More Than Need You

by Shayla Black

  Provided she ever agrees to marry me at all.

  I took a chance and ordered invitations. I don’t need many since the wedding will be small. They arrived quickly and I made it very clear in the verbiage that the event will be a surprise to the bride. I fucking hope these twenty people, mostly casual friends and a few work-related folks, can keep their mouths shut. I mailed them yesterday.

  We didn’t have time to order bridesmaids’ dresses, so Keeley and Harlow are coordinating on finding two dresses that are as close to that cornflower color—which I now know is blue—as they can find. I picked up a wedding band for myself, chose a tuxedo, then got Maxon, Jamie, and one of my college buddies to a fitting.

  Keeley, with Britta’s “help,” has locked down all the visual elements of the ceremony. I have no doubt that will be perfect.

  The marriage license situation is under control. If Britta will sign it before the ceremony, my former client’s daughter will make sure everything gets done and legal.

  I’m not sure what to do about a honeymoon. We live in Hawaii. How much better does it get? But I need to think of something. We deserve time to ourselves to cement our bond. We’ll take Jamie with us since Maxon and Keeley will be newlyweds and won’t need a toddler cramping their love life. Besides, I’m not sure I can do without the little guy for long.

  Head spinning, I use one of the two spare minutes I have to rub together and call Keeley. She answers right away.

  “Are you freaking out?” she asks without even saying hello.

  The woman knows me well. “Yes. This wedding is in two weeks.”

  “I know. Mine is in eight days. Gah!”

  “Sorry. I know you’re under a lot of pressure, too.”

  “Yes, but mine is controlled. Everything is planned. So unless something goes horrifically wrong, I’ll be fine.” She hesitates. “Do you have any idea where Britta’s mind and heart are?”

  “No.” And it’s killing me. She’s been reserved, harder to read, for the last month—since her lunch with Makaio. I regret that we’ve had so little time for us. I need to push everything else aside as much as I can or I’ll forever regret that I didn’t take full advantage of the one opportunity I had to win her back. “But I called Eleanor and talked to her.”

  Finding the courage to pick up the phone and talk to Britta’s mother… I won’t lie, that took some time, and I had to search for my balls. I could only imagine how much that woman resented what I had done to her daughter.

  We talked for almost two hours. Initially, Eleanor was chilly to the point of being curt. I apologized, laid my cards on the table, and told her about the wedding with which I was planning to surprise Britta. After that, our relationship thawed to something almost friendly. Makaio, the idiot, hadn’t even thought about incorporating Britta’s mother into their wedding. Eleanor didn’t have the money to fly to Hawaii. My angel didn’t have it, either. And I know her. Not having her mother there for her wedding would be something she’d always regret. A woman wants her mom on her wedding day. Keeley assured me of that. Hers is coming from Phoenix, along with her stepfather, Phil. So I bought Eleanor a first-class ticket to Maui.

  She’ll see her daughter get married, regardless of which groom Britta chooses.

  I simply have to push work aside long enough to figure out how to make that groom me.

  “Why don’t you send Jamie over here tonight with Harlow for dinner and a movie or something? You and Britta need a break.”

  Normally, I’d hate to impose, but I don’t have a choice now. “Thank you. I owe you big.”

  Her light laugh is a familiar comfort in my ear. “I’ll remind you of that someday when your brother and I need a babysitter.”

  Fifteen minutes later, my sister texts me that she and my son will have a grand time with Uncle Maxon and Aunt Keeley and she’ll stay gone as long as she can.

  I thank her. Then I start strategizing.

  At the end of the day, Britta and I hop in the car. She looks beyond exhausted.

  “Jamie is with the rest of the family. Maxon picked him up from daycare.” Since he’s on the approved list. I’m still not, and I try not to let that bother me. “It’s just us this evening.”

  She sighs tiredly. “I’d be disappointed if I had any energy.”

  “I’m with you. Dinner?”

  “Whatever you feel like.”

  I take her to a casual seafood place. It’s not much to look at but the food is incredible. Best of all, it’s not crowded, so it won’t be too loud to talk and we shouldn’t be distracted by anyone else.

  After we’re seated and we order, I don’t waste any time. I feel as if I’ve pissed away too much of it already. “Tell me what you’re thinking and feeling, angel.”

  “Besides beat down by the pace of work right now?” Her shoulders sag tiredly. “Overwhelmed maybe. What about you?”

  I swallow. “Our time together is running out, and I’m not sure if you’re any closer to knowing whether you can love me again and want to marry me.”

  The waitress sets down our drinks. Since we already ordered food, she slides away unobtrusively. I take a sip of my beer and watch Britta down half her wine.

  “We are running out of time. I know.” She licks her lips. “Let’s be real. I don’t think I ever fell out of love with you. I should have. I tried to. I just couldn’t.”

  I sit up straighter and reach for her hands. “If that’s how you feel, you can’t marry Makaio. Because you know I love you, too.”

  “In the past, I’ve always made decisions with my heart. When I was young and didn’t have responsibilities, that was great. In fact, what we had was magical and epic…while it lasted.” She withdraws her hands from mine. “But maybe the time has come to think with my head. I need someone I can depend on. I need a family sedan, Griff. You’re a Ferrari.”

  Is she saying no? After I’ve already planned our wedding? Granted, she doesn’t know that, but I’m trying to go all out and prove how much she means to me. She’s got to give me a goddamn chance. “A Ferrari still gets people where they need to go. I’ve been dependable as hell the last thirty-eight days.”

  “Yes, but it’s barely a month. And we’ve been drowning in work for the last few weeks.”

  “I know. And I hate it. But that’s not my fault.”

  “It’s not,” she assures. “I’m still hung up for some reason. Like I said, I’ve forgiven, but I can’t seem to forget.”

  “After you saw Makaio and he made you cry, I didn’t lose my temper or push you for more information. I’ve been trying to back off and let you make your own choice.”

  “I didn’t say you haven’t changed.” She looks down at the table, tracing a pattern on the clear plexiglas. “But maybe I have, too.”

  Enough to marry a man who won’t love her enough to put her and our son first? Nope. I won’t believe that. “What am I not giving you that you need?”

  Britta falls quiet and cocks her head as if she’s debating the wisdom of her next words. “All of yourself.”

  I rear back. Of all the things I imagined she’d say, that wasn’t it. “What? I’m with you all day. All night. By your side when we tuck Jamie into bed. I sleep beside you. I wake up next to you—”

  “I don’t mean your time.”

  “You know I love you.”

  She sighs. “I don’t mean your heart. I mean whatever it is that makes you guarded and angry and keeps you from really trusting me. Despite all the time we’ve spent together, I’m not sure I know you any better now than I did three years ago. You know all about me, my life, my past. Since we moved into the Stowe estate, I’ve spent nearly every moment with you, risking everything to see if we could truly have a future. I’ve been thinking—hoping—you would open up and erase my doubts. You haven’t once offered to tell me what makes you tick.”

  I sit back and stare, covering my shock with a swig of beer. She sees through me. Despite how well I thought I’d recovered or how thoroughly I’ve been
hiding the decades-old crap, Britta isn’t fooled. How much can I tell her without freaking her out?

  It’s clear I have to say something or she may walk out on me for good.

  “Just before I turned seventeen, I had a relationship with an acquaintance of my mom’s. Julia. She was divorced and had kids a few years younger than me. I started doing her lawn one summer…and she made it clear she wanted me to do her, too.”

  I still remember the forbidden thrill, the way she always made me feel like a man. I worshipped her. I didn’t care that she was almost thirty-five. She was beautiful and smart and savvy. She ran her home-grown business and her personal life like a shark, and I admired the hell out of her for it. She taught me a lot about a woman’s body, about sex. I’m sure people would call her a pedophile, but I was all too willing.

  “So you did?” Britta grimaces as she asks.

  “Yeah. I thought what we had was important to her. That it was real. By the time winter rolled around, she broke it off abruptly. No warning. No explanation. She told me off-handedly one day, after I put my clothes back on and she showed me the door, that she had hired a new lawn boy. I shrugged, thinking that if she wanted someone else to do the yard, that was fine by me. I was tired of the pretense. When I talked about being glad to see her somewhere other than her house, now that we’d ditched the cover story, she laughed at me as she explained in small words that it was over. It never once occurred to me that she’d been planning to do away with me for weeks and simply waited for the most expedient moment. After getting one more fuck out of me, of course. That was the end.”

  Well, not exactly. But the rest of the story won’t shed more light. It will just make Britta pity me more. And make me choke again. But I’ve given her enough to help her understand…and the sad empathy flitting across her face is already warming my heart.

  “Griff… She hurt you. You were so young and—”

  “I learned a lot from the experience. I know now that I didn’t love her. But at the time, it felt a lot like heartbreak.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” she murmurs softly, giving me a quick squeeze of my hand. “Was it hard?”

  “Yes.” I squeeze back, not wanting to relinquish her fingers. “I’ve never told anyone, not even Maxon. I spent a lot of years being bitter. After that, I found myself questioning everything and everyone I’d always trusted. I decided that if I could just control the people and events in my life, I’d never get too attached to anyone again. I thought I’d be fine. And I was getting by.” I blow out a ragged breath. It’s hard to say this, but Britta deserves all I can give her. “Then I met you.”

  She blinks at me. “I didn’t want to challenge or hurt you. I just wanted to love you.”

  I nod. “And I couldn’t control that, just like I couldn’t control how quickly I fell for you. I told myself you were sweet and innocent and that you would never go out of your way to rip my guts open. But you still scared the hell out of me. I spent so much of our time together waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “I was never going to betray you. I never would. Griff…”

  “You seemed too good to be true, but I couldn’t make my heart stop caring about you. I tried so hard to keep you at arm’s length. But I seduced you because I couldn’t stand not having you. I moved you in with me because I couldn’t do without having you near me. Every day that passed, I began to think a little more that maybe you were real, that painting you with Julia’s brush was unfair. Every day, I let my guard down more. I wanted to tell you I loved you. I wanted to propose. By the fall, I believed you were everything I wanted and more. I made a plan. I was going to give you the grandest gesture of love I could think of. Then that morning the listing agent on the prince’s palatial love shack accidentally called me instead of Maxon and I heard about the deal. I lost it. My brother and I had always been competitive. I chalked him up to being too much like Dad. I decided that I couldn’t be in business with a sneaky fucker like that. But you… I couldn’t handle believing you betrayed me to help him, that I meant so little to you—”

  “You meant everything.” Britta sniffles. “I loved you so much then that I would have followed you to the ends of the earth. I would have stabbed Maxon if he’d intentionally been trying to cut you out of a deal. I would have married you, had your children, and held your hand forever. But you let go. Griff, I don’t know what to do about that.”

  I close my eyes. If I keep looking at her, I’m going to fucking get emotional. We’re at a restaurant, and now I wish we were anywhere with privacy. I want to hold her, kiss her, show her in some way how much she means to me. I don’t want to fall days short of our happily ever after again. It fucking can’t end this way.

  “I’m going to regret that forever.”

  “So…all the women after we split up? They were—”

  “Numbing. I could control everything about my time with them. When. Where. How long. How much. How hard. How pointless. So much of it was basically anonymous. A bar there, a swipe to the right there. I’d undo it all for you if I could.” I look across the table, willing Britta to believe me. “I don’t know how to make you trust me again. I’m the last person who should preach to you about how long it takes to believe in someone. I’m sure it’s doubly hard for you since I’m the one who first broke your heart.”

  “None of this has been easy. I’m still not sure what should come next for us.”

  “You know what I want.”

  She presses her lips together. “But that doesn’t mean I can give it to you.”

  In other words, she’s not ready to take a leap of faith. I didn’t manage to our first time together, so I can hardly blame her. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying to convince her.

  “If you choose your head over your heart…” Jesus, she simply can’t. “I know you. You’ll be miserable.”

  “Maybe. But that’s better than being broken.”

  I want to argue that I’m not going to break her again. But that will simply lead to a circular argument. I know better than anyone that wanting desperately to believe something doesn’t mean you actually can.

  “So where does that leave us?” I challenge her.

  “We have two more weeks to figure it out. I’ll keep searching my soul until I have an answer.” She shrugs. “My mom always says that whatever is meant to be will be. I’ve always thought she’s right.”

  It’s not the answer I want, but I don’t have any choice but to accept it. I destroyed us with one stupid act of fury and distrust. Now I may have to live with the fact that our future is beyond my repair. She may wind up with a man who won’t worship her the way I do.

  If that’s the case, I will spend my life alone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The day dawns beautiful. Britta and I drive out to Keeley and Maxon’s new house, which will officially be a bed-and-breakfast next week. They started moving in two days ago, but tonight will be their first night to spend here. Also their first as man and wife.

  As I drive closer, I hold Britta’s hand. My pants and shirt swish inside a garment bag hanging in the backseat, along with Britta’s sundress. I’m not wearing a tie. Or a coat. Keeley wants a casual wedding. Hell, she even instituted a no-shoes rule. This will literally be a barefoot wedding.

  I would rib my ambitious, traditional, bordering-on-stuffy brother about that, but he seems sublimely happy. I never imagined in a million years when my best friend sought him out to see if he and I could behave like brothers again that they would fall in love. But Keeley completes him, and that made all our lives come together perfectly.

  Well, almost. I glance at Britta.

  It’s been just over a week since our last serious discussion. The following day was another explosion of work. When do we ever negotiate and sell six listings on the same day? Just insane. On Sunday, Britta and I caught up on paperwork while we took turns entertaining Jamie. Harlow breezed in late afternoon after meeting up with some of the friends from the priv
ate high school she once attended on the island. She waved our way, all smiles, then took a call and disappeared upstairs. After that, she glowered like a thunderstorm for the rest of the day and well into the following week.

  Jamie got a tummy virus midweek, so that occupied Britta for two days. I offered to spell her, but she insisted I had a full schedule of showings and closings that we couldn’t miss.

  It sucks…but sometimes that’s life.

  Wedding activities started in earnest on Thursday, and we all began pitching in to get the house set up for the big event. Ditto Friday. We finished less than ten hours ago. Throwing together a last-minute wedding was a mountain of work, but Keeley wants something simple, almost homemade. Maxon just wants to marry her ASAP.

  When we pull up, I’m awestruck by how inviting the cheerful house looks sparkling in the morning sunlight. On the lawn, we laid a pair of crisp white sheets, sprinkled them with petals from