Long and Hard: A Bad Boy Box Set

by Lulu Pratt

  “Maybe she’s just not as expressive.”

  “Or maybe she’s just not feeling it,” Isaiah countered.

  I shot a glare at him. “I know they look terrible together, but we can’t doom this. We work with adults who can make their own life decisions. All we can do is make sure our side of the deal runs smoothly.”

  “You’re so practical,” Isaiah sighed.

  “You’re hopelessly romantic,” I said.

  We stopped at the venue and unlocked for the decorator and the florist so they could start setting up. The caterer arrived shortly after. Isaiah oversaw the reception room going through its transformation while I ensured the cake made its way safely to the kitchen and no one dropped a single platter of hors d’oeuvres.

  By noon, we were almost set up and everything was going smoothly. I stopped to eat lunch, and Isaiah joined me outside.

  “Is the photographer going to the bride first and then the groom for their prep photos?” I asked.

  Isaiah shook his head. “The photographer is tag teaming. I arranged for a second camera to take care of the men. This wedding would never work if they had to share. Too much ego between the two of them. It was bound to clash.”

  “You’re a saint,” I said.

  Isaiah grinned. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

  We ate in silence for a while before round two started. Isaiah and I split up to check on the bride and groom respectively. I headed to the groom because they were uncomfortable with Isaiah. They were all straight men with very serious views on homosexuality, and the girls all loved Isaiah.

  The groom’s entourage was huge. He had five groomsmen. The groom’s cousins and father were also present for the photo.

  “Are we ready, gents?” I asked when it was time to start packing them into the limo.

  “Ready as I’m ever going to be,” the groom said. “Let’s get this shit show started.”

  The wording was ominous, and I hoped it didn’t mean there would be drama. This wedding seemed to be doomed from the start.

  I drove behind the limousine filled with men and parked at the venue. I escorted the men inside, setting them up where they needed to be. Isaiah arrived at a quarter to four with the bride.

  “You’re on time,” I said.

  Isaiah nodded. “I nearly had a runner. The bride is an emotional wreck. But she’s here on time, she’s dressed and her make-up is as intact as I could keep it.”

  It wasn’t the first time I had been grateful Isaiah had managed the women. I couldn’t handle the mental meltdowns, and he always seemed to take it in stride.

  The bride stood in her position, the music started, the bridesmaids walked in, and the bride followed. I brought up the rear, watching the whole ceremony from afar.

  It didn’t take very long before they were married, despite the brief hesitations during their vows, and by four thirty, they were married.

  “First half taken care of,” Isaiah said and high-fived me when we were alone in the foyer. We had to usher out guests to have drinks while the newlyweds took their wedding photos. After that, it was family photos, a sit-down dinner, speeches and finally, dancing.

  After the speeches, things started going south. The bride was getting louder and louder, and it looked like she was getting upset with her new husband. Her voice rose above the music, and guests started turning their heads, noticing her for the wrong reasons.

  “She’s had too much Champagne,” I said.

  “And too much of everything else, including resentment,” Isaiah pointed out. We walked to the bride, but she was already shouting. Their disagreement had become a full-on fight in front of everyone.

  “Honey, come, we need to check your make-up,” Isaiah said, taking the bride gently by the arm and pulling her away.

  “I’m not doing this!” she shouted. “I can’t do forever with this.”

  “All you need is a glass of water and some Tylenol in the morning,” Isaiah said in a soothing voice. I walked to the groom, who was seething.

  “For the sake of both your families, could you keep it until after you’re alone?” I asked him.

  He glared at me. “Yeah, tell that to her,” he said. And I knew he was right. With the alcohol in her system, the bride had been the one to start the scene and finish it.

  “It’s almost over,” I said to the groom.

  He sighed. “No, Callie. It’s only just started.”

  My heart went out to the man. No one deserved to be that unhappy on their wedding day. I had seen so many happy grooms despite how uncomfortable they were with the show that getting married had become.

  “I’m going to check on her, but it would be good if you could apologize to your guests,” I said.

  The groom nodded and walked to the podium with the microphone. I heard his voice by the time I reached the ladies’ room. Isaiah’s voice sounded through the door. He was talking her down. I wouldn’t interfere because he was better at this than I was. I turned to notice her bridesmaids clustered around the signature book.

  “They should never have gone through with it,” the maid of honor said.

  “It’s Diane.” The bride’s mother was Diane. “She’s the one who loved him so much she had to set him up with her daughter. And she had the money to throw around with her iron fist.”

  “She forced them into a lifetime of misery. They’ll be lucky if they last a year.”

  My heart sank. Hearing what the ladies said after I had heard the groom’s despair left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t like it when people ended up unhappy, even if the event ran smoothly. Logistically, the wedding had been beautiful. Everything had run on time, the decorator had done everything according to plan, and nothing had gone wrong with the catering. It had been the perfect wedding.

  But perfection meant nothing without love, and it was terribly lacking in this case.

  When Isaiah returned with the bride from the ladies’ room, her make-up was where it should be, and she had a fake smile on her face. Isaiah sighed with billowed cheeks.

  “I can’t thank you enough for handling that.”

  “It’s not my marriage, thank God,” Isaiah said quietly. “This was never meant to be.”

  I nodded. “I noticed.”

  “Let’s get this behind us so we can get out of here,” Isaiah said. He wanted to get away from the doomed ever after as much as I did.

  Seeing the couple so desperately unhappy made me realize how good Abigail and Carter had it. They looked like they were going to make it work. Sure, there would be ups and downs. There always were. But they loved each other, and they knew what it meant to spend a life together, especially with Carter having been married before.

  Abigail had never mentioned it to me before. I wondered if she knew. She had to if they had already obtained the marriage license. Carter would have had to mention it to the priest during the process.

  The wedding finally ended, and Isaiah and I left as soon as we could. The venue’s clean-up crew would handle the rest, and Isaiah and I both silently agreed we needed a drink to shake this one off.

  “Mind if I invite Abigail? Carter is off to Vegas for his bachelor party, so she’s alone tonight.”

  “Of course. You know I love her,” Isaiah said.

  We met Abigail at a cocktail bar half an hour later.

  “How was the wedding?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “One of those that was perfect and perfectly sad,” I said.

  Abigail frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. So many people make mistakes. I can see why you were worried about me. You must see a lot of those.”

  Isaiah and I both nodded. “Too many for my liking,” Isaiah said.

  “But if I must be honest with you, I don’t think you’re in danger of being unhappy. You and Carter have something special even if it happened so fast.”

  Abigail grinned with the starry-eyed look she always got when we talked about Carter. “I’m so glad you think so. But enough about weddi
ng talk. Tonight, I want to spend time with my two friends, drinking and having fun like the good old days. Before long, we won’t get to do this so often.”

  We raised our glasses and clinked them together.

  “To a friendship through thick and thin,” I said.

  “To a friendship despite love,” Isaiah said.

  “To the best of people,” Abigail concluded, and we drank.

  I was so lucky to have Abigail in my life. When I’d learned she was marrying Carter, I’d been scared I would lose her. I knew I would see her less, but she would never let this slide, and as long as she was happy, I was happy for her.

  We talked about the good old days, laughed about ex-boyfriends and the trouble we had got into. We drank until we were slightly tipsy, and we dreamed about what our futures would be like. Happiness was a welcome guest at our table, and I knew it was here to stay.

  Chapter 22

  GRAYSON

  A WHOLE WEEK passed after the disastrous bachelor party, and Carter was still not speaking to me. We had been moving around the same house, strangers to each other. I felt like shit for what I’d done. I had decided long before that night that I hadn’t wanted to fuck it up for Carter anymore. I’d made my amends and apologized to all the right people. But I’d forgotten about the plans I put into motion, and my attitude had blown up in my face.

  The strippers had left the hotel room, there had been no photos, Carter had done nothing wrong, and I was relieved everything was still perfect between him and Abigail. If something had happened to break them up, I would never have forgiven myself. I had gone from hating the idea that Carter had moved on to hoping he would manage to find happiness once again.

  When I told Callie about everything that had happened with Jenna passing away and Carter being alone again, I’d realized that he’d been through so much pain, he deserved to move on and find happiness again. Callie had been the one to show me that, even though she hadn’t known about it. No one had known about it.

  Carter wouldn’t listen to me. I tried to explain myself to him again and again, but he had gone through the whole range of responses, from avoiding me or changing the topic to downright ignoring me or telling me to fuck off. I didn’t blame him. What would I have done if it was the other way around? Carter was my best friend, and if he fucked it up for me instead, I would damn near hate him.

  Which meant I was a colossal asshole. I regretted it so fucking much. I had to prove to Carter somehow that I was a good friend, that I had been wrong, and that I was sorry. I wasn’t even sure he still wanted me as a best man. I wasn’t sure of anything in our friendship anymore.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s going on with you and Carter?” John asked me one morning when I was still in the kitchen eating breakfast. Carter had walked in, seen me sitting there, and promptly left again. He had slammed the front door on the way out, and I doubted I would see him for the rest of the day.

  “We don’t see eye to eye right now.”

  “What did you do?”

  I wanted to get upset that John immediately concluded I had been the one to fuck up, but it wasn’t such a far stretch. I had been pushing it for a while now.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I fixed it, but it was too little, too late.”

  John shook his head. “Sometimes an apology can go a long way.”

  “He needs to want to listen to me for that.”

  “Give him time.”

  I nodded, but I doubted time would be on my side in this case. It was a week until the wedding, he was going away for two weeks on his honeymoon, and by the time he came back, I would have gone back home with my tail between my legs to carry on a life that was void of any of the people who meant anything to me.

  If Carter was the only one angry with me, I might have been able to deal with it, but Callie was being off with me too. When I had seen her at the venue walk-through the night after I told her everything, she’d been distant, but I assumed it was because she hadn’t wanted Abigail and Carter to know what we’d done. And I agreed with that.

  Since then, she hadn’t been taking my calls, and when I had seen her because I had been tagging along for the final arrangements, she’d been cold with me. I had no idea what was going on, and I couldn’t get her to talk to me to find out what it was, either. What the hell had I done to piss her off?

  Maybe Carter had told Abigail what I had done. God, I hoped not. It was bad enough that my best friend hated me without his future wife knowing I’d been a total jerk.

  But if Abigail knew, no doubt she would have told Callie. Women did that. They ran with gossip to their best friends. It was a little inner circle that was inevitable. Maybe Callie knew what I had done, and that was why she was so upset with me.

  And I knew I fucked up. But was no one focusing on the fact that I had tried my best to stop it from happening, that I had done my best to make it right? Why didn’t that count? Everyone made mistakes, but I had come to my senses and done everything I could to stop it from happening. I had paid so much money to stop it.

  I deserved for someone to hear me out if forgiveness was going to be permanently off the table.

  I spent the day out of the house to give Carter his space. When I returned that evening, Carter was coming down the stairs with his bags packed.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To stay with Abigail for a few days.”

  I didn’t ask him why. I knew full well what was happening. I had effectively put my best friend out of his own parents’ house. God, I felt rotten.

  “Can I talk to you before you go?” I asked. I had to keep trying to make it right.

  “I don’t feel like this shit, Grayson,” Carter said.

  “Please, I’m not asking for you to let it go. I’m just asking you to hear me out.”

  Carter narrowed his eyes at me, and I expected him to say no, but he nodded.

  “I’m putting this in the car, and then we’ll talk,” he said and pushed past me. I waited for him to return from the car, and he walked with me to the patio. We sat down in the wicker set.

  “So?” Carter asked. He wasn’t fucking around.

  “I know I fucked up,” I said.

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Come on, man. I’m trying here,” I said.

  Carter shrugged, and I took a deep breath.

  “I felt like you were forgetting about Jenna. I thought she didn’t matter anymore. I was pissed off because she’s my sister.”

  Carter shook his head. “How can I forget her? God, Grayson. She was my everything. There’s not a day I don’t ache for her when I wake up. But she’s gone.”

  I nodded. “I know that. I’ve been struggling to come to terms with that, but I know.”

  “I deserved to find love again, to be happy again. If I hold onto what I lost, I may as well die too.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “It took me a while, until after I had booked those fucking strippers, but I get it now. I tried to stop the whole stripper thing, Carter. I want you to know that. I tried to undo what I did. It failed, but I never wanted you to hurt.”

  Carter shook his head again. “You’ve been a jerk since we arrived in Austin.”

  I nodded. “I know. I’m dealing with it. I’m learning. I’m trying. I am so very sorry. I don’t know how to show you how sorry I am.”

  Carter nodded slowly, and I wasn’t sure if it was forgiveness of some kind, but I was wary about jumping to conclusions.

  “It’s a bit overwhelming for me to see you so happy again,” I admitted.

  “You don’t have to be a part of it,” Carter said. “You could have refused to be the best man. I would have understood. You can still pull out if it’s too much for you.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not,” I said. “Not anymore. I want to be there for you. I’m glad you found happiness again. I don’t wish this pain I’m carrying around on anyone, and you managed to escape it. I guess that’s part of why
I was so bitter. You could try again, and I can’t.”

  Carter nodded. “I’m sorry she died. I know I couldn’t stop it. For a long time, I blamed myself for not being there with her that day, for not being able to save her. But I’m so sorry you had to lose her too. I’m sorry you have to hurt so much.”

  Carter swallowed like he was biting back tears. “When Jenna died, I didn’t think I would be able to live again, let alone find love and happiness again. But I found Abigail, and she means more to me than you know.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “And I want you to be happy.”

  Carter pegged me with a hard look. “So, I’m going to make this very simple. If you do anything that will stop or ruin this wedding for me and Abigail, we’re done. Do you hear me? I won’t look back. Your mom is family to me because of Jenna, and you will always be the brother-in-law I had for a while when my life was perfect. But I will never talk to you again if you fuck this up for me.”

  I nodded. Carter was being serious, and I knew it.

  “I have no intention of doing anything other than celebrating with you and being happy for you.”

  “Good,” Carter said and stood. The conversation was over. I was being dismissed. I watched Carter walk away, and I knew I was lucky he had been willing to listen to me at all. I hoped Callie would find it in herself to accept me the way Carter had, even if it had nothing to do with forgiveness.

  I had fucked up badly. I had made choices no best man should ever have made. I was still the best man, which meant something. Carter hadn’t told me not to stand next to him up there while he said his vows. I took it as a sign that at least he would eventually forgive me, if not now.

  Because I didn’t want to lose my best friend. Carter was like a brother to me, and for a short while, he was my brother. I didn’t want that to change because his wife wasn’t my sister.

  I didn’t want to lose Callie either, but I wasn’t sure if that was a possibility. She wanted nothing to do with me. Surely, she understood why I had done what I’d done? I told her about Jenna. Maybe she hadn’t been told I’d tried to stop the whole thing before it got out of hand. I wasn’t sure how to approach her, but I wanted Callie back the same way I wanted Carter to stay in my life.