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My eyes wander over to where the women are talking. All I see is my ex-wife. Just one look at her and my gut scrunches up like a crushed soda can.
God—how am I going to stop myself from feeling this way about her?
Alana steps forward, hugs her bestie again, and then there’smorecrying. Oh boy.
When Mrs. Kingston suggests moving into her office so they can look at the calendar and discuss options privately, Cash hops up from his seat.“I’ve got to find a way to cheer her up. To get her mind off this.”
Mason cringes, his head whipping around the decorated lobby. “I’d recommend flowers, but y’all have a shit ton of those bouquet things already.”
“Chocolate, bro,” Harry pipes up. “Lots and lots of chocolate. I’m sure there’s a bakery or something in town.”
“I don’t think there’s enough chocolate in the world to fix this shit,” Cash groans, scraping a palm down his face. “But if you think of something better, come find me.”With a sigh, he follows the women into Mrs. Kingston’s office.
With the groom gone, Harry turns to me, frowning.“Are you all right? You seem…out of it.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I scratch the back of my head and lie.
“Are you sure?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes,dad. Just had a long past few days.”
“How was the ride up here with your ex-wife?” Mason questions me.
“It was fine,” I bite out.
“I heard you were staying in some cabin out in Starlight Falls. Weird town. I have an old med school buddy who lives out there,” Mason muses thoughtfully.
“Good for you,” I grumble.
“What about the sleeping arrangements?” Harry questions, still prodding and poking.
I slap my palms against my thighs. “It was fine. It was all fine.”
“Wow. Real sociable you are right now,” Mason mutters.
Harry narrows his eyeballs at me. “Don’t tell me you spent the whole drive up here being an ass to Alana,” he deadpans.“She doesn’t deserve that.”
“Lay off it, would you?” I bite, exhaustion taking over me, despite knowing that I sound like a complete jerk. “I need a shower with actual hot water and something to eat.”
Grabbing my bags, I wander off with the room key Cash gave me. As I’m stomping away, Harry calls my name. I glance at him over my back.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’ll put it out there anyway. You may be convinced that you and Alana are over but you’ve never been the same since your divorce.”
My jaw clenches. “No shit, but what the hell am I supposed to do about that?”
“I’ll tell you something Nadia said to me once,” my brother tells me. “Sometimes soulmates mess up the first time. Sometimes they need a second chance to get it right.”
I exhale roughly. “Thanks for the wisdom, mystic guru.”
Harry calls me a grump as I trudge away, but I let it roll off me. In his defense, he’s not wrong. I haven’t been the same since my divorce.
I head straight for my room on the second floor. Despite part of me wanting to crash on the first horizontal surface I can find, I do as I said and carry my stiff, tired body into the shower, cranking up the heat as hot as I can bare it.
I stand under the spray, slowly feeling my muscles loosen up and I start to feel half human again. Until my mind drifts to Alana, and I’m violently reminded that without her, I’m a shell of a man. Watching her practically skinny dipping under the waterfall. Her warm, little body curled up on the mattress next to me. The experience of being inside her again and again.
Before I know it, images of her in my head have me growing rock hard.
Everything I said to her in the car was a lie.
