Ben made a trombone sound that my son would've found endlessly amusing while Jakobi read every word on the label of his beer bottle.
Ah.Thiswas what Emme had meant.
I dipped my hands into my pockets and went with the truth. "That's probably because, until recently, the last time we talked was about twelve years ago when she was about to marry a rageaholic dickhead who deserves to be neutered with a rusty screwdriver."
"Mmm. Yeah, I can see how that might not come up in conversation," Ryan said.
"I've known Audrey since we were fifteen," I went on. "We go back a long way."
"And where is it you're going now?" Noah asked.
Goddamn.This guy knew how to turn up the heat. "We're still figuring that out," I said.
Ben, my only friend in the world at this moment, slung an arm over my shoulder. "I know all about that but let me tell you, we'll send you packing if you give that sweet lady any grief."
Noah eyed me like he wouldn't mind backing over me with his car. "My wife loves Audrey like a sister, which makes her family. I wouldn't want to see her hurt in any way."
"Especially knowing that she's already been through enough with the ex," Ryan added, a brow winging up in warning. I could see how he scared the shit out of his opponents.
Jakobi merely made eye contact and tipped his chin up, which I took to mean no one would ever find my body.
I studied these men for a moment, the other halves of Audrey's chosen people. And I was fucking thrilled that they loved her enough to put me on notice right from the start.
A laugh stuttered out of me and I patted my chest, saying, "Fuck, I really appreciate how willing you guys are to beat the shit out of me."
"Nah, we wouldn't do that," Ben said before Noah and Ryan chorused, "Yeah, we would."
I coughed out another laugh. "Knock me around if you want but you should know how relieved I am that Saunders has a whole bench of big brothers backing her up. I've been so stressed about her being on her own all this time."
Noah stared at me for a heavy moment. Then, instead of suggesting he feed me into a wood chipper before the ceremony, he said, "Welcome to Friendship. Don't fuck this up."
chapter forty-two
Jude
Today's vocabulary word: impermanence
I triedto sit in the back row. Ben wouldn't hear of it. He marched me to the second row, right behind the bride's family. I had Noah and Ben on either side of me, and without a single inch of breathing room to figure out how tonotfuck this up.
The trouble was, I didn't know how to do that. Not when I had no idea what came next for us. It wasn't a simple matter of what I wanted, what she wanted. We lived hundreds of miles apart. An eight-hour drive on a good day. There was a kid involved, not to mention his mother's family.
And then there was me and all the things I'd kept buttoned up and under control for so long that I barely remembered what I had hiding in there anymore. But it was all starting to crumble and I didn't know what would happen when it finally fell apart.
The truth was, Audrey wasn't the start of this great inner crumbling. It stretched all the way back to finding out about Percy and the chaos that followed. Audrey was the fine-point pickaxe, here to chisel away those last pieces of stubborn concrete I'd forced into the seams. I just had to let her.
I watched as Audrey walked down the aisle, her gaze flitting to mine but then quickly away. She smiled like she couldn't help it, and I loved that. There was the Audrey I knew. That one right there, she was all mine.
I fixed my attention on her instead of the ceremony. I knew she noticed because she caught my eye several times before turning a pointed stare toward the happy couple. There were those good girl manners again.
Eventually, she gave up on redirecting me and held my gaze long enough for that secret smile to return and pink to fill her cheeks. It was like stepping back in time, a reminder of why I'd fallen so hard, why she'd occupied so much space in my head for so long. Why she'd filled my chest with concrete when she left.
The openness in her eyes, the raw vulnerability of it, made it hard to sit still. My hands itched to hold her. I'd die if I couldn't bury my face in the curve of her neck, couldn't inhale the scent of her until it filled every part of me.
She tucked a wisp of hair over her ear and I could almost feel those fingers grazing my skin. The need to taste her, to feel her shudder against me, was almost too much to bear while she wasright there. I wanted to take my time with her, to map every curve and dip of her body and brand myself on her skin.
I didn't know where she was spending the night but I hoped to hell I was welcome there too. And not only because I wanted to watch that dress hit the floor. I needed to apologize for going dark on her after Phoenix, explain all the noises in my head, and find out what she wanted from me, if anything.
But the dress hitting the floor…that was very important too.
