Nash Brothers Box Set - Carrie Aarons Page 0,97

when someone has repeatedly cut her down, she’ll still try to shake their hand and call it a truce.

It’s a good thing, for both of us, that I’m the worst kind of person.

Because I was teetering on the edge of doing something disastrously stupid, something that could damage both of our reputations. I was willing to break just to have one moment of us. But now, I have to break for her, to protect her.

“No. We aren’t friends, Lily. We’ve never been friends. Just because we have to be in the same rooms doesn’t mean we need to talk. Or even look at each other.”

The look in her eyes … it’s as if I’ve slapped her. So much shame and hurt cloud those baby blues, and I feel the knife twisting deeper into the ventricles of my heart.

“God, when is enough going to be enough?” I slam the rest of my whiskey back, psyching myself up to destroy the love of the most amazing woman in the world. “Don’t you get it? This is desperate and sad. We were over a long time ago. I don’t want you. What is going to make you understand that?”

In the middle of my total annihilation of her, her phone buzzes. She picks it up, using anything to escape from this attack.

“It’s my parents. They want to make sure I got home, say it’s too late.”

I snort, the alcohol making me especially mean tonight. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint the senator and his wife. Oh, wait, I shouldn’t use the word disappoint. The word is disobey.”

Lily’s eyes grow cold, and that’s good. It’s what I want. “You’re despicable.”

“And you’re weak. You’ve never had one thought for yourself. One thought that wasn’t put there by them.”

This asshole comment has a different effect. Her entire face fills with upset, and I’m sure she’s about to crumble.

“I have to go.” A single tear falls.

“Yeah, go do whatever mommy and daddy tell you to. It’s what you do best.”

Lily sends me one last defeated, humiliated, heartbroken look as she grabs her purse and bolts from the bar.

My own soul may be cracked in half, but my mission is accomplished.

Hopefully, I’ve done enough damage that she’ll stay away, and never discover the secret that divides us.

12

Bowen

The collar on the tux was pulling so tight, I couldn’t seem to get a good breath in.

“I feel like some Vegas showboy,” I grumble.

Keaton laughs at my uncomfortableness. “Presley doesn’t care what we wear, but I’ve always envisioned a tux when I’m standing at that altar.”

“Of course, you have, why would you dream of anything else? Old-fashioned, stiff, conservative … wait are we talking about you or the tux?” I smirk.

He huffs in annoyance but can’t move to sucker punch me in the arm because the tailor has pins dangerously close to his junk.

When he asked me to come with him to get fitted for the wedding, I guess I didn’t realize I’d be wearing a suit, too. Or, more accurately, a tuxedo. The thing was stuffy and restricting, but I wasn’t complaining as much as I could because I was supposed to be the best man.

I’d been poked and prodded all morning, but at least it was almost over. And at least I had Keaton alone.

Because I needed to talk to someone. Me, the guy who never wanted to form words, couldn’t help but wanting to spew the thoughts spinning around in my head.

After last night, after almost slipping up and kissing Lily for the second time in as many weeks, I needed a game plan.

Without a doubt, I felt rotten, like I’d poisoned myself, thinking about the things I’d said to her. They were fucking horrible. But I’d needed to do something to get her away from me. These chance meetings, the moments in private, they were becoming a regular thing. It had to stop. I wasn’t strong enough to resist her much longer.

Being in her presence, it hurts too much. I was so blindly in love with this girl from the moment she crossed my path, she basically concussed me. There was no explanation to it either; one second, there was the world before her, and the next, everything shifted. What we had, still have, is that inexplicable kind of love. The kind that defies logic and years, that keeps burning brightly no matter how much you try to extinguish it.

She was around too much now. Those long brown curls, her eyes the color of a midnight sky filled with stars,