A few chuckles break out around the table, including from Sloane. I don’t miss the quick moment where Sterling’s eyes narrow, where his teeth clamp and his jaw pops.
Sloane jumps in quickly, patting his arm like he’s a dog who needs soothing. I can almost feel her slender fingers on my own arm and absently find myself wishing it were me she was touching instead. “I used to hunt with my cousins out in Chestnut Springs too, you know?”
I’m tossed back in time, remembering a young Sloane keeping up with the boys all summer. Sloane with dirt under her nails, scrapes on her knees, sun-bleached hair all tangled and free down her back.
“It’s more about the thrill, you know? The power.” Sterling ignores Sloane’s comment entirely.
He looks at me like an opponent, except we aren’t playing hockey right now. If we were, I’d give him a quick blocker shot to the face.
“Did you not hear what Sloane just said?” I’m trying to be cool, but I hate the way he’s treated her through this entire dinner. I don’t know how she ended up here. She’s my best friend. She’s eloquent, and smart, and funny—does he not see that at all? Does he not see her?
Sterling waves a hand and chuckles. “Ah, yes. I’m always hearing about Wishing Well Ranch.” He turns to her with a condescending tone and a mocking smirk. “Well, thank goodness you outgrew whatever tomboy phase you went through, babe. You’d have missed your calling as a ballerina.”
His shitty response is worsened by my realization that he heard what she said and chose to ignore her.
“I can’t even imagine you handling a gun, Sloane!” one guy further down the long table exclaims, his nose a deep red from far too much scotch.
“I was good, actually. I think I only hit something alive once.” She laughs lightly and shakes her head, bright blonde strands of hair slipping down in front of her face before she pushes them back behind her ears and drops her eyes with a faint blush. “And then I cried inconsolably.”
Her lips roll together and I’m entranced. Instantly imagining things I shouldn’t be.
“I remember that day.” I glance across the table at her. “You couldn’t even eat the venison for dinner that night. We all tried to console you—it didn’t work.” My head tips at the vivid walk down memory lane.
“And that right there”—Sterling points at Sloane without even sparing her a glance—“is why women don’t belong out hunting. Too upsetting.”
Sterling’s overgrown frat buddies guffaw at his lame comment, which urges him to go all in on his assholery. He holds his glass up high and looks down at the table. “To keeping women in the kitchen!”
There’s laughter and a smattering of people offering “cheers” and “here, here.”
Sloane dabs the white cloth napkin over her full lips with a prim smile but keeps her eyes fixed on the empty place setting before her. Sterling goes back to gloating with the other guests—ignoring the woman sitting beside him.
Ignoring the piece of herself she tried to share with him. Ignoring the way he embarrassed her.
My patience for this night is quickly dwindling. The urge to slink into the background is overwhelming.
Sloane catches my eye across the table and gives me one of her practiced smiles. I know it’s fake because I’ve seen her real smile.
And this isn’t it.
It’s the same smile she gave me when I told her I couldn’t go to prom with her as her date. Taking a twenty-four-year-old NHL player wasn’t appropriate for either of us, and I was the asshole who had to tell her that.
I smile back, feeling frustration build inside me over the fact she’s about to tie herself to someone who treats her like an accessory, who doesn’t listen to her. Or appreciate that she’s layered and complex, and not just the polished princess she’s been molded into by her family.
Our eyes stay locked, and her cheeks start to flush pink. She shimmies her shoulders back, and my gaze drops to her collarbones. Suddenly I see myself trailing my tongue there. Making her squirm.
My eyes snap back up to her face. Like maybe I’ve been caught. As though she could somehow hear what’s in my head. Because we both know I can’t be looking at her like that. She’s might as well be family. And worse, she officially belongs to another man.
Sterling catches the exchange and turns his attention to me once again. It makes my skin crawl. “Sloane tells me you’ve been friends for a long time. Pardon my confusion, but a rough around the edges hockey player doesn’t seem like he’d be friends with a prima ballerina. Of course, I haven’t seen you around much since she and I got together. Something keeping you away?” He drapes an arm over her shoulder in a show of possession, and I try not to fixate on the gesture.
“To be fair, I haven’t heard much about you either.” I say it with enough humor in my tone that anyone missing the way we’re glaring might not even pick up on the jab. I lean back, crossing my arms over my chest. “But yeah. I guess I’m not too rough around the edges to be the one that brings over Polysporin and painkillers when my friend’s feet are too raw from dancing in pointe shoes to even walk.”
“I’ve told you this.” Sloane’s voice is placating. “He helped me move into my new condo. Sometimes we grab coffee. Simple things like that.”
“Basically, she knows if she needs something, I’ll be there,” I add without thinking.
Sloane shoots me a look, probably wondering why I’m acting like a territorial asshole. I’m wondering the same thing, to be honest.
“Good thing you’ve got me for all that now.” Sterling is responding to Sloane, but he’s staring at me. Then he abruptly places a palm over Sloane’s hands that are now propped on the table. The ones still pulling at her napkin anxiously. But the way he touches her isn’t soothing or supportive. It’s a swat, a reproach for fidgeting.
It sends fury racing through my veins. I need to get away before I do something I’ll really regret.
“Well, I’m going to head out for the night,” I announce suddenly, pushing my chair back, desperate for fresh air and a break from the dark walls and velvet drapery pressing in around me.
“Better get a good sleep in, Gervais. You’ll need it to get thinss rollins for the Grizzlies this season. After last season, you’re probably on thin ice.”
I pull at the cuffs of my shirt and force myself to ignore the jab. “Thank you for inviting me, Woodcock. Dinner was delicious.”
“Sloane invited you,” is his petulant reply, clarifying that he does not like me—or my presence.
I stare down at him blankly and hitch one side of my mouth up. Like I can’t quite believe what a raging prick he is. I can feel eyes on us now, other people picking up on whatever unspoken tension is between us. “Well, that’s what friends are for.”
“Wait, but you’re her cousin, right?” The drunk guy’s scotch spills over the rim of his tumbler and onto his hand as he points at me.
I don’t know why Sloane and I have always been so adamant that we’re friends and not cousins. If someone tried to tell me that Beau, or Rhett, or Cade wasn’t my brother, I’d write them off immediately. Those men are my brothers.