“Yep.” I knock back a mouthful of beer and grab a few nuts, popping them in my mouth.
“How did she look?” Linc asks, leaning forward on his elbows.
“Fucking beautiful, but I’m not surprised. Sydney has always been a looker.”
“Got any pics?” Wilder asks, smirking, and I throw some nuts at his face.
“What? You think I took selfies with her? Tor and me and my ex?”
Wilder chuckles. “How sharp were Toria’s claws?”
“Sharp enough to easily shred glass.”
“Ouch.”
“You should talk to Sydney.” Linc eyes me somberly. “This is your chance to find out why she did it.”
“I’m not sure there’s much point. I thought if I ever saw her again she’d show remorse, maybe rush to apologize, but she looked at me like she hated me. As if I was the one who broke her heart and not the other way around.”
“Huh.” Wilder grabs a handful of nuts from the bowl. “That’s weird.”
“I have always felt there was more to it,” Linc says, stretching his arm across the back of our booth. “It never made sense to me. Girl sounded crazy about you. Maybe it didn’t go down how you think it did. What if there’s more to the story?”
“Like what?”
Linc shrugs. “I don’t know, and you won’t either unless you ask her. All I know is this. If I had another shot with Presley, I’d grab it with both hands.”
“I have a pregnant fiancée,” I remind him. “Wanting answers to something that has puzzled me for years is not the same as a second chance. That ship has sailed. Even if there is an explanation, I don’t think I can ever forgive Syd for what she did.”
“So, get closure,” Wilder suggests, lighting up a blunt. “Find out what really happened after you left for London, and then put it behind you.”
Linc nods. “If it was me, I’d be swinging by that gallery on my way home and demanding answers. I wouldn’t leave until I got them.”
ChapterTwelve
Sydney
“You want me to get that?” a man with a sleep-heavy deep voice asks as someone repeatedly bangs on my front door, rousing me from slumber. My eyes pop wide in a flash. It all returns as the bed dips and Gio leans over me, smiling like all his birthdays and Christmases have come at one.
Barely touching any food at my birthday dinner.
Drinking my body weight in wine.
Bumping into Gio and his friends at the nightclub.
Dirty dancing with my recent ex and inviting him home.
Fucking his brains out all night as I attempted to blot Jared and his pregnant supermodel fiancée from my mind.
I’m a goddamned idiot.
My stomach lurches the same time I notice the painful pounding in my head and icky taste in my mouth.
It’s been years since I went on a bender, and now, I’m paying for it.
This is why I don’t get trashed.
The hangover is never worth it.
