Fake it till you make it.
I was the king of faking it, and I certainly wasn’t going to fail now. The hotel ballroom was filled with eligible bachelors of all kinds, and I wasn’t going to be the one to bring the mood down.
“He’s cute,” I said, tipping my champagne glass discreetly at a tall man with smooth, medium-brown skin and a killer fade.
My cousin Caspian eyed the man up and down and turned beet red. “He’s also a famous influencer who does videos about sexual health,” he whispered. “I could never.”
My brother glanced at the tall man and turned back to Cas. “Why not? He’s hot.”
Cas shook his head quickly. “No, yeah. But like… he probably knows things. Things I don’t know.” He lowered his voice even more. “Skill-level things.”
“Think of all he could teach you,” our cousin JJ said, bouncing his eyebrows. His wife rolled her eyes and walked away to get another drink.
I reached my glass over to clink with his. “Smart man.”
Gabe clapped Cas’s shoulder and suggested they move to the table where their place cards were. The two of them were at a different table from me.
“We’re meeting up after for shots, right?” Gabe asked. “All the cousins?”
I looked at the place card two over from mine. “I haven’t seen Wolfe yet. Is he here?”
Gabe looked around the large room. “I haven’t seen him yet. He was supposed to be here, though. Did something happen to him?”
Cas appeared worried. “Aunt Tilly will be pissed if he doesn’t show. He’s her favorite.”
It was true. She had a soft spot for the guy, but then again, she was a sucker for old souls and interesting characters. Men with bleeding hearts.
She was less impressed with those of us who kept it casual.
She was the quintessential matriarch who seemed to want everyone to fall in love and settle down.
Needless to say, I’d been avoiding her like the plague all evening.
As Cas and Gabe moved off toward their table, I turned to take my own seat. I snickered at my coupled-up cousins who’d been stashed together at an old-people’s table in the corner of the room. They seemed perfectly happy, especially my cousin Alex and his boyfriend, Judd—the man I’d almost hooked up with in Amsterdam a few years ago.
What would have happened if I’d kissed the other man in Amsterdam? If Judd hadn’t gone to the men’s room and we’d headed up to his room before Locke arrived?
I shuddered to think of it. But that’s what was going through my head when I continued the sweep of the party, looking for Wolfe… and saw Locke Maris come striding into the room looking like he was there to lay waste to an entire village and take revenge upon his enemies.
It was a hallucination. Or a dream. Or a stroke.
A psychotic break, maybe?
In the time it took me to realize he was actually here, I panicked.
There was no way I could talk to himhere, of all places. Not with my entire family around. Cousins, siblings, friends. I had ahistory of crying like a baby when overwhelmed with emotion. I’d already done it at least once before over Locke, and chances were I’d do it again the minute he asked me to explain myself.
The minute he realized I wasn’t anything like the man I’d pretended to be.
As I bolted from the room, all I could think about was getting to my hotel room. I said a silent prayer of thanks for Gabe’s insistence that we get separate rooms in case he wanted to bring a guy back to his. With any luck, I could have my big sobbing breakdown in private.
I stabbed the elevator button several times. “Come on, come on,” I muttered, staring up at the digital display.
“Don’t fucking move,” I heard Locke say in a low voice as he strode quickly toward me, his long legs eating up the ground between us.
The elevator doors slid open, and I darted inside, hammering the button for my floor over and over while saying a prayer to all the elevator gods.
Just as the doors began to slide closed, he shoved his hand between them and held them long enough to squeeze in.
