Prologue
Seth
Almost five years ago
The guy in the suit in the mirror wasn’t me. He couldn’t be. I wasn’t ready to pack it all in yet.
I’d only graduated college a couple of years ago. Marriage? A baby on the way? Fuck, middle-aged guys did that stuff. Me, I was still young and fancy free.
But I wasn’t. Not anymore. Not since the morning Marjorie Maplewood had walked into my office at Hamilton Realty, waving around a white stick that didn’t belong to a popsicle.
This kid is yours, Hamilton. Don’t try to pretend it isn’t. What are you going to do about it?
It had never occurred to me that the child wasn’t mine, but I’d probably stared at her for two full minutes before finding my voice. Marj hadn’t appreciated that, and she’d burst into such loud sobs that my loyal assistant, Shelly, ran in from the reception area with a handkerchief, a mint, and plenty of judgment.
An hour later, we’d been engaged and planning a wedding. Okay, maybe two hours.
Now I was facing my reflection in a spotted mirror in a back room at Our Lady of Peace Church, and the ticking minutes might as well have been a time bomb that wouldn’t be kind enough to kill me.
Jesus, you’re an asshole. She’s the mother of your child.
And I was marrying her. I knew my duty. It wasn’t our child’s fault. Truth was, I already wanted that baby. I had as soon as I’d stopped panicking.
Hell, I was still panicking, but I was moving forward anyway.
A soft knock came at the door and I turned, expecting my father. He was one of the few pleased as could be about this union. Marjorie’s family wasn’t as well-to-do as ours, but they had good social positioning. My father sold property for a living—as did I now—and was always negotiating deals and searching for angles. My mom leaving the family when I was a kid certainly hadn’t softened him. If anything, he’d become harder and more inflexible.
Everything has a price, Seth. Even people. Especially people.
But it wasn’t my father. The woman standing in the doorway, her dark hair wreathed in a crown of tiny wildflowers, would never worry about social standings or brokering deals. She called me on my shit and made me laugh while doing it.
“Hey you,” Ally said, and I smiled for the first time since I’d walked into this narrow, stuffy room.
What that said, I didn’t want to analyze.
She took a step forward and for a moment, light surrounded her, making her pale blue dress seem even paler. Almost…white. And if I tilted my head, that crown of flowers on her head could be attached to a veil.
Almost immediately, the tightness in my chest eased and I could breathe again. I wasn’t going to run out of oxygen before I even walked down the goddamn aisle.
“Ally Cat,” I said, my voice sounding scratchy even to my own ears. I moved forward and gripped her shoulders, drawing her back enough that I could search her eyes. Then she slugged me in the gut and the spell was broken.
I wasn’t marrying Ally. That wasn’t what we were about. We were buddies.
We’d met in Mrs. Danforth’s third period English class in tenth grade on the second day of school. Ally had been absent the first day, and I was a transfer from the godawful prep school my father had sent me to in Connecticut. I’d lasted a year there, which was three years fewer than my twin, Oliver. Then I’d landed in public school in our tony small town, still unsure if I was making a colossal mistake—sure, prep school had sucked, but school was never fun—and I’d been half as interested in starting Of Mice and Men as I was at looking down Marcie Culpepper’s V-neck top.
Then Ally had hurried into the classroom, her hair done up with crazy sticks, her arms full of books, and dropped into the empty seat beside me. She’d taken one glance at the way I was hunched over my desk to ogle Marcie’s boobs and smirked.
Between that and the fact that I’d assumed she’d ditched the first day of class, I’d figured she was totally badass. I found out later her mom was sick and she’d stayed home with her to keep her company. But my badass opinion of Ally had remained all these years.
This badass chick was my best male friend…who just happened to have a pair of tits.
Sure, occasionally, I noticed more about her than a friend should. Like how her hair always smelled like fucking sunshine, or that her legs seemed six miles long. I always shut that crap down immediately. She’d been dealing with her mother’s illness all along, and with every passing year, her mom grew frailer. I was Ally’s support system. The only certainty she had in her life.
Just as she was mine.
“Seth? Hey, wise ass, you okay?”
I flexed my hands on her shoulders, not quite ready to let go. Normally, I didn’t grab hold of her as if she was my only lifeline, but it sure as hell felt as if I was facing an abyss.
One of my own making.
“What’s going on?” She reached up to lay her hands over mine, and the softness of her skin made me swallow hard.