by Piper Lawson
We make our way inside, down a dark hall that opens to a plush room that’s decorated with black walls and leather couches, simple crystal lights on the walls. Almost classy enough you don’t notice the low stage in the center, the black velvet curtains separating it from whatever’s beyond.
“We’re not staying. You’ve got booze for us.”
She gestures to the bottles behind a private bar. There’s a bucket with half a dozen bottles of Dom, plus every top-shelf bourbon I’ve ever tasted and a couple I haven’t lined up along the ledge.
I nod my approval. “We’ll take ‘em to go.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry, Mr. Jamieson. Our liquor license won’t permit that. They need to be consumed on the premises.”
The place is full of mirrors, but I see it with new eyes. It’s basically a private bar. And it’s all ours for the night. “We’ll stay. But tell the girls they’re not performing.”
Her brows draw together. “The girls?”
“Ladies. Whatever.”
“Ah, Mr. Jamieson—”
She doesn’t have time to finish because hip-hop music blasts from some invisible speaker system, and the five of us turn at once toward the stage. The curtains have parted, and a line of men, greased up and half-naked, make their way onto the stage, gyrating to the beat.
“Shit, Brick. These are dudes,” Kyle moans.
When I turn back to our hostess, she’s been joined by a male bartender, shirtless with suspenders.
Yup. It’s four days until my wedding, and all I want is to lock my bedroom door and fuck my absentee fiancée until she forgets everything that’s not me.
Instead, I’m at a club surrounded by retired musicians and male strippers.
“We don’t need the stage entertainment.” One of the strippers, dressed as a firefighter, comes down off the stage and takes up a post between Mace and me. “Just drinks.”
“Yeah, so let’s cover that up,” Mace says to the guy.
“I don’t work out seven days a week to cover this up,” comes his instant reply, winking at my friend.
I appreciate the irony that, after my day, this is what it takes to amuse me. I address the three men, who are costumed as a firefighter, a cop, and a cowboy. “Dance or don’t dance. I don’t care.” My friends’ heads all swivel immediately. “You’ll be well compensated at the end of the night.”
“We can’t even try to convince you?” the firefighter asks.
“No,” Mace and Brick echo.
“Hell no,” Wes adds.
The firefighter meets Kyle’s gaze and holds it. “What about you?”
Kyle hitches a thumb at the bar. “Dude, I haven’t even started drinking yet.”
I make my way to a couch, and my friends follow.
The bartender comes and pours us drinks. I can’t help wondering if my abs look that cut from the side. I’m thirty-three; he’s probably twenty-five, but still…
“To crazy adventures,” Kyle kicks off the toast.
“To old friends and new ones.” Brick nods to Wes.
“To futures as bright as our pasts,” Mace adds.
After a sip of Bulleit, I say, “You guys did good on the drinks.”
“Yeah?” Kyle looks hopeful.
“Do you think the girls are somewhere like this?” Wes muses.
I freeze, my drink halfway to my lips.
I motion the firefighter over from where he’s hanging out at the bar with his, er, colleagues.
“Check the other room for a bachelorette party.”
He grins. “There’re a dozen bachelorettes, guaranteed. But don’t picture your fiancée in there. Even if she is, I’m not gonna tell you she’s thinking of you right now. But every other second”—his gaze roams my body—“she sure as hell is.”
Wes coughs into his drink.
“Sit down,” I offer graciously.
The firefighter drops down beside Kyle, the cowboy next to me, and the cop between Mace and Wes.
“So, we need a drinking game. How about ‘I’ve Never’?” Kyle says, offering the firefighter a drink, which the guy takes.
“That’s for college kids,” Brick replies.
The cop lifts his hand. “I’m in college.”
We start with easy ones.
I’ve never missed a show on account of puking my guts out. That one’s for Mace.
I’ve never had a threesome backstage between sets. Brick drinks, saying, “You assholes better not tell Nina.”
“Who do you think set it up?” Mace tosses back.
I’ve never left tour to chase a college girl across the country.
I drink twice on that one because I’d do it again.
And as far as getting us drunk, it works.
“I’ve never fucked someone in the wedding party,” Mace declares with a sloppy grin.
I drink.
Brick drinks.
Kyle too.
As Wes drinks and sets down his glass, I wonder what he sees. We’re a bunch of dudes who made our living in front of a crowd, making people feel something. He’s a straitlaced guy, the book-smart type who can solve any problem, who not only understands the world but seeks to make it better.
“Okay, I know about Brick and Nina,” Wes states, pointing at Kyle. “Who else is a couple that I don’t know about?”
Ah, fuck.
Kyle realizes at about the same time. “Uh. Nothing, man.”
Wes might wear dress shoes and button-downs, but if he knew Kyle and Serena had hooked up, he’d probably beat the shit out of my drummer.
Mace intervenes, turning to Wes. “You do computer shit like Haley, right? But some kind of matchmaking?”
My friend draws Wes into an explanation of his dating app, which the strippers seem fascinated by, peppering him with questions.
Listening to Wes, I see why he gets along with my fiancée. Haley’s mind’s always trying to find problems, to solve them.
“That how you and Serena met?” Mace asks.
“Yeah.”
“She’s cool. We used to see a lot of her in Philly.”
“Some more than others. She and Kyle used to hang out a lot.” Brick says this without thinking, and Wes’s face darkens. “Kyle even went to yoga with her a few times.”
Wes’s gaze lands on my drummer. “Yoga,” he echoes.
“Yeah,” Kyle fills in quickly.
“Only yoga.”
Kyle shifts in his seat. “It wasn’t serious, man.”
Mace tries to keep the peace. “One time.”
Kyle winces. “Actually, a few times—“
“Kyle, shut up,” Mace warns.
Wes tosses back the rest of his drink. “I’m gonna go. Excuse me.”
He heads for the door without looking back.
Brick smacks Kyle’s head. “Way to go.”
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
Mace looks at me. “Think we should go after him?”
I turn it over. “Nah. Let him work it out.”
Serena’s going to murder my band, but I’m not worried. Kyle was a blip on the radar. Wes is the real thing.
Love like that lasts. It’s what we spend our lives looking for, whether we know it or not.
“Women,” Brick says, nodding for the bartender to grab another drink.
I can agree with that.
I’ve never asked my band for advice about women, but something has me saying, “Haley’s been acting weird.”
“Weird how?” This is from the firefighter, who’s stroking Kyle’s knee and doesn’t seem at all perturbed to be asked to weigh in.
I narrow my gaze on him. “A word of this gets out, I will have your ass.”
“That a promise? Kidding. We’re discreet.”
I shift forward, staring past them at the empty stage. “Haley’s always got her own shit going on, and I love that about her. But this is different. The last month, she’s been in Philly. I figured she’d come back and everything’d be normal, but…”
I think of her troubled expression last night. The tension in her shoulders today. “Something’s up.”
“You think she’s having second thoughts?” Brick asks.
In truth, I’d figured she was caught up in a work problem she couldn’t solve. The possibility that it was something bigger, that she could be reconsidering all of it…
My gut tells me that’s not it. I know she loves me.
But even the slimmest shred of possibility makes me want to rip this building from its foundation, strippers and all, and hurl it across the parking lot.
“This rich guy in my frat,” the baby cop says, “proposed to his girlfriend. She dumped him the week before the wedding. Turned out all she wanted was the ring.”
“Haley has the ring,” I say under my breath. “And she’s not like that.”
The flawless five-carat diamond was half the size of what I’d wanted to buy her, but I knew she’d never wear anything bigger for fear it’d catch on something or mess with her typing rhythm or something equally practical.
Though her eyes had gone huge when I presented it to her, I knew in my soul that every ounce of that emotion was for me—not the rock.
“She has everything,” I insist even as I rack my brain for something I’ve missed. “The house. The wedding…”
“You.” Firefighter arches a brow, and I frown at him.
“Obviously.”
He lifts his hands. “Just saying.” His gaze runs over me, a grin tugging as his mouth. “If I were her, I’d say that’s the best part.”
Cowboy weighs in for the first time in a while. “In my experience, it’s not about the trophies. Women want to know you’ll go through hell for them. Marriages can be voided. They want it in blood.”
We all stare at him for a long moment.
Then I glance at my arms and the ink along my skin.
In blood.
I straighten, snapping my fingers. “Get the limo.”
7
Haley
“Grip is important,” the woman, who looks like Scarlett Johansson in full-on Black Widow mode with her leather pants and vest, explains. “Hold it firmly. Put your lower body into it. Then let the rotation do the work.”
“That’s what he said,” Serena murmurs, and I swallow a laugh.
The woman releases the axe with a grunt, and it flips, end over end, until it lands with a satisfying thunk in the target ten feet away.
“I didn’t know you could take axe throwing classes.”
“It’s not the most common bachelorette, but after the move and everything else, I figured you might want to release some pressure. In a healthy way.”
“It’s perfect, and I love you.”
It’s true. I can’t think of anything better than simple fun with my girlfriends tonight.
After Jax dropped me off this afternoon, I answered a few emails on a project I started this spring and have been trying to finalize before the wedding.
When I was in Philly, I decided I’d take another run at the Big Leap funding as a wedding present for Jax. I found some new sources and spent every spare moment writing up proposals and lobbying.
Jax outdoes me at most things. But staying just inside the rules while dazzling bureaucrats with how music education could expand with access and technology—that’s something I can do for Jax. Something I’d love to do for him.
And I can’t wait to find out if we’re successful so I can tell him.
Since I was already in my email, I snuck another look at the proposal requirements for the client I learned about yesterday.
Then, because it didn’t look that hard, I started an outline and sent it to Carter while I was under the blow dryer at the hair appointment Serena insisted I needed to “freshen everything up.”
Now, we finish our round of instruction—Serena’s first axe makes it to the target, but it takes me and Nina two tries each—and take a load off with non-alcoholic drinks, including straws bent into little ring shapes at the top.
“I can’t thank you enough for planning the wedding,” I say to Nina when she takes a seat on the couch next to Serena and me.
“Are you kidding? Even if you weren’t paying me—which you are and a lot—this event will be my calling card. Besides, I thrive on hard work and zero sleep, and I already have the overdeveloped biceps from managing tours.” She flexes with her phone arm with a laugh, and her sheer competence is a relief.
“So, you and Brick. How long did that take to happen?” Serena asks Nina.
“Too long. But we were on tour. Working together. I couldn’t do it then.”
Serena laughs. “Wes and I hooked up even though we worked together.”
“Everyone thinks musicians are crazy, but I hear the guys in suits are freaks.”
Serena lifts a shoulder, her mouth curving into a smile. “What can I say? The man is high-strung. I like helping him unwind.” She cocks her head. “What about Jax? Tell us, oh almost-married one. Is the sex getting predictable now that you’ve been together more than a year?”
A flush crawls up my face. “Um, no.”
Both Nina and Serena burst into laughter at my expression. “That’s all you have to say? Fine, use your hands. Thumbs up means it’s better. Two thumbs up means it’s way better.”
I set my drink down on the table and glance around to make sure Annie’s out of earshot of this conversation.
Then I stretch both hands as high as they’ll reach, both thumbs pointing toward the ceiling.
Somehow, it’s getting hotter. I’m living my own personal wicked fantasy—a man the entire world wants, and he can’t get enough of me.
“Remember when the idea of a guy going down on you was hell?” Serena reminds me when her laughter dies down.
Nina chokes, and I bite my cheek. “I came around.”
“Yeah, I bet you did.”
Serena pokes her straw into her drink and lets out a little noise of irritation. “These ring straws are cute, but they don’t hold up to repeated uses.” She lifts it out, glaring at the frayed end.
“Maybe you’re drinking too fast,” I tease her.
“Not possible.” Serena snaps her fingers. “Tyler! Can you check the car and see if we brought more of these?”
We’d decided Tyler was one of the girls since Brick and Kyle stated he was too young for whatever they were planning.
The guy in question looks up from where he’s talking to Annie in the corner.
We watch him depart, and he returns a minute later with a bag. “Here you go.” He tosses it at Serena, and she catches it with a grin.
“Thanks. You need a new one?”
Tyler lifts a brow. “Do I need to drink my Coke through paper bling? Nah, I’m good.”
My lips twitch as I watch as him return to Annie’s side. She says something I can’t hear, and Tyler reaches a hand into the ice bucket in front of them, dropping enough ice into her drink to make the contents splash.
She shoves at his shoulder, and he grins as he reaches for his own drink.
“Oh, high school.” Serena sighs. “First crush, first everything.”
I straighten in my seat, thinking about Jax’s concerns from earlier. At the time, I brushed them off, but maybe I was too dismissive. “How old were you? For your first everything.”
“Sixteen.”
I glance at Nina.
“I lost my V-card at fifteen.”
I sip on my own ring straw as I turn back to the kids.
Jax has been Annie’s primary parent since the three of us started living under the same roof. While we discuss issues with one another, at the end of the day, I try to respect that she’s his daughter.
But even though Annie doesn’t often come to me with her problems, I’ve always tried to be there for her. And it’s understandable that sex isn’t something she’d seek out her dad to talk about.
I’d always figured something might bloom between Annie and Tyler, but I’d also assumed we’d know before there was. That the
y’d go out on a date or we’d spot them cuddling or kissing.
Instead, they seem like good friends. The kind of friends you want for your kids.
We would know, I insist to myself.
But before I can process that further, Nina bounces up. “Ready for round two?”
I watch her get another axe from the Scarlett woman.
The sound of an axe sinking into a target chased by a loud groan has us looking over. Nina’s holding her shoulder and bent double.
“Shit!” I gasp, leaping up to run over to her. “You okay?”
“I think so, but it hurts.”
The Scarlett woman’s there in an instant, inspecting Nina.
“You might have sprained it,” she says, and Nina’s eyes widen. “But I’m no doctor, and it’s probably best you get checked out at the hospital.”
The five of us pile into the limo.
“This was a bad idea,” Serena says, dropping her bag and Nina’s on the seat beside her. “I didn’t mean to break the wedding planner.”
Serena reaches into the bar on the inside of the door and unscrews a tiny bottled shot of bourbon. “For the pain.”
“I don’t drink much,” Nina protests. “Herbal tea mostly. My alcohol tolerance is low.”
But as Nina shifts in her seat, she lets out a low moan and grabs her shoulder.
Serena starts to recap the bottle, but Nina interrupts. “Wait.”
With a brief hesitation, Nina takes it from her and tosses the whole thing back in a gulp.
“Is it helping?” Serena asks.
“It’s doing something.”
Serena pours a shot for herself and something sugary for Annie, Tyler, and me.
“Why aren’t you drinking, Haley?” Annie asks.
“Ah, I have to get up early tomorrow.”
“We all have to be at the church at ten.”
“Right. But I need to, um, wax,” I supply, cursing in my mind the moment the word slips out.
“But you say waxing’s for swimmers and masochists,” she counters.
“And special occasions.” I focus with renewed intensity on Nina’s shoulder. “When you threw it, did you hear something pop?”
“I’m not sure.” She touches the shoulder gingerly with a hand. “But I think that drink might be helping.”
