The Best of Winter Renshaw - An 8 Book Collection - Winter Renshaw Page 0,188

least one fashion magazine in any given month, she was one of the most highly sought after names in the business until her tragic demise.

“That was Rhett’s fiancée,” he speaks slowly, and his gaze moves to the half-empty beer stein resting before him. Gripping his hand around the finger-smudged glass, he tosses back what remains before pressing his lips into a hard line.

“I ... I had no idea.” I knew they were in the accident together, and I’d read at least half a dozen articles about what transpired that day, but none of them mentioned that Damiana was engaged or so much as involved with another man.

“Not a lot of people knew,” he says. “Rhett is extremely private. He didn’t want people to know about the engagement because he didn’t want to commercialize their relationship. He didn’t want to turn it into a PR stunt because he loved the hell out of that woman. The gossip sites love a good supermodel-athlete combo, you know?”

I take a sip of beer, thinking of all the trashy magazines I used to buy with Giselle and Tom on the cover, Derek and Adriana, Derek and Kate, Derek and Jessica ...

“Anyway, none of us know how long Bryce and Damiana were hanging out on the side,” he says. He’s kind to call it ‘hanging out.’ “But far as we know, nobody knew anything about it until the accident. Not even Rhett.”

My chest tightens. I can’t imagine what it would be like finding out your fiancée is sleeping with your best friend ... and finding all of that out the day she is killed in an automobile accident with him at the wheel.

“You fucking told her.” Red smacks the back of Shane’s head, then shakes his head, turning to me. “Sorry about him. Shane doesn’t know how to keep his damn mouth shut.”

“It’s fine,” I say.

“What a way to go out, eh?” Red refills his beer with the last of the pitcher’s contents and takes his seat, his head shaking in sympathy. “So now you know.”

“It’s okay, really,” I assure him.

“So that’s why Rhett isn’t here,” Red says, as if I need further clarification.

“Can’t say that I blame him. It was a dick thing to do to your best friend.”

Red nearly chokes on his beer and several pairs of eyes land on me, and I realize I shouldn’t have said what I said on a day such as this, but I can’t help myself. Honesty is my middle name. I’ve never apologized for it, and I certainly won’t start now.

“You guys want another round?” Shane asks. The boys grunt and mutter their answers all at once, and Shane leaves to flag down the bartender.

Someone passes me a phone with a picture of Bryce on the screen, his beefy arms around two of his teammates as one of them holds a giant trophy. He’s the only one without an enormous smile engulfing his face.

“Bryce lost his two front teeth that game,” someone points out to me. “Took a biscuit straight to the kisser. Knocked out some Chiclets. But we won, baby!”

I chuckle and pass the phone around, watching everyone’s face light up as they remember that day in their own ways. Finishing my drink, I check the time. It hasn’t even been a half hour and I’m struggling to stay awake. I took the red-eye from LA to New York yesterday, then spent all day going over final funeral preparations, the ones I wasn’t able to sign off on from afar, and then I met with his coach, privately, to discuss a few details for the service.

At some point soon, I’m supposed to meet with Bryce’s attorney to go over his estate. At some point after that, I’m going to have to go through all of his belongings and decide what to do with them.

I haven’t booked a flight home yet because something tells me this is going to take a while. At least I can work from anywhere in the world, and I don’t have an article due until the end of next week. There may be a million things on my plate right now, but as long as I take them in stride, I can get through this.

Maybe in a messed up way, it’s good that we never knew each other. It’d be hard to be here, doing all of this, if I had some kind of deep-rooted emotional attachment to him. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if I could go through