“Don’t go spilling all of our sexy secrets, Rach,” Ty chimes in, and Rachel winks at him.
“In my defense, you are the one who chose the Carlyle, not me.”
The fucking Carlyle.
It’s been a hell of a long time since Charlotte took off on the day of our wedding and left me to smash half the breakables in my groom’s suite at the Carlyle Hotel, but it’s something of a core memory. It’s a day that shaped and polished me into the person I am now.
A day that, no matter what else happens in my life, or how right I know she was to call it off, haunts me. It reminds me of parts of myself I’m not proud of. Of emotions that have a long-standing history of making me feel out of control.
Winnie notices my face and steps forward to take Izzy from me and pass her to our mother. She walks up to me then—already engaged and ready to play peacemaker.
I don’t want to do it; I want to let it go. But before I can stop myself, I’m butting into the game to ask the exact thing I know I shouldn’t. Fucking with Ty over the whole left-at-the-altar thing has evidently consumed the dark humor part of my soul.
“Did you say the Carlyle?”
Rachel glances at Howard, and then Ty, and then back to me before tentatively nodding. “Um, yeah. Why?”
The room is almost painfully silent now, and Maria is looking at me with questions in her eyes, but now that I’ve opened this can of worms, I can only see one way to close it.
Rachel is uncertain, glancing again to Ty for help or advice or direction—I’m sure none of this is making sense to her—and he groans, piping up to explain.
“I took Rachel to the Carlyle for a week when we first got together, okay?”
“The Carlyle?” I ask, just as Jude lets out a half groan, half laugh, his mind torn between being amused and concerned over what’s brewing.
“Yeah, dude.”
“Seriously, Ty?” is all I can say.
“Seriously what, Rem?” he snaps back. “I mean, are we just supposed to ignore one of the nicest hotels in New York for the rest of our lives because you’ve got a bad memory there?”
“What’s going on?” Rachel whispers, to which Winnie steps forward and grabs her arm with a shake of her head.
“A bad memory?” I challenge, my voice edging toward angry. I mean, it’s all fun and jokes until he starts to act like he wasn’t there to witness the whole huge thing.
“Yeah. So, your wedding crashed and burned there a fucking decade and a half ago. It’s not like it was the hotel’s fault! They even refunded some of the money!”
A warm hand settles on my back, the scent of Maria enveloping me from behind. I can feel the flow of her comfort as she infuses it into me with all of her strength. She thinks I’m upset about Charlotte, about the wedding, about stupid shit that doesn’t matter to me anymore. Everyone does, honestly. But it’s so much fucking deeper than that.
Still, the last thing I want is to upset her or make her nervous that I might overreact in some way. I force myself to relax.
She must feel the tension leaving my muscles, because the pressure on my back shifts then, turning into a comforting rub.
“You’re right, Ty,” I admit. “It’s not the hotel’s fault. Not a big deal.”
Ty’s eyes widen to the point of bursting, and the rest of the room takes a collective breath. It’s a little alarming how much they all expected me to flip out, and even more disturbing that if it weren’t for Maria looking on, they probably wouldn’t have been wrong.
Fuck. That is not the man I want to be. Maybe it was the man I was okay with being for a long time, but I’m not okay with that now. I don’t want to model that for the next generation, and I certainly don’t want that to be what I’m known for by the people I love the most.
Howard, the smart bastard, goes back to the game, pulling everyone’s attention away from my outburst, and I decide to head out onto my sister’s back deck for a minute. I just need a second to breathe. A gulp of air to figure out why on earth I reacted at all.
Ty, for once in his life, is right. It was ages ago. I’m over it. I’ve been over it. Charlotte is married to Lexi’s biological father. And yet, still, I can’t seem to find the place inside myself that doesn’t go back to that day when I hear something related to it. Even my long-running joke of busting Ty about it has to be rooted somewhere, right? The normal thing to do would be to let it fucking go.
I lean into the rail to think, and the door cracks open behind me. I’m expecting it to be my mom or my sister, so when Maria calls out to me, I’m surprised.