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“Perfect,” I said. “Even for LA.”
He nodded. “This kind of weather, this kind of celebration, gets you thinking about love, you know?”
He was right about that. But I didn’t exactly feel chill about bringing up the subject of Shania with him.
“I know what you mean,” I said.
Then he sighed and shook his head, as if in disbelief. “That Shania,” he said. “Amazing girl, huh?”
I was confused. Why the hell was he bringing her up?
“She is,” I said. “Been great reconnecting with her.”
“Same,” he said. “And especially over this last week.”
What the hell was he talking about?
“That right?” I asked.
He nodded. “When I heard what she was getting involved in with her big spa plans, I couldn’t help but ask her about it. I mean, you don’t get to where I am without meeting some of the most powerful people in the state, you know? Lots of men and women with some serious pull in the real-estate world here in LA.”
I said nothing, waiting for him to go on.
“We met up few days to talk it over and, well, what can I say? Something special happened between us.”
“’Something special’?” I asked. “You mean like—“
I didn’t even need to finish. He smiled and nodded, as if trying to say something he knew probably wouldn’t be appropriate to say out loud.
“Just…a reconnection with an old friend,” he said. But it was clear he was being euphemistic.
My gut sank down to my feet. No fucking way was he telling me what I thought he was.
“You guys are…what, dating?” I asked, trying to keep my cool.
“Might be a little premature to call it that.” He tilted his head to the side. “Just started with a business meeting, you know? And then before either of us knew what had hit us, we realized we had something special on our hands.
“But giving it labels or anything like that can wait.” He shook his head. “Right now we’ve got the weddings, and on top of that, we finally managed to pick out the perfect spot for her spa—awesome place right in Silver Lake, right off Sunset. And I told her, of course, that I’d be more than willing to help invest.”
My hands and feet went cold, and I gripped the railing hard, as though I might fly off.
“You found a place?”
It was the least concerning thing about what he’d said, but the only part I felt like I could ask about without slipping up.
“Sure did,” he said. “She reached out to me after she’d been having some trouble signing a lease. Only took a few phone calls to get her set up. Hell, I even got her a discounted rent.”
He smiled and looked off into the distance, as if he couldn’t hold back how proud he was.
“Mixing business with pleasure,” he said. “But I’m thinking the two of us can make it work. Funny, we used to be at such odds back in college. But sometimes a little timing is all you need, right?” He gave me a pat on the back. “Anyway, you’ve got a big night ahead of you. But good luck tonight.”
One last smile and he was gone.
What the fuck?
I couldn’t believe what he’d told me. He and Shania?
No way. No fucking way.
I felt sick, like I could barely think straight. I stood up and realized my jaw was slacked open.
Then it all came together—I hadn’t seen much of Shania over the last few days. And when I finally had, downstairs, she’d been evasive and distant, continually looking over my shoulder at James. I’d wondered what the hell had been going on, but that must’ve been it.
And there I was about to come clean with her, tell her how I felt, that I thought there might’ve been something serious between the two of us, something worth giving a shot.
But I’d been seeing things that hadn’t been there. I knew, just knew, that when I’d told her about keeping things casual and fun and not-so-serious that it had been my way of pretending I could even do such a thing.
There’d been feelings there, ones that had lain dormant since all the way back in college. And like a dumbass, I’d ignored them.
And why wouldn’t Shania act the way she did? I’d loved her and left her before, and there I was—as far as she knew, getting ready to do it again. She was being smart.
But as I stood there, alone and shaken to my core, I felt like my world had been pulled out from beneath me.
I loved her, I did. But I’d lost her.
Again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SHANIA
Something was wrong with Sean. I could tell, and I had a feeling that everyone else who was watching his speech was of the same mind.
It’d gotten off to a nice enough start. Sean, drink in hand, looking handsome as shit in his suit, told the crowd how he’d met the grooms, how the four of them together had decided to take a chance on their crazy idea to start a rock band, how they had, all over the course of the last decade, become something less like a group of friends and more like brothers.
