Best Man

You coming, Lia? You coming for me?

Miles…!

Come for me, Lia. Jesus, you’re gorgeous, look at me when you come…

I did.

And just the look in his eyes undid me.

God. I’ve been eaten alive, and I love it.

“Hey,” Miles says gently, sliding his thumb under my chin and tilting my face to his. “You okay?”

Suddenly it all hits me. Everything. The fact that it feels so right in his arms, that I never want to leave them. The fact that I’m wet and half naked, smelling of him while he smells of me, my lips raw from his kisses and my heart sore from what I feel.

I shake my head and wrap my arms tighter around him. My tears fall over his favorite shirt, wetting the shoulder and making a small mess. “I don’t know.”

I don’t know anything right now.

All I know is that I don’t regret a thing we’ve just done. And I think that makes me a horrible person.

“Just hold me.”

He does. He draws me closer and kisses the shell of my ear, licks away the tears from the corners of my eyes and my cheeks. Nuzzling my neck and groaning, he whispers, “I can’t believe you’re in my arms.”

“Neither can I,” I whisper. I love it there, in this little cocoon of warmth with him. It feels so perfect. So meant to be. I thought the wedding would make my life complete, but I can’t imagine anything more complete than being here, with him, like this.

I also can’t fucking believe what I just did.

My tears become a waterfall.

Holy hell. Did I just fuck the best man on my wedding day?

I am a walking, talking tragedy.

“Even if it isn’t going to last.” His voice is suddenly so hollow, it shakes me.

He thinks I’m crying for Aaron? I lift myself up and peer into his eyes. “What do you mean?”

He lifts my hand and plants a kiss on my knuckles. “I know you, Lia. You said you love him. You’ve been with him for five years. You know him better than you know me. Your whole family is waiting for you to marry him. You don’t just give that up.”

I stare at him, something hard and caustic growing in the pit of my stomach. “And what? You’ll just disappear again? That worked out so well for you the first time.”

“What can I do? Yeah, you might not be out of my system. I’m too far gone for that. I knew that going in. But maybe I’m out of yours.”

I cross my arms, wiping my wet cheeks, hating this whole situation. “You’re not.”

“All right. But sooner or later, you might be. And how many times have you broken up with Aaron in the past?”

I frown. He’s looking at me, expecting an answer, but I’d have to count. It’s more than five. College relationships are hard. He was the only one in his frat who had a serious girlfriend. Everyone else was hooking up, getting together, breaking up the next weekend…so we got caught up in that. We weren’t exactly stable. “Well, a lot, but what’s your point?”

“How many times has he cheated on you?’

“Well…” I swallow. Why is he going into this now? “If you count the time at the bachelor party, two, but—”

“You know that’s not true.”

I straighten my spine. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Aaron told me about it. You kept breaking up with him because you suspected he was cheating on you.”

I push on his chest, pushing myself away from him. Aaron told him? So is that what I was? This amusing joke he could tell his brothers about? All this time, he would tell Miles how shittily he treated me, just to hurt him, and me?

“And the thing was, every single time, you were right. Every time you were home, visiting your family? He didn’t keep his bed empty. But he’d tell you the things you wanted to hear, explain it all away, and you’d take him back. Because you believed what you wanted to believe, not what you knew was true.”

I find my leggings and panties on the ground and slip into them, feeling remarkably numb, considering. That chapter of my life is over, even if it isn’t over for Aaron. “You’re saying he played me for a fool all these years, and you just let it happen. Is that it?”

“I never thought you were a fool. I thought you were in love with him. I thought he didn’t deserve you, and I couldn’t understand why you didn’t think you deserved more.”

“You? Is that what I deserved?”

He shrugs.

“I’m used to being treated like shit, Miles. So you probably could treat me that way and I’d put up with it. I mean, I thought you were sometimes unkind to me because I misinterpreted your distance, but the truth is that you always took care of me in ways not even Aaron did. You’ve been so good to me for the past five years that I wasn’t yours. How do I know that you won’t treat me the way Aaron treated me, the second I tell you I’m yours?”

“You really think I’d do that?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“I guess you don’t know me well enough, then. Even after five years.” He tucks his cock into his pants and shrugs. “That’s why I know. You’ll go back to him cause it’s what you do.”

“No,” I cry. Because I shouldn’t. Because I don’t need to fall into that habit again.

“I’m only speaking from what I know. I know you want the wedding. And it’s there, waiting for you, over the mountain. It’s everything you want.”

“Not everything.” Because I want something more.

“It’s the most important thing to you.”

I cross my arms over myself. “Don’t think you know me so well.”

He hitches a shoulder, a challenge in his eyes. “Prove me wrong. No one will be happier than me if you do.”

“Maybe I will be the happiest of all.” I meet that challenge in his eyes with a look of defiance.

He stands up and grabs my wrists, pinning them above me against the wall. “We could turn and go back down the mountain toward Boulder. Run away together.”

I laugh, but he’s not laughing.

“Stop. You know we can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re too anal. And I’m a planner. When I do spontaneous things, I usually end up fucking something up.”

“Like now?”

I capture his cool blue eyes with mine. “No. Not now. This is something five years in the making.”

“But it’s also why you’ll marry him. Because you hate it when shit doesn’t go to plan.”

I wish I could say he’s wrong about that. But he’s not.

He must see it in my eyes. That little seed of doubt and confusion in me. My mind planning for one thing, my heart screaming for another. My very fear that every time I think I have it figured out, something goes wrong to prove me hopeless.

He groans and kisses my neck again, and as I tilt my head back and let him ravage my throat, wishing we could just run away like he says, when a flash of orange hits my eyes.

A shaft of orange sunlight, streaming through the glass of the double doors.

“Sun!” I say excitedly, pointing.

As he turns to look at it, I realize the reason for me to be excited over that development doesn’t exist. Actually, I should be dreading that, now, because it means that the second we get off this mountain, I have to face my family and friends and tell them why we called off the wedding.

And sooner or later, I will have to face Aaron.

Oh, god.

Will he beg me?

Will he convince me to marry him after all?

Do I want him to convince me? Or do I just want him to try so I can finally say, no thank you. You’re no good for me, and I think I know what I want, what I truly want, and what truly wants me back at last…?

I try to reach for Miles again, because maybe we don’t have to enter the real world. Maybe we can stay here for fifteen minutes, an hour, a lifetime more, the two of us, in this protective little oasis that I’d once believed was a prison.

But he pulls away from me too quickly, tucking his shirt into his jeans and heading for the door. “Yeah. Would you look at…”

He stops when he reaches the door and peers out. His body tenses.

“Holy shit,” he murmurs as I comb my fingers through my hair and hook the clasp on the back of my bra. “Guess the road to the lodge must be clear.”

“Really?” I ask, slipping on my t-shirt, standing beside him and peering out. “How do you—”

I freeze.

A familiar hunter-green Jeep is pulling into the plowed lot at a breakneck speed, going so fast, it’s fishtailing despite the four-wheel-drive.

Aaron’s Jeep.

So it appears that I’m going to have to face him sooner than I thought.