After drying off my face, I pulled my phone out of my pocket to try calling Jacob again. I’d been sneaking off to the bathroom all night to try to get a hold of him, and this call, like the ones before, ended in the same result. No answer. I was starting to worry. My brother had always drunk more than he should have, which had gotten him into plenty of shady situations.
Usually those situations involved waking up next to some woman whose name he didn’t know, but it was past six o’clock. His drunken stupor from last night should have worn off by now, along with the hangover, leaving enough room in his head for realization to hit that, holy shit, today was his wedding day.
Either Jacob hadn’t hit pause on whatever party he’d disappeared to last night, or something bad had happened. And I would feel like a real prick if I’d spent the afternoon marrying his fiancée and dancing with her and touching her if he was in some ditch in need of help.
I was just looking up the numbers to some of the local hospitals to see if a Jacob Adams had been admitted when a pounding sounded on the door.
“The ol’ ball and chain’s looking for you, Adams.” Some muffled laughter and more pounding. “That didn’t take long. Hopefully she doesn’t start sporting mom jeans and cancelling her waxing appointments. Make sure she doesn’t let herself go just because she’s landed you.”
More laughter, followed by a few more comments that had me gripping the edge of the sink. That these friends thought it was okay to say what they did to Jacob about Cora made me see red.
Growing up, I’d heard plenty of lewd locker-room talk about Cora. Most of it derived from the fact that she was pretty much every straight guy’s type—though no one could seem to get through to her—but some of it was said because she didn’t come from our world. The world of the supposed “elite,” where money decided how important you were and were not.
Cora’s mom became our nanny after our mom died since Dad knew his way around kids as much as he did a kitchen. Mrs. Matthews was our nanny from the time Jacob and I were eight to the time she lost her fight with breast cancer seven years later. Her daughter, Cora, had grown up right along with us, from sitting at the breakfast table every morning to roaming our school halls.
Even though our dad paid for her to go to the same private schools Jacob and I did, everyone knew she was the daughter of the “hired help.” They treated her as less than, and the boys talked about her and viewed her in ways they didn’t the girls who came from “good” families.
After she and Jacob finally made their relationship official after graduation, some of the stigma and comments eased off of her, but only some. Here we all were, years later, and the same douchebags from high school were talking about her like she was an inanimate object they could use for their every whim and pleasure.
“Adams, open up already. I need to take a piss and the other bathrooms are occu-piedo.” That was Hunter. Drunk Hunter. I’d had just as much experience with drunk Hunter as I had sober Hunter.
When I threw open the door, I fought the urge, as I had hundreds of times before, to wrap my hands around all of their necks. “Cora’s my wife, shithead. Show a little respect before I force it out of you.”
Okay, not exactly strangling. But not exactly ignoring and moving on.
Hunter grinned like I was making a joke and smacked Preston on the back. “Oh, believe me, man, I respect your wife. Serious, serious respect for a creature that fine.”
More laughter. The stench coming off of them was staggering. The reception had only been going for a couple of hours, but they smelled like they’d taken a bath in whiskey.
Biting my tongue, I shoved through my groomsmen. Aaron was holding out a flask for me, but I ignored it. I’d already had a couple glasses of champagne during dinner and the toasts, and my head was feeling fuzzy. Probably more from the situation I’d put myself in than from the alcohol, but still, I was a smarter man than my brother when it came to knowing alcohol limits.
“Dude, talk about cutting it close today with Tits McGee from last night.” Preston rung his arm behind my neck as Hunter started taking a piss in the bathroom without closing the door. “You really milked the last moments of your bachelorhood dry.”
Hunter staggered in front of the toilet and had to brace himself against the wall. “You’re an example for us all, Adams.”
My feet froze to the tile. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Last night. That chick you hooked up with at the last club we crawled our drunk asses into.” Hunter zipped himself back up and staggered out of the bathroom. “When you weren’t at the church when you were supposed to be, I figured you must have changed your mind about matrimony.”
“I was with another woman last night?” My throat was burning, because I knew it was true. Jacob wasn’t in trouble somewhere, in need of my help. Jacob was drunk off his ass, getting a piece of ass that didn’t belong to the woman he’d promised to marry.
If he were standing in front of me right now, I would have killed him. Or I would have come close.
“How wasted were you?” Preston whacked my back a few times, shaking his head. “Yes, you left with a woman last night. You said not to tell anyone and that you’d see us at the wedding today.”
Outside, I could just make out Cora scanning the party like she was looking for someone. I guessed that someone was me, her husband who’d spent the last fifteen minutes splashing cold water on his face and being reminded of why his brother was so undeserving of the woman who’d promised to be forever faithful to him today.
“Why don’t you guys do me a favor and just high-five each other in the face with a chair?” I lifted my middle finger at them as I headed outside. “I’ve got a honeymoon to get to.”
They went with their typical response to everything—laughter. As much as I despised them, they’d been useful for one thing. Now I knew. Jacob was fine. He’d missed his wedding because he’d been drunk-fucking some other woman and I wasn’t going to waste another minute worrying about him.
He had some serious explaining to do whenever he surfaced. He wasn’t the only one. That sent me reaching for another glass of champagne as I headed toward Cora. He’d messed up. So had I.
Would it have been better to just be honest and let her find out what kind of person Jacob really was? Would heartbreak and humiliation have been better than this—marrying the wrong guy as a standin for another wrong guy? God, did two wrongs make a right?
My head was spinning, so I drained the champagne in one drink.
“There you are.” She reached for me as soon as she saw me coming.
Setting the empty glass on a table, I wound my hand around hers.
“I was starting to worry you were a runaway groom.” She was smiling, making a joke, but she had no idea the truth of it.
My fingers tied through hers, and I pulled her closer. My other hand easily found its way around her waist, as if I’d done it a million times before. The reality was entirely different from my fantasy though.