Page 99 of The Wrong Groom

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Yeah. Well, she got a phone call from him—coming on to her. She panicked and came over here to talk to me about it, and… shit, I don’t know. The way I felt when she told me? It was primal. I wanted to go hunt him down and beat him bloody.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Tristan says wryly. “We don’t need the PR nightmare right now.”

“I did call him, though. The other day. Scared him off a little. I told him to stay away from my wife.” I can still feel the echo of the possessiveness, the protectiveness, that rose in my chest as I made that call. “I don’t think that was ‘detached’ behavior.”

Tristan shakes his head. “No. It doesn’t sound like it was.” He offers me a sympathetic look. “If it helps, I know the feeling.”

Fair enough. If anyone in the world knows this feeling, it’s him. I glance up at him. “Yeah? And how’d you handle it?”

“About a dozen different ways, very few of them intentional.” He shrugs. “I started falling for Chloe a long time before I realized it consciously. And once I did realize it, I couldn’t stop sabotaging myself with my own stubbornness. I couldn’t commit to the one thing in this world that would make me truly happy… until I almost lost it.”

I remember the hell Tristan went through after Chloe was hit by a car, the nights he spent in the hospital by her side after the accident. He came close to experiencing what I experienced when I lost Melanie.

I feel torn. Conflicted. Because I can’t imagine how much losing Melanie would have hurt if I had never told her how I felt. If we hadn’t shared a beautiful life together before her death. The regret would have consumed me. But at the same time, the pain of losing her was so immense, so all-encompassing, that I’m not sure I could survive loving someone like that again.

That’s only a small part of my worries. Even if I could overcome the caution and take that step, it still wouldn’t be right.

I want Alexis. I want her badly.

And I feel like I shouldn’t have her.

“I’m not right for her,” I mutter, and Tristan widens his eyes.

“What? Why the hell not?”

“I’m older than her, for one thing.”

He scoffs and shakes his head. “She doesn’t care about that, and you know it.”

“I’m too unavailable,” I continue. “I’m not sure I could give myself over to a relationship, be the guy she would need me to be.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Tristan mutters. “Gabe⁠—”

I cut him off. “Seriously, think about it. I’m not that man. I care about her, and I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

Tristan gives me a look, like he thinks I’m the stupidest person in the world. “You don’t think you’re that man, huh? You don’t think you could be in a relationship? Do you even know what needs to happen in a relationship?”

My shoulders tense defensively, and I’m about to snap back at him, but he holds up a hand to stop me.

“You need to be happy,” he says slowly, “and she needs to be happy. That’s it. Those are the only prerequisites.”

“She deserves more than this,” I say. “More than someone who’s still trying to piece himself together. What if I can’t give her what she needs? What if I’m not enough?”

Tristan is silent for a long moment, like he’s thinking through what he’s going to say next. He sits forward, his hands clasped together, and studies me.

“Gabe. After Melanie died, everyone who loves you was worried about you. You were lost. And we all understood why. You’d just had your entire world ripped apart. But right now…” He trails off for a moment, then shrugs. “Honestly, you seem more alive right now than you have in years.”

I stare at him, struggling to comprehend what he’s saying. “I⁠—”

“Listen,” he says. “It’s okay to be happy.”

I glance away, my chest tightening. His words hit me harder than I expected. It’s okay to be happy. I’ve felt happiness before, but it was a lifetime ago. I’ve always assumed that my happiness expired when Melanie passed. That my best chance to find traces of it in the future was to watch Peyton grow and find her own. Secondhand joy was all I could hope for.

“Just think about it,” Tristan advises. He stands, tapping his knuckles against my desk, and turns toward the door.

“What was it you came in here to ask me?” I give my head a shake, trying to shift back into work mode. “Market reports, right?”