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Hayden sits with his girlfriend Callie on his lap, a coffee mug clenched between her palms as he whispers something in her ear. The opposite of them is Nixon, along with his wife. His arm is thrown over her shoulders as he plays with a strand of herhair almost absentmindedly while she types something on her phone.
“Morning.”
All heads turn toward me, smiles forming on their faces as they echo back the greeting.
“I hope you didn’t make those,” Hayden jokes, pointing at the food I’m carrying. “If I remember correctly, the last time you cooked, one of your teammates ended up sick.”
“I wasn’t the one cooking,” I protest, remembering that incident a couple of years ago just before my team played against the Ravens. “The asshole raided my fridge and made himself mac and cheese.” Hayden opens his mouth, but I give him a pointed look. “With the cheese that was sitting in there for God only knows how long. It served the idiot right for stealing my food. But no need to worry, Hades. Your ass is safe. It’s all Mrs. S.”
“That’s good to know.”
“I just don’t get it.” Nixon tilts his head to the side. “How didn’t he see that the cheese was molded?”
“That’s what I asked him too, but the idiot thought it was some gourmet cheese or something like that,” I snort. “As if I had money for shit like that.”
While my family had enough money, after leaving Bluebonnet, I had to rely on my scholarship. Because I was playing football, I couldn’t work. Not that I actually had time to work for the most part, so I lived off the cafeteria food for the three years I was in college. And the little I managed to scrape by with an odd job here and there, like helping people move or cutting grass, was spent on bare necessities.
“As if a country bumpkin like you knew anything about gourmet shit even if it bit you in the ass,” Emmett chuckles, and all heads turn toward the doorway where he’s standing with hisarm wrapped around his wife, a big grin on his face. Completely and utterly ecstatic.
Why wouldn’t he be? Just last night, he married the woman he’d been in love with since he was seventeen.
As if they have a mind of their own my eyes scan the room, until they settle on Rebecca, who’s just coming in with Mrs. Santiago behind her. The older woman slaps her son over the head. “Emmett James Santiago, I taught you better than that!”
“What?” Emmett raises his hand, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m telling the truth.”
“You’re being mean. Now get your ass inside and sit down. The food is getting cold, and I’m sure your friends are hungry.”
Nobody needs to be told twice. People take their seats, leaving the one next to Emmett open for me, and right across from me is none other than Rebecca.
Because of course she is.
She’s the maid of honor, and I’m the best man.
Just until this brunch is done, an hour tops, and then you’re leaving this place behind, and this time you’re not coming back,I remind myself.
Wiping my sweaty palms against the sides of my legs, I pull out my chair, making a point of looking anywhere but at her.
Even if I didn’t just have a fight with my dad, I didn’t know how to deal with everything that had happened last night. Everything that I found out.
I wasn’t even sure what I was angrier at. At her, for keeping it a secret for so long, or at myself for not being there when it all played out.
Both.
I was angry at both of us, but there was nothing that I could do to change it.
What would be the point, really?
I had one foot out of Bluebonnet, and Rebecca had to stay.
I should have never started… Well, whatever the hell this thing between the two of us is.
I eat methodically, stuck in my own thoughts as people around me chat about God only knows what, and it isn’t until a chair scrapes against the hardwood floor that my head finally snaps up.
“We have an announcement to make!” Emmett yells, getting to his feet and pulling Kate along with him.
Everybody quiets down as we turn our attention to the newlyweds. The pure happiness radiates off the two of them, and I can’t help but feel a twinge of envy at seeing my two best friends so in love. But this was more than that. Watching them… They felt complete, like two halves of a whole.
“What’s with the theatrics, Hulk?” Hayden asks, a grin on his face.
