Page 60 of Slapshot Bride

There is a black SUV idling at the curb. The driver is in the front seat, not looking. Maya is standing next to the back door, her phone already out.

She doesn't say anything.

She turns the screen toward me.

It's a photo of me and Riley.

Not the blurry one the gossip sites have been running for two weeks. It’s a clean photo. Crystal sharp. The two of us walking into the back lot of Valentina’s, my hand at the small of her back, her face half-turned toward me, fully visible. The freckles are visible. The hand is visible. The expression on my face is visible, and it's the expression of a man who has stopped pretending he doesn’t want the woman next to him, which is something I had not known was visible to anyone, including me.

The paparazzo took more than he published. Or someone bought what he did not.

Maya doesn't say which.

She doesn't say anything.

She locks the phone, slips it back into her purse, and climbs into the SUV. The driver pulls smoothly away from the curb and into the West Hollywood night, and the taillights are gone in under fifteen seconds, and I'm standing in the parking lot of the bar, with the smell of someone else’s cigarette in the air, and the message ringing in my ears as clearly as if she had spoken it.

I have you. And now I have her too.

I don't know how long I stand there.

When I go back inside, Mason is half out of the booth.

“Easton. What the hell?”

I sit down.

I put both hands flat on the table.

“That was her.” I exhale. “Maya. She was here, with a photo of me and the woman.”

He stills.

He sits back down. He doesn't say anything for a minute. He looks at the door, then back at me. He looks at the door again.

“Whoever she is, you have to tell her.”

“I can’t. Not now, not like this.”

“You have to tell her. Tonight. Don’t let her find out the way Maya is going to make her find out, which is in a way you can't control and can't soften. If this is going to splash on her, she deserves to know before it does. You don’t get to decide for her. You hear me?”

I look at him.

“She’s going to bolt for the hills. She’s going through a tough phase at the moment, and this… this is exactly what scares her about me.”

“Then you tell her the truth. Let her hear it from you, and let her decide.”

The two weeks I have been carrying settle on my chest like a hand.

He's right. Of course he's right.

I have spent two weeks watching Riley read texts from a man who decided for her, and I have been making the same kind of decision quietly on her behalf in my own house, in a different costume, telling myself the difference was that I was doing it to keep her safe.

The difference was supposed to be that I was doing it to keep her safe.

Mason is watching me.

“Tonight, Easton.”