Even though Jake knows Natalie isn’t really my girlfriend, I don’t want to say the truth out loud now that I’m here with her. Not even to him. It needs to feel as real as possible for both of us for this to work.
He nods and reaches out to take her hand, pulling her in for a hug. “Nice to meet you.” Backing away from her, he makes her do a little spin, while whistling, which gets everyone’s attention. “Madden is one lucky dude. Come meet Natalie, everyone. Our boy Madden didn’t come alone.”
Natalie doesn’t even have time to react before Jess is rushing over and wrapping her arm around her shoulder with excitement. “Madden Parker brought a girl. This makes me so happy.” She motions to all the guys surrounding them. “It’s sort of a dickfest here in case you haven’t noticed. It’s nice to add another girl to the mix.”
Natalie laughs as she takes everyone in. “I’ve noticed.”
I shake my head and point around at the guys as they come in closer. “Natalie… this is Jake, Jess, Walker, Seth, and Riley. We’ve all basically known each other since we were in diapers.”
With everyone jumping up to welcome us, Natalie ends up getting pulled away, everyone wanting their turn to talk to her and drill her with questions of how we met.
I’m standing here with a huge smile on my face as she loosens up and laughs, making herself comfortable with all of my friends. I like that a whole lot.
In fact, I’m so into watching her interact with everyone that I don’t even notice Alana until she’s jumping into my arms and hugging me.
My heart leaps out of my chest when she wraps her hands in my hair and places her forehead to mine just like old times. “I’ve missed you so much, Madden. You have no idea how much I’ve been dying to see you again.”
She leans in to kiss me, but I’m quick enough to turn my face away that she misses. I drop her back down to her feet before I make that huge mistake again like last year. “You aren’t going to do this shit this time. Were the ignored texts not obvious enough? There won’t be any more kissing me, Alana. Don’t try that again.”
“Why not?” She sounds surprised and refuses to release my neck, forcing me to pull at her hands. “Don’t do this, Madden. Please. You have no idea how much it hurts that you won’t talk to me. Just give me another chance to prove myself.” Her grip on me tightens, but I pull until she finally releases my neck and takes a step back. “What’s your problem? Why even bother pushing me away when you know you miss me too?”
She looks past me and notices Natalie. At least, I’m guessing it’s her she’s looking at, because her face is slowly turning from confusion to anger. “Are you serious?” She pushes at my chest with wide eyes. “Did you seriously bring a girl with you? How could you, Madden? This is our place. You can’t just bring some one-night stand to piss me off and get back at me. That’s not fair.”
I stand here and let her push me a few more times, letting her anger out before I speak. “No, Alana. This isn’t our place. It’s Jake’s, and if we’re going to be coming here every year we need to learn to move on and deal with seeing each other with someone new. And she’s not a fucking one-night stand. We’re together.”
“You’re a bad fucking liar. We both know no other woman will ever be more to you than a one-night stand. You’ve proven that multiple times. Let’s not pretend otherwise.” She gives me one last shove and gets up in my face. “I told you I wanted us to work things out and you do this to me.”
“Really,” I growl out. “You fucking cheated on me. There are no ‘working things out’.”
“Whoa… break it up over here.” Jake slips between us, and that’s when I look over to see that everyone, including Natalie, is staring at us, and they probably have been this whole time.
She looks pissed, which is good, because that means she’s playing her part well. It almost looks as if she wants to come over here and give Alana a piece of her mind, but she’s holding back.
“I apologized for my mistake more times than I can even count, Madden. How long