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If coercion can be considered something right.
“Maybe.”
The waiter arrived with their wine. Vicky took a healthy slug.
“Speaking of the brothers Prince,” Sabrina said, “there’s something I want to ask you . . .”
Chapter Twenty-One
“We’re in the damn wedding!”
Victoria burst past him into the apartment the minute he opened the door. She was practically hyperventilating.
“What?”
She whirled on him, face red, eyes wide. “We are in. The. Wedding. Your mother ambushed me at lunch—and I was actually fine with that—mostly she just wanted me and Sabrina to get to know each other—and that was going okay—Sabrina’s really a lovely person, and I’m glad she and Noah found each other, and maybe she and I can even be friends, but that’s not the point because then she told me they want us to be in the wedding.”
She stopped to catch her breath as Ryder absorbed as much of what she’d just said as he could manage. He was surprised, that was for sure.
“Noah wants me to be in his wedding?”
If you had asked him, he would have told you he couldn’t care less what Noah wanted, but the truth was a small part of him, buried deep inside, felt oddly warmed at this news.
“Not at all,” said Vicky matter-of-factly.
Oh. Right. Of course not.
“But your mom,” she continued, “is deeply invested in the idea. And Sabrina convinced Noah it was important for him to mend fences with you, especially if he wants me in his life. You know, because we’re an item and all.”
Ryder bit back the comment he wanted to make about Noah not deserving her in his life.
Vicky had been with Noah for years. Much as it nauseated him to think about, she had cared about him. Loved him. Having to stand by—literally stand by, there at the altar—while he married someone else would be impossibly hard for her. He could do this. He could do this for her.
He stepped close, taking both her hands in his, and looked into her eyes.
“It’s okay, Vic. We’ll deal with it. And what, the wedding’s at the theater in the park, right? No roofs for us to get caught on,” he said with a playful smile.
“You don’t get it. Now we can’t break up.”
Logically, he knew the end of their arrangement was coming. He knew exactly when it was coming because Vic had made a written plan.
So why did her mentioning it feel like a blow to his solar plexus?
“I thought that wasn’t happening until after Mom’s birthday party?”
She looked down. “I was going to talk to you about it. After the whole photo fiasco, I thought the best thing to do was just take the loss and move on. But now that doesn’t seem like an option.”
Photo fiasco. What had felt meaningful and important to him had been a fiasco to her. And the worst part was he knew better than to let himself care about what other people thought. To stake his own contentment on someone else’s affection.
He gritted his teeth. “No. I suppose it doesn’t. Well, that sucks, eh?”
Her eyes grew shiny as her gaze penetrated his, moving from one eye to the other for a long, silent moment. “Yes, it does.”
She broke away from him then. She leaned down and picked up her bag, which she had flung onto the couch during her big entrance. “All right then, well. If you’re okay with it, then we’ll continue and, um, break up quietly after the wedding.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
