by V Vee
Stacey sighed in relief and nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“Mrs. Jacobs also said crying and telling the truth helped with illness,” Gregory’s deep voice came from the doorway of the kitchen behind her, and Stacey stiffened. She noticed the look of confusion and contemplation that crossed Tommy’s face before it was replaced with a look of smugness.
“And sometimes being honest with someone can be freeing for us but binds the other person in a reality they are not open to. Then, hearing their truth is devastating for us,” Tommy mused with a smirk.
“Ahh, but that’s only if the other person is not amenable to hearing our honesty, and it has been my experience that everyone I have been… brutally honest with has loved my brand of truth.”
Stacey looked back and forth between the two men. Tommy looked as if he were barely holding onto his temper. Whereas Gregory had the appearance of a predator who’d successfully outfought a challenger for his kill and had every intention of enjoying the spoils of his battle.
I wonder what that’s about, she thought to herself. Is this about me?
Stacey rolled her eyes at herself. Of course, it was about her, but she simply couldn’t figure out how Tommy was aware of Gregory’s feelings for her.
Or hers for him.
“Well, thank you for stopping by, Gregory,” she stated, trying to diffuse the tension between the two men. “I’ll call you later to talk about work.”
“Yeah, Gregory. It was great of you to drop by, but my fiancée and I would like to spend the evening together,” Tommy interjected, his tone petulant.
Gregory walked towards them, his stride confident, his gaze focused on Stacey. She felt her skin heat as her body remembered what they’d done in her kitchen only a few moments earlier. She stepped closer to Tommy and snuggled into his side. She would do everything she could to make up for her indiscretion with Gregory. She could never tell him—Tommy—how she’d betrayed him. Made a mockery of their relationship and promise to each other to remain faithful and true, but she would do everything in her power to make it up to him. To have it so that he never doubted or questioned her devotion to him.
She watched as Gregory folded his arms across his chest and stared at them, expressionless. She felt uncomfortable. Uncertain… guilty. As if she were betraying Gregory by being so close to Tommy, instead of the reality of her current situation.
“Oh yeah? What are you two crazy kids getting up to this evening?” he asked them though his focus was trained on her.
“We haven’t decided what we’re doing just yet,” Stacey began.
“We’re going to dinner then we’re coming back to put the finishing touches on our wedding,” Tommy interjected, glaring at Gregory.
Gregory smacked his hands together and grinned at them. “Well, that sounds perfect. I would absolutely love to come and have dinner with the two of you. Plus, with me being the man of honor I feel as if I should have some say in this wedding,” Gregory said with a chuckle.
Silence filled the hallway as the three of them stood there watching each other. Tommy looked down at her, his eyebrows raised in a silent question. Stacey knew what he was asking her, or rather what he was not asking her, and as she became the sole focus of both men, she became more embarrassed, more uncomfortable, and felt even more guilty.
“Um… Greg? You’re not my man of honor,” she mumbled.
Gregory cleared his throat and stepped closer to her. “I’m sorry, what?” His voice was low, and his face was a thunderous cloud of anger.
Stacey swallowed the nervousness and guilt that rose and congealed into a large lump in the middle of her throat. She glanced over at Tommy and rolled her eyes at the man who seemed more than amused by the situation. He appeared almost… gleeful. Knowing she couldn’t delay in telling Gregory exactly what was going on any further, and truthfully not wanting to keep any secrets from him—and wasn’t that something? She decided to just lay it all out on the table.
“Well, you see, I wasn’t sure if you were actually going to be here for the wedding,” she began. “If you will remember, you took off like two weeks after we announced our engagement and barely stayed in contact, so I didn’t know if you were coming or not.” She shrugged. “So, I asked Trisha to be my maid of honor.”
“Trisha.”
Stacey nodded.
Gregory scowled. “You asked Trisha to be your maid of honor.”
Stacey bobbed her head again, lightly punching Tommy in the arm when he started to chuckle.
“You. Asked. Trisha?”
Stacey tossed up her hands. “Yes, I asked Trisha! What the fuck did you expect me to do, Gregory? You weren’t here! I wasn’t sure if you were going to be here! I wasn’t sure if you cared!”
Gregory lowered his eyebrows and stared at her. “You know I care.”
Stacey returned his gaze and felt herself growing aroused again.
Tommy cleared his throat and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, effectively snapping her out of the lustful haze she found herself in. “Well, positions have already been handed out. Roles assigned. Everyone knows what they’re doing. Sorry old boy. And now, Stacey and I…” his words were cut off by the ringing of a telephone.
Everyone pulled out their phones, but it was Tommy who held up a finger and stepped away, speaking urgently to the person on the other end. Stacey watched him walk away, a frown on her face, and suspicion sparking in her belly. She quickly snuffed out the embers before they could turn into a blaze. Who was she to have cause to be jealous or suspicious of Tommy? She was the cheater. She was the one who had betrayed their relationship.
“Stop feeling guilty,” Gregory’s voice came to her ears, and she turned to look at him with a frown.
“Stop doing that,” she hissed.
“Doing what?” he asked with a smile.
“Reading my fucking mind. I hate it when you do that!” She turned and walked away from him, walking into the kitchen, pausing, then heading out the door onto the back patio. She was distinctly aware of Gregory following her the entire way, but she tried not to react.
“You don’t hate it. You love it when I read your mind. It means that you don’t have to tell me what you want. Or tell me what you need. I always know,” Gregory said, sounding amused. Stacey shivered when she felt the heat of his body pressed against her back. “I’ll always know what you need, and I’ll always give it to you.”
“Greg,” she moaned softly.
“What is it, Stacey?” he murmured, rubbing his nose along the side of her throat.
“We can’t do this. Not here. Not now,” she told him.
“Why?”
“T-Tommy” she stammered.
“What about that little prick?” he asked with a harsh tone.
She shook her head and turned around placing her hands on his chest. “Don’t do that. You, of all people, don’t get to do that.”
Gregory scowled, he crossed his arms and Stacey tried not to look at the way his biceps bulged against the seams of his t-shirt. “Don’t get to do what?”
She tried to push him away but couldn’t so instead she just poked at his large, muscled pectoral. “You don’t get to call him a prick. You don’t get to disparage him, or mock him, or tease him. You don’t get to talk down to him or to insult him. You know why?” She shook her head and continued without letting him respond. “Because he’s a good guy. Because he loves me. Because he told me he loved me and then he stayed. He let me know how he felt about me, and he didn’t run from me. He was a goddamn man not a fucking coward. He wants to be with me. He wants to spend the rest of his life with me. He wants to have babies with me. He wants to have a home with me. Grow old with me. He wants to love me and worship me. He wants to fall asleep to me every night and wake up to me every morning. He needs me. So, you don’t get to talk trash about him. Not after you deserted me and ran off only to come back and… and seduced me and filled my head with promises and sweet words that were too little too late.”
> Her chest was tight from the effort of expelling her words, from the emotion she’d expressed after it had been bottled up and repressed for so long. Stacey pushed at Gregory’s chest one final time before making a move to step around him and head back inside her apartment. She came up short by Gregory’s hand on her forearm. He spun her around and pulled her up against her chest.
“You don’t think I want those things, Stace?” he asked her, his voice deep, rumbling with barely restrained anger and pain. “You don’t think I’ve always wanted that? When we were in high school and Tommy was harassing us, you don’t think I went home and imagined I could take you in my arms and kiss away your tears? When we were in college you don’t think I fantasized about sleeping with you? Holding you in my arms? Walking around campus with you, hand-in-hand, letting everyone know that you belonged to me? When you started dating Tommy, it killed me, because he had the one thing, the one person, I’d always wanted. The woman I’d always needed, always believed would one day be mine. I hated him for that more than I’d ever hated him for the bullying. He may need you, but I need you more. And even more than that, I ache for you. I yearn for you. I breathe you in and whisper your name with every exhale. And you can tell yourself whatever you want, but with us? That feeling is damn mutual. Tommy can want whatever he wants, I don’t give a fuck, but you and I are destiny. We always have been. And I’m sorry you feel that I abandoned you, baby. I never did. But I was trying to give you what you wanted. Trying to let you have a happily ever after with Tommy because being here, watching you with him? It gutted me. It was tearing me apart. Day after day. Night after night. And I couldn’t take having my heart ripped out any more. So, I left for my own peace of mind. But you know what?” He brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear.
“It didn’t work. Because I saw you everywhere I went while I was gone. I heard your breath on the wind. Felt the warmth of your smile in the sunshine. Tasted your tears in the rain. Heard your voice in every song, every conversation. And your heartbeat was the echo of every footstep I took. I couldn’t escape you while I was there. I saw your face everywhere I looked. But though I saw you, none of the images of you, none of those copies, contained a fraction of the beauty, of the brightness, of the glow, that you do. None of them moved me. None of them stirred me. None of them caused me to burn with desire, to ache with longing, to weep with lust, or to tremble with love. Only you can do that. The real you. So, I came home. To you. Because I know you. I see you. I always have. And I knew that if I was suffering then so were you. And I couldn’t let you experience the pain I was enduring. Not when I could come and claim what was rightfully mine and put us both out of our misery.”
Stacey stared at him, moved to tears that she refused to let fall. She bit her lower lip and shook her head. She was marrying Tommy. She had to. She’d promised. She’d experienced the bliss of being with Gregory. The wonder of making love with him. Of being held in his arms. Of kissing him. Of hearing him say that he loved her. That would have to be enough. That would have to last her for the rest of her life. Because she would marry Tommy. She would.
“I’m sorry, Gregory,” she whispered, choking on a sob.
She twisted free of his grasp and turned to run back into her apartment, barely paying any attention to Tommy who stood just inside the doorway.
Gregory And Stacey
The Day Of The Wedding
Stacey
Gregory pushed Stacey against the wall, pressing his erection against her wet heat and leaned down until his lips were only an inch away from hers.
“Don’t deny what we have. What I gave you. The real emotion here. If you do this, you will ruin both of our lives.”
Stacey couldn’t respond. Her heart pounded in her chest. A harsh knock on the door startled her and she covered her mouth before stammering out a response.
“Stacey? Do you still plan on going through with this wedding? Because Tommy’s getting a little nervous.”
Stacey looked at Gregory. Her best friend. The one man she’d wanted forever. The man who was currently seducing her while she was dressed in her wedding gown about to marry another man. Could she? Would she?
“Trisha? Can you tell them that I...”
****
Gregory
The Rehearsal Dinner
The Night Before The Dinner
Gregory sat at one end of the table, Stacey’s sisters, Trisha and Feya. When he’d arrived at the restaurant for the rehearsal dinner, he’d been bombarded by the Jacobs family. They’d wanted to know why he was still allowing Stacey to marry Tommy when he’d been back for a few weeks and had enough time to convince her to call it off. Gregory hadn’t known what to say. Especially to Mr. Jacobs, Stacey’s father. Did he tell them that he’d professed his love? Given her what he thought was the best sex of both their lives and still she’d rejected him and declared she was still going to marry Tommy?
Gregory was feeling the sting of that rejection. Feeling the pain of knowing that the next day… he glanced down at his watch… in eighteen hours to be exact, the woman he was destined to love, the woman he was destined to spend forever with, was going to pledge those promises to another man. A man who had tormented him for a years. A man who didn’t deserve her. A man who…
Was currently eye-fucking another woman at the table with them.
Gregory narrowed his eyes as he looked back and forth between Tommy and the dark-haired, curvy woman with the round, pale face. Her freckles stood out starkly against her pale, peach skin, and though she looked inherently innocent, the way her green eyes had darkened with lust as she glanced over at Tommy “shyly” let him know that their looks were not the ones of friendship or ones shared between family members.
No, these were the looks of lust. Of passion. Desire. Of enflamed emotions. Of secret kisses. Of covert touches. Of barely there grazes from one hand to another. Of whispers in the dark. Of phone calls held in private rooms. And of knowing. Knowing something private, deep, dark, intimate, about another person. And being unable to share that knowledge with anyone else.
Gregory knew all about those looks. Because he’d been sharing the same ones with Stacey all night as well.
Did Tommy sleep with that woman? He wondered.
“Aahh, I see you’re noticing the same thing we did,” Trisha whispered to him.
Gregory turned to look at her, quirking an eyebrow in her direction.
“Hmm?”
Trisha indicated Tommy and the other woman with a subtle tilt of her head.
“Tommy and his assistant, Fiona,” she stated softly.
“Is that her name?” Gregory asked.
Trisha nodded. “Yeah. The two of them are always working late and always off somewhere by themselves laughing and having private conversations.”
Gregory shook his head. “Doesn’t mean anything. They’re coworkers. That’s something that people who work together often do.”
“Yeah, but,” Freya interjected from his other side, leaning over the table. “About six months ago, right after they got engaged and you took off? We noticed that their relationship—or friendship—went from being simply uncomfortable and inappropriate to appearing as if the two of them were having an affair. Stacey said he was hardly ever home, because he was always with Fiona…”
“They would be out to dinner and he would up and leave her there a few times to go and deal with an emergency at work with Fiona,” Trisha said.
“Fiona would drop by their place unannounced and they would go into the office and close the door, and Stacey would hear him laughing and her giggling for hours. Then they would come out all breathless,” Freya stated.
“Tommy hangs up with Stacey to take phone calls from Fiona,” Trisha retorted with disgust evident in her tone.
Gregory nodded remembering Tommy quickly walking away from their conversation when he’d received a phone call from someone only a couple of weeks before. The night Stacey had informed him that he was not the man of honor. The nigh
t she’d broken his heart by telling him that even though he loved her, even though they had something special, even though they were made for each other, and even though she loved him in return, she would still be marrying Tommy.
That fucking jackwad.
“Have you seen him doing that?” Trisha asked.
Gregory grunted and turned his gaze back towards Tommy and Fiona.
“Has anyone talked to Stace about it?” he wondered aloud.
When he was met with silence from both of Stacey’s sisters he nodded. As soon as he got the opportunity, he would talk to Stacey about everyone’s concerns about the man she was dead set on marrying.
And the woman he was having an affair with.
****
Stacey
I have to get out of here. I need air. Now. Or I’m going to fucking scream.
Stacey lifted her glass of champagne to her lips and took another deep, long swallow. She’d thought she would be okay tonight. Seeing him. Being around him. They were surrounded by other people. Surrounded by family and friends. Surrounded by Tommy’s parents, family, and friends. But even with all of that, Stacey had found her gaze wandering over towards Gregory more than once. She felt even worse because Tommy hadn’t noticed her distraction once. He was so busy being excited and happy and chattering away with his assistant, Fiona, and his best man, his brother, Devlin, that he’d barely talked to her. She should probably feel some type of way about that, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was so wracked with guilt over her previous behavior with Gregory and her current thoughts about and longing for him, that she’d decided to let him enjoy his evening. Enjoy his dinner. She’d even told Devlin to order a few more strippers for the bachelor party that they would be going to as soon as the rehearsal dinner was over.
