“Suit yourself,” he says as he heads out the door.
I turn on my side and get comfortable, falling asleep all too easily.
Chapter Fourteen
Alex
“Fuck me,” I groan as I fall onto my bed face first, grabbing for my pillow, exhaustion finally hitting me.
The last three days have been a damn blur, just as I knew they would be. I haven’t had time to breathe between my mother losing her mind over last-minute wedding bullshit and our out-of-state guests arriving. How I got roped in to making sure the caterers were set and the final deposit was paid to the venue is beyond me.
Savannah’s at home, since she opted to stay here instead of going away to college with Austen, which means I see her everywhere. She’s been off work all week to get things done for the wedding, yet I’m the one running around like a wedding planner. Why?
Oh, right. Because my perfect brother is up at college, over an hour away, and my mother and Savannah’s mother can’t agree onanything.
I glance at the clock, noting it’s nearing eleven thirty. Rolling onto my back, I stare up at my ceiling, which I’d painted to look like a sky with constellations, with those little plastic glow-in-the-dark stars and jeweled stickers set among an abstract mirror that cuts across the middle of the ceiling. It’s a mess, there’s no real arrangement or rhythm, but it’s beautiful. Especially in the morning when the sun shines through the windows and refracts off all the jewels, gold leaf, and the broken mirrors.
My reflection stares back at me, and I let out a sigh.
I wasn’t allowed to paint my room when I was living at home, because my realtor mother didn’t want to depreciate the value of our home. Everything was always about the value, the money, and never about the feeling or the expression. Which was why the first thing I did when I bought my two-thousand square foot ranch was paint my walls—because Icould.
Finally, out of my parents’ reach, I could just do whatever the hell I wanted. Be whoever I wanted to be.
That first stroke of the paintbrush was like a salvation I never thought I’d feel. I cried like an idiot. Who cries over fucking paint?
Me, apparently.
It’s hard to believe that was only two years ago.
I glance around the room, at my handiwork. At the staccato reliefs and gold-leafed veins and stars.
It’s the one room here that no one’s ever been in. Not even Britt. Every time we’ve had sex, it’s been at her place, on her terms. Once upon a time, I had hoped she’d move in with me, and we could just, I don’t know…
This wedding’s got me feeling all sorts of shit I don’t want to feel.
My phone lights up and I can see it out of the corner of my eye. I roll over to grab it, hoping it’s Mack. He still hasn’t messaged me about the gift I’d left in his bag. Either he’s terrible at unpacking and hasn’t found it yet, or worse: he has, and he’s not messaging me on purpose because he knows it’ll drive me crazy.
I’m betting on the latter, honestly. Sometimes I think he likes to piss me off as much as I like getting under his skin, and sometimes I think he just can’t help himself.
Which only fuels my fire.
Attention is attention, and I selfishly want all of his.
But when I look at my phone screen, it’s not Mack. It’s just some stupid email notification. I open the app, hoping it’ll be the email I’ve been waiting for—an acceptance letter to the Reading Rioters.
I’d tried out for a few teams this year, in between avoiding my mother’s fruitless attempts to find me a wife and working nights at the ice rink. I know it’s a long shotbecause I’m technically graduated, but I’m still young, and my record speaks for itself.
I choose to believe it will happen, because what’s the alternative?
Stay here, work my mediocre job and pretend to be someone I’m not? Avoid my meddling mother who keeps trying to marry me off to some “respectable” woman like it’s the fucking 1800s? I don’t think so. If I ever get married, it’s going to be someone who knows just how to bring out the respectable parts of me as well as the parts of me that are depraved. Someone who can love me for me and not as if I’m some kinky weirdo. Someone who will love me for more than my looks or my name or the money I’m going to make once I get on the Rioters or a team in general. My phone goes off with a notification from social media, stating I’ve been tagged in an album. I smirk, clicking on it to see which of the guys has tagged me. It’s Trey.
I browse through the photos, smiling to myself as I recall the weekend. There are photos of Austen and Cam passed out on the plane, of Hudson looking like a deer in headlights at the strip club. Mack smiling with his arm around me as we posed for the Vegas sign.
I stop on that one, zooming in so the rest of the group is cropped out, and all I can see is us.
The smile on his face is genuine, though it’s pretty obvious he’s drunk. I can still remember his warm palmagainst my shirt, how he’d called meAlly Cat.How moments after we’d taken that picture, he took one of me.
And of course, I remember that night, too.
