“Like you’ve been married for entirely too long, since you’re asking questions like that.” Knox shook out his shoulders and grabbed the tuxedo jacket.
“That’s not an answer.” Linx pursed his lips.
“Fine. I don’t want to think about it being over, it makes me edgy,” Knox admitted. The thought made him want to eat a box of cookies and listen to Celine Dion songs on repeat. “But thinking about it lasting forever also makes me edgy. Who’d want that? The constant pressure of the same person for every day? I mean, go you two for taking that route. I just happen to like life more than letting one person run my life for the rest of it.”
“I don’t accept this,” Linx said.
“Okay.” Knox didn’t really care if he accepted it or not. It’s how things were.
“So now we’ve got to add Operation Pull Knox’s Head Out of His Ass to our mission?” Bax asked Linx, tossing the socks again.
Knox shrugged on the jacket, smoothing the lapel. “Yeah, good luck with that, boys.”
“Still no bride?” Mom asked, sauntering in the room. Really, he wouldn’t have put it past his mother to have slashed her tires.
Actually… “You didn’t do anything to my bride, did you?”
Because that would be low, but not totally out of the ordinary for the things he’d seen his parents do to each other when ticked off. Once, when Dad complained about the salt level of the chuck roast, Mom poured an entire can of tomato soup in his gas tank.
That hadn’t gone over well with Dad or the mechanic.
“What could I have done to her?” Mom asked, faux appalled.
Well, he could start a Game of Thrones style list, but that would probably only serve to freak him the fuck out.
“Seriously, Jeremy.” Mom tsked. “Believe it or not, while I want you to be happy, and I think this wedding is ahorribleidea, I do have some boundaries when it comes to keeping my nose to myself.”
Linx snort laughed at that.
“If she’s not here,” Mom looked around the room like Irina might pop out from under the bed. “Your people should start with damage control.” Mom lifted her hands in mock surrender. Mock, because there was no way she’d ever actually surrender. At least she hadn’t dressed all in black for the event like it was a funeral—she’d gone with yellow. “That’s all I’m saying.”
That’s not all she was saying, and they both knew it.
He paced the floor of his room at Bax’s place back to the dresser to grab his own pair of socks. The guest room was large, with a king-sized bed, dresser, and all the other shit a bedroom needed. He even had his own en suite bathroom. He appreciated that. The place wasn’t his, but it was comfortable enough. Yeah, the mattress could’ve used an upgrade, and the thread count of the sheets was weak, but it didn’t totally suck. Hell, it was better than his official residence because it smelled decent, and the walls didn’t look like someone sprayed them down with Pepto.
“You still have time to back out of this,” Mom continued, like she hadn’t just said that.
“Not happening,” he murmured, closing the dresser drawer.
The guests were arriving—or had arrived. Bax and Linx hung with him because they didn’t want to deal with people. Mach and Tanner both played interference with guests since they were the newbies, and also because his bride was totally missing in action, and they needed the guests entertained until she arrived.
Was he worried about his bride-to-be? No, because Courtney and Becca were missing right along with her. Missing in the sense they weren’t here at the wedding, but not missing because they’d both checked in with their spousal units even though they didn’t say where they were. There had been a vague acknowledgement Irina was with them.
“Jeremy, you know I only have your best interests at heart here,” Mom went on, like he’d actually been listening to whatever she’d been going on about.
Knox slipped on his wingtips, seeing as they were supposed to say their vows in…oh…twenty minutes or so. “Mom, seriously, drop it.”
“She’s not here,” Mom did not drop it. “You don’t even know that she’s coming.”
“I do know she’s coming. I talked to her this morning.” Not long and not about anything as important as, say, not showing up at the wedding, but they’d conversed.
“A lot of things can change in a short time.” Mom at least had the decency to look sad while she said this. Big frown, eyelid droop, all of it. She was probably as good an actress as Irina.
That thought dropped on his chest like a weighted blanket.
Irina was an excellent actress.
So was his mother.
