I stood up, soaked in beer and dripping blood from my hand. Corin helped clean up the spill and then brought one of the clean bar towels over to me, reaching for my hand.
“Touch me and I’ll snap you in half, brother or not,” I snarled. “Leave me the fuck alone.”
Corin backed away, palms up and facing out. “Fine, dude, Jesus.” He extended the towel toward me. “You’re bleeding, though.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Lucian sighed, sliding around from behind the bar. He snatched the towel from Corin and grabbed my hand, wrapping the towel around the cut and tightening it. “Calm down you big dumb oaf.”
I growled a warning, but Luce just chuckled.
“I’m not scared of you, big brother, so quit growling at me. We arepeople, and we usewords.” He enunciated the last sentence slowly, and with exaggerated precision, as if I was either deaf or stupid or both.
“Luce, I swear to god—”
He tied the towel in place around my cut hand, and met my eyes. “She’s marrying that guy, Bax, whether you like it or not.” His voice was quiet, but his words cut through the haze of my rage. “So you have two choices: stop it, or let her go for real.”
“I’vebeentrying to let her go, goddammit,” I snapped.
“No, you’re drinking yourself into a stupor every night and trying to ignore it till it goes away. You haven’t done the emotional work necessary to really move on. It’s obvious”—he indicated my injured hand—“that you’re very muchnotover her.”
“It wasone day, Luce. I shouldn’t be this hung up on a girl I spent one day with. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“People don’t make sense, Bax. Sometimes we just latch onto people and there’s no rhyme or reason for it, and time has no real bearing on the intensity of it.” He went back behind the bar and poured me a new beer. “You have to decide if you feel strongly enough to do something about your feelings. As you say, you spent a single day with her, so it could be nothing.”
I drank half the beer, and then eyed him. “You don’t think that’s the right choice, though.”
“It’s not my life, not my choice.”
“But?” I said, and finished the other half.
“But?” He tilted his head to one side as he poured me another. “But if two and half weeks later you’re still hung up on someone you spent a few hours with, it stands to reason there might be something there.”
“And you think I should go out to New York or wherever the fuck she lives—”
“Aerie said she heard it was happening at the Wordsworth house or the Wadsworth house or something like that,” Corin put in. “It’s in Connecticut, I know that much.”
“So I go to Connecticut, then, or wherever the fuck the Wordsworth-Wadsworth fucking house is, and just crash the wedding?” I laughed and drained the beer as fast as I had the first two. “Yeah, that’d be cool. I’d be all like, hey there Eva, remember me? I’m the asshole from Alaska you fucked a couple times, and I don’t think you should marry this rich, powerful, well-connected guy, because I havefeelingsfor you.”
Luce stared me down, his gaze steady and cool. “Pretty much, yes.”
“I got pretty big fuckin’ balls, Luce, but that shit would take stones I don’t think even I have.”
“Then that’s your answer.”
I growled. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“I dunno man,” Corin said, “I know you meant it sarcastically, but I kinda feel like what you just said says it all. Maybe leave out the part about fucking her, though. Atinybit of tact might go a long way in that situation.”
I laughed in his face. “Yeah, ohhhhh-kay, good one, Cor.”
He shrugged. “I was being serious, but whatever, man.”
“You two are for real?” I gaped at them. “You saying I just pop down to fuckin’ preppy-ass Connecticut and walk into their fancy shit wedding and tell her she shouldn’t marry the guy?”
Corin nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.” He raised a hand, two fingers extended. “Two questions, though. One, why do you call it Connecticutpreppy? Weird way to describe an entire state. And two, were you actually even listening when she told us the story about Thomas?”
“Have you ever been to Connecticut?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nah. All the gigs we did on the East Coast were in New York or Boston.”
