by Lexie Ray
How could two completely different people share such similarities? I might’ve come from a middle-class family, and Nick’s family was definitely of the upper crust of society. But here we were, the two of us, fighting against the overpowering majority trying to dictate who we were in favor of trying to become who we thought we should be.
It made me feel close to Nick, like we understood each other if not exactly, then really close to it. We’d both run away, both tried to learn how to be our own people, and now here we were, trying to figure each other out, trying to figure out if we could love each other.
It also made my heart almost open, but I quickly turned away from that. An open heart was too much, too soon, especially with all the wounds it had after what I’d been through with Greg. I’d have to be satisfied with keeping an open mind toward Nick, toward his feelings, toward our similar lives.
And yet my heart still ached, the wound still fresh, and I wanted to fill it with something, needed to fill it with something. I was still crying. I’d been crying this entire time, and Nick had been silently thumbing away each tear, trying to be the dam that stopped the flood.
“Stupid Prince Charmings,” I said, shaking my head.
“What?” Nick asked, taken aback by my non sequitur statement.
“It’s something that Faith told me,” I said, tears streaming unchecked down my face. “About Prince Charming.”
“When are you going to grow up about that?” Nick demanded, his voice finally breaking, finally reaching past the point of patience. “There’s no such thing as Prince Charming, Jennet. You can’t put that kind of pressure on anyone. No one can live up to a fairy tale.”
“I know that now,” I said. “I have grown up. I waited my whole life to find a man who fit all of these ridiculous qualities I defined as ‘the perfect man,’ and just when I thought I’d found the one, he turned out to be the worst man I’ve ever attached myself to.”
I shuddered, thinking about Greg. He’d fooled me so thoroughly.
“I don’t know what you want me to say anymore, Jennet,” Nick said. “I don’t think I have any more words for you. I don’t have any more words for anyone.”
“Then let me say them, now,” I said. “Let me give you some words, now. I’ve been jealous of Faith and Sol for finding their happily ever afters with Adam and Xander. I’ve wanted that for myself my entire life. But the moment something went wrong, I’ve run away from my life. I’d always done that. It had become a habit. And when you asked me to be something more than friends, I considered it again — just packing my bags and leaving when something got complicated, or didn’t go the way I expected it to go.”
Nick looked surprised, and then hurt. I didn’t want to cause him any pain, but he needed to hear this. I needed to say this.
“All my life, I’d had this idea of what Prince Charming was, and it was all wrong,” I said. “Yes, happily ever after does exist. My friends are examples of that, but I wouldn’t want their lives. I want my own. I’m understanding that happily ever after doesn’t mean neat and clean and tied up in a bow. Happily ever after can be messy and imperfect and full of fights and disagreements.”
I paused to take a breath and to chance a glance at Nick. His face was unreadable, so I plunged onward.
“I’m starting to realize that happily ever after is someone you just want to be around all the time,” I said, locking eyes with Nick. “Someone you’re comfortable just walking up to and plopping down and hanging out with. Someone who, if you don’t talk to them for a long time, makes you feel like you’re doing it all wrong, that everything is wrong with your life if something’s not right with your relationship.”
I swallowed carefully and looked at Nick. “A happily ever after is being best friends with someone. You’ve already given your heart away because you trust your best friend with it above anyone else. I can’t prove myself to you, Nick. I can’t prove what you want me to prove. I’ll never be able to since I didn’t give you a chance before in Miami. It was stupid. I was stupid. But you should know that I can see a happily ever after with you. I hate that it’s taken that long for me to see it. But I’ve told you. The ball’s in your court now. I don’t know what else to say, what else to do…”
I didn’t have to do or say anything else. Nick stood up abruptly and kissed me, relieving any other need for me to say anything.
I hadn’t expected this. I expected for him to tell me to go to hell, to dismiss me from his presence, to tell me to find my own way back to Miami. I hadn’t expected this kiss, hadn’t expected what feeling his lips on mine right now would do to my heart.
My heart fluttered and came alive, and it hurt so bad — but at least I knew it was still there, still capable of opening itself to someone.
The fact that the someone in question was Nick was…interesting. Interesting, but right.
I’d been blind to it. But if you could spend every waking moment with someone, always having fun, looking forward to your time together even if all you did was watch trashy television and eat junk food, that was the person you needed to be with.
Nick was the person I needed to be with.
“Let’s go home,” I said, resting my forehead against us.
“Back to the hotel?”
“No,” I said. “Back home to Miami. Together.”
“You think I should give up Mason Hotels?” he asked, holding me out at arm’s length so he could look into my eyes.
“I think you should do whatever your heart tells you to do,” I said.
“Okay.” He cleared his throat. “Jennet. Will you be my wife?”
I gaped at him, those words the last ones I expected to hear, and he shrugged.
“You told me to do whatever my heart tells me to do,” he said. “It’s been telling me to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“I meant about Mason Hotels, your legacy,” I spluttered.
“I’ll give it up for you,” he said. “What’s money without love? What’s life without love? It’s nothing.”
I thought of all the finery that hung in the closet of my room in the suite, of the suite, of the posh lifestyle of someone with much money. Nick was right. If you had that but no love, it meant nothing. All of those frills, those expensive products in the bathroom, they were just things. Nick was real, living and breathing, and the feelings I had for him and that he had for me didn’t have a price.
“Dirt poor and in love,” I summed up, laughing. “We’re the richest people on the planet.”
“I didn’t say anything about being dirt poor,” he said, kissing me and smiling. “I took a buyout from the board of trustees. It’s something of a pay cut from what I would’ve had, if I’d agreed to lead the company, but that wasn’t what I wanted.”
“A buyout?” I wasn’t well versed in the business world. What did that mean?
“You can be comfortable in the eight figures, can’t you?” he asked, his eyes twinkling with mirth. My own eyes bulged as I struggled to do the math.
“Seriously?”
“I can’t wait to be back in Miami with you,” he said. “Back in our crappy little apartments, knocking on each other’s doors at all hours of the day and night.”
“Whatever you want,” I teased him. “But I imagine we’ll want to tear down those doors. Share a bed from time to time.”
“Time to time?” he asked, pretending to be hurt. “Not every night?”
“How about we make a brief detour for the nearest bed before we leave for Miami?” I suggested. “I think I could go for a little physical comfort right about now.”
“You can’t call it that!” he exclaimed, trying his best to smother me with kisses. “I regretted it the instant I said it!”
“I’ll only remind you of it for the rest of our lives,” I said, kissing him back whenever I could land one. He stopped.
“Does that mean…is that a yes?”
“Nick Madison, Nicholas Mason, and whoever else might be hiding in there with
you, will you marry me, a poor magenta-haired girl?”
“Of course I will,” he said. “But may the record show that I asked first. What about you, Pink? You going to say yes?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” I said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. I always have. I always will.”
Nick wrapped things up with lawyers, bequeathed the box of his father’s ashes to the board of trustees, and showed me a few last places in the city. It wasn’t quite a farewell tour of the Big Apple. I was sure we’d be back, but maybe not for a while. I felt that Nick needed a break from it.
We were walking out of the hotel, heading for the car to make the journey to the airport, the journey to go back home to Miami, together now and for always, when a familiar face caught my eye. Greg! I fought the urge to cringe, to groan, to simply vomit the contents of my stomach on the floor. Just when I thought we were home free, just when I thought everything was going to be all right and life was going to be amazing, shit just had to float to the top, begging to be dealt with.
Nick saw him the same time as I did, and cursed under his breath.
“Just don’t,” I begged, but Greg was making his way toward us.
“Well, look at you two,” he said, grinning. There was a time when I loved that grin — or thought I did — but now it grated against me, irritating. Was there a real person beneath all that bullshit? I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t, if there wasn’t an ounce of substance to him.
“I thought you’d been reassigned,” Nick said coolly.
“I heard through the grapevine that the happy couple was on the move out of the city,” Greg said. “I thought I’d swing by to see you off. No hard feelings. Nicholas Mason got his girl, in the end.”
No hard feelings? This asshole had broken my heart. He’d lied to me and manipulated me and used me to get to Nick. There was no way that there weren’t any hard feelings. All I had were the hard feelings — indignation, frustration, complete outrage — and my hands balled into fists.
Whatever I’d been about to do — and even I wasn’t sure, myself — Nick beat me to it, cocking his fist back and popping Greg right in the nose. Enormous, muscular, broad-shouldered Greg spluttered with surprise, blood spouting from his nose, and fell backward onto the sidewalk. Passersby gasped and sprung out of the way, but they all kept walking. Say what you wanted about insensitive New Yorkers, but their blasé attitude was nice sometimes, especially when things were personal.
Greg fought to get to his feet, one hand covering his snout, but the rest of the security personnel swarmed, separating him from us.
“Nice hit, sir,” one of them muttered discreetly to Nick. “You’re a hero among us. This guy’s an asshole.”
I had to laugh at that, and Nick put his arm around my waist.
“I hope that closes that chapter of our lives,” he said. “You’re fired, Greg.”
“I’ll sue you, motherfucker,” Greg gurgled, hauled bodily away by his former colleagues.
“Won’t hold up in court,” the same man who’d congratulated Nick said. “We all saw it. You threatened Nicholas Mason. You think a judge is going to reward you for that?”
I wanted to feel bad, but I couldn’t so much as fake a repentant look. I watched with no small amount of glee as Greg struggled with his former coworkers, and then a couple of passing police officers got involved.
Karma was a beautiful thing. Greg had come this afternoon for the sole purpose of taking a prod at us, and now he was getting loaded into the back of a patrol car.
“I hope you enjoyed your time in New York,” Nick said, kissing me, dragging me away from the absolute spectacle Greg was making of himself. He kicked at the window, and one of the police officers shook his head, consulting with Nick’s security personnel.
“Are you kidding?” I laughed. “I couldn’t have asked for a better ending to the trip.”
The bad guys got theirs in the end, and the hero and heroine ended up together. They rode or flew off into whatever sunset pleased them the most, and they lived happily ever after. That was a fairy tale I could believe in. It was my story, my happy conclusion, and the hiccups and bumps and tears that had led up to it made it all the sweeter.
Epilogue
Weddings always had very specific types of attendees.
There were the weepers — the mothers of the bride and groom, generally, and anyone who’d ever wanted to walk down the aisle toward someone she loved, and everyone who remembered the happier days of “I do” and a big ceremony and fete.
Then there were the humorists — all those skeptical of the power of such a union, the ones laughing at the mischief the children involved in the ceremony got away with, the ones making fun of the weepers, taking all of the general hubbub of the day with an enormous satirical grain of salt.
And you couldn’t forget the documentarians — the people who, in spite of a cadre of professional photographers and videographers and what have you, insisted on snapping photos of each and every moment and word and movement. With the proliferation of social media, it was a wonder that any couple would hire a professional to take record of their wedding when they could be sure of seeing it from fifteen different vantage points on Facebook.
I scanned the crowd, quickly filing each guest of Jennet and Nick’s wedding into their proper categories. It helped me take my mind off the club, which I worried about constantly. It took a strong, even hand to ensure everything went fine, and even then, the least little hiccup could send everything tumbling down. I’d left it in capable hands — or as capable as I could find, since Sol had wanted to come support her friend and insisted that I come along, too. My goal was just that the place wouldn’t be burned to the ground by the time I was able to slip away from the reception.
The ceremony ended, and somehow, through all the gauze of stress and romance, Jennet caught my eye as she and Nick practically ran down the aisle. Her already wide smile stretched further into a manic grin, and I had to smile back at her. I couldn’t resist even if I had wanted to, and I don’t even like smiling. This was the kind of wedding that would make any normal person ache to find that special someone, to hold them close and show the world how good they were together.
But I wasn’t that person.
I turned to watch Nick and Jennet leave the church in a flash of tulle. For a girl who’d mostly spent her tenure as my employee in ripped jeans or a half-hearted wrap dress, Jennet had really sprung for a Cinderella ball gown. I hoped it made her feel like a princess, but not as much as Nick made her feel like a princess. Clothing was one thing. She wouldn’t be spending the rest of her life with that dress. She’d be spending it with him.
Faith was next down the aisle, on Adam’s arm. They’d both served in the wedding party, and they glowed nearly as much as Nick and Jennet had.
“Think we should be the next ones to get married?” Adam asked me, having to shout over the triumphant processional music.
“I have to catch the bouquet first,” Faith said, laughing. “See you at the reception, Parker. Are you going to be going for the bouquet, too?”
I shook my head and waved them onward. They were holding up the flow of the rest of the attendants.
Sol was on the arm of one of Nick’s friends, and she didn’t see me as she walked toward the exit. She only had eyes for one person in the crowd — Xander. I followed her line of sight to find him seated a couple of rows back, also on the bride’s side of the church. He grinned and winked at Sol, and I missed whatever reaction she had to that.
Weddings were supposed to be happy, joyful affairs, but they didn’t hold much sway over my feelings. Jennet deserved good things, so I guessed I was happy about that. And Faith and Sol both deserved those good things, too. If invited, I’d attend their nuptials. It seemed like the next natural step for all of these happy couples, anyway.
The next natural step. The idea made me more than a little bitter.
The only man I would consider marrying, the only man
I had ever or would ever love, the only man I would want to take that next natural step with was well out of reach.
Why? He was my stepbrother.
