“If you were her family, you wouldn’t have left her.”
He could see he’d done it now—the nice guy gone, and that was good for Griff. He wanted that guy gone. He wanted an excuse; he waswaitingfor one. Jamie’s face flushed, his stance going more rigid, his jaw tightening.
Griffin wondered whether the flour on his hands would make throwing a punch feel more or less weird.
What he expected was Jamie to go after him again: to say,You hardly know her, which was, on the face of it, true. He knew now that Jamie and Layla met at freshman orientation at college, knew they’d been together for years before they got married, while Griffin hadn’t even known hernamefor a full week.
But he felt ready for that; he somehow felt confident about that.I do know her. I may not be good or reliable, but I know her.
He did not feel ready for what Jamie actually said, though. A snappish, spontaneous response. The man practically bit it out.
“If Layla wanted family, she wouldn’t have leftme.”
It wasn’t that Griffin didn’t believe it. Hecouldbelieve it. He knew she might have had any number of reasons for walking away from a marriage, and she would have.
But in all the times she’d gotten close to speaking about the end of her marriage to this guy—all herIt was amicablebullshit—Griffin had always, always had the feeling that it hadn’t been up to her.
Thatamicableis what she settled for in a situation not of her choosing.
That she had come to this wedding as an exile, missing this family she’d desperately wanted to keep, that she would’ve done anything to keep.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Griffin said, but as soon as he did, he knew it was the wrong question, or at least he knew he didn’t want the answer to it from this guy.
He also knew he’d said it too loud.
“Griff,” said Michael, rushing up behind Jamie, setting his hand on his almost-brother’s shoulder, and Griffin hated that. In hisperiphery, he could see Fitz, turned toward them, and everything in him clenched.
This was not good for Michael.
He was fucking this up for Michael.
He held up his hands, a ridiculous mirror of Jamie from only a minute ago, knowing the posture didn’t look natural on him, knowing it showed off his gnarled left hand.
“Sorry,” he said. “We were talking about…” He trailed off. He could not come up with any meaningful lie related to pastry dough that would’ve gotten him—let alone Jamie—this mad.
Jamie did not supply an alternative, and the three of them lapsed into strained silence until Michael squeezed Jamie’s shoulder and said, “All right?”
“I’m good,” Jamie said, stepping away. “Gonna go check on my croissants.”
Michael looked at Griffin. Long and disappointed.
Then he tipped his head toward the door, and turned to walk away.
Griffin wordlessly followed.
* * *
Outside, Michael stopped—arrested on the street, one look up the hill, one look down, his face setting into an even deeper expression of frustration: the endless, exhausting awareness of knowing Griffin so well.
“It’s fine,” Griffin ground out, going to the right, goingup, ignoring the hitch in his leg. Only a few steps to a corner, where they could turn and duck out of sight from the pâtisserie. They didn’t go any farther: enough for privacy, for quick access back to wherethey’d been. Griffin set his shoulder against a freestone building, getting the weight off his leg.
“Man,” Michael said, not leaning against anything. “What are you doing, getting into it with my brother-in-law?”
Griffin clenched his teeth, unsure how to answer. He had not planned to tell Michael about Layla, maybe not ever and definitely not yet, not because it wasn’t important but because he knew it wastooimportant. Certainly too important for this week, especially now, when Michael was under additional pressure.
He said, “He was rude about your croissants.”
Michael blew out a breath, rubbed a hand over his face. More frustration, but also, Griffin knew him well enough to hear something else in that huff of air—grudging laughter.
