my mind, but what was the point? This was Chloe. We were pretty real with one another.
“I’m trying to be,” I said honestly. “It’s pissing me off that I’m not.”
“It must be hard to see your dad with someone other than your mom.”
I blew out a gust of a breath at how she’d nailed that without even trying. “Yeah. I guess it is. I’m trying to be happy for them, around them, but it’s a struggle. And that just makes me feel like an asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
I leaned forward, jabbed my elbows into my thighs, and ran my hands over my face. “Everyone’s on my case. My dad begged me to give Faye a chance. My brothers are on me to stop acting like a jerk. I know Faye noticed I’m not over-the-top happy like everyone else, and the thing is, I like Faye. She seems like a sweet woman—”
“But she’s not your mom.”
“She’s not my mom,” I said, feeling a little like a petulant child.
“Maybe it’s okay not to be exactly okay.”
I leaned back and looked up at the dark sky. Though we were in the city, I could still see the stars, just not nearly as bright as in Dragonfly Lake. Automatically, I scanned for the Big Dipper, same as I always did, and when I found it, I laughed quietly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chloe’s head whip in my direction, as if my laugh had surprised her. Then she, too, gazed upward.
