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“That’s smart,” Mandy piped up. “We didn’t really have that option.”
“I’m positive a few photographers followed you guys here, anyway. Worst case scenario, I’ll have someone reach out so they know where to find us tonight,” Jackson added.
Wade took a sip of his wine, cradling the glass between his fingers as he looked toward me. “A few snaps of the four of us together should sell it enough.”
I nodded my response. I’d barely touched my food, hardly drank any of my wine. The nausea was still there, picking away at me, daring me to run away and fling myself into any vehicle I could find. Trying to speak wasn’t going to help.
“You okay?” Wade asked quietly, leaning toward me as he covered the side of his face with his glass of wine. “You seem a bit… off.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. I wiped my mouth with the cloth napkin in my lap and scooted my chair back, the squeak drawing unwanted attention. I hated being there. I hated it with a goddamn passion and I was going to throw up if I didn’t get out of there for a moment. “I need some fresh air.”
Wade’s eyes went wide. “Ray?—”
“I’ll go with you,” Mandy said, standing up from her chair with an ease and grace I knew I didn’t possess in the moment. “There’s an outdoor area in the back. You won’t get swarmed there if the press are out front.”
As much as I wanted to be alone, I felt wrong telling her that I was fine. She’d been nothing but an angel so far to me, and she didn’t deserve to be shot down, especially not when she was just trying to help. “Okay.”
Mandy looped her arm through mine the moment I stood, ushering me on my shaking legs through the dining room and down a narrow hallway. A faint, “Yes chef!” came through the walls, but other than that, the only sound was our clicking heels until we opened the back door.
The freezing air nearly tore the air from my lungs as I stumbled out into the cold without my jacket. My strappy satin dress did absolutely nothing to keep me warm, but I didn’t care—I needed the blast of cold air and quiet, I needed time to think. I needed to calm down.
I stepped forward onto the balcony and grabbed the railing, using it to keep myself steady. “You can go back in,” I rasped. “You must be freezing.”
Mandy stepped up beside me, a sad smile on her face and held onto her arms to keep herself warm. “I’ll wait. You seem like you need this.”
I nodded. Wishing I hadn’t left my purse with the monitor in it back at the table, I dug my nails into the wood, pushing down the feeling of sick climbing my throat. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Mandy asked, one hand reaching out to touch my back lightly. Instinctively, my body flinched, and I wished it hadn’t. “It’s okay, Ray. I was really overwhelmed too when this was happening to me.”
I blinked down at the snow beneath the deck, glistening and sparkling from the dim lighting. She did know exactly what I was going through, but only on the surface. And based on their outcome, she probably had some amount of fondness for Jack from the beginning. I didn’t have that with Wade. “It’s just… it’s a lot. And it’s making my anxiety peak.”
“I get that. I really do.” She leaned onto the railing beside me, her jaw flexed to keep her teeth from chattering. It had to be below freezing. “I hated Jack when everything went down with us. Didn’t want to be in the same room with him. Didn’t want to hear him speak. He was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.”
That was… wholly and entirely unexpected.
“The idea of spending massive amounts of time together for our own gain was horrible,” she continued. “But it got easier. The more we talked, the more we opened up to each other, the easier it became.”
The idea that she’d been just as upset about her situation, more so even, was a little reassuring. “But you ended up with Jack. You married him.”
She nodded. “I did. And it was the best decision I’ve ever made.”
She watched me as silence fell between us, quiet and unbroken. I knew what she was saying. There was no expectation there for me and Wade to end up like her and Jack, all smiles and in love. She understood that it was hard. But she also understood that it would help both of us in the long run.
“Listen,” she sighed, leaning in a little closer. Her deep brown hair fell forward over her shoulders, hanging between us. “Wade’s a good guy. I know he can be a bit of an ass but trust me when I say he’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had. I wouldn’t trade him for the world, Ray. He has a good heart.”
I was well aware that she knew him better than I did, but it genuinely boggled my mind how another woman as strong and confident as she was could respect the way he ran through women. “Then why is he the way he is?” I looked up at her, every part of my body screaming at me to go back inside. “He runs through women like a fucking freight train. I’m not like that, Mandy. I can’t handle that kind of thing.”
She pursed her lips together and looked away, out into the woodland surrounding the restaurant, up to the mountaintop above. “That’s not my story to tell. I’m sure he’ll tell you when he’s ready.”
So there was a reason. I knew there had to be one, but the idea that something had happened to him to make him who he was made my chest ache. I wanted to know. I wanted to open up his mind and pick out all the interesting bits, ask him questions, dissect him as a human and learn everything I could. But I also knew that would open a whole new can of worms. It would put me back into that horrible, heartbreaking place I’d been in before.
I knew myself. I knew there was an attraction there, and I knew how easily I fell when even the slightest bit of humanity was given to me. If I had that… no. Absolutely not. I couldn’t, wouldn’t do that to myself again.
“I’m cold,” I said, giving Mandy the smallest smile I could muster. “Let’s go back in.”
Chapter 16
Wade
