Bad Wedding: A Bad Boy Romance (12 page)

J
ason

“
W
ake up
, sleepyhead.”

She was rolled in the sheets, which were a mess. I could see a riot of brown curls on the pillow, one perfect thigh, and a foot. She moved, groaned softly.

I lifted a foot from where I sat in the hotel room’s chair and tapped her foot with my shoe. “Megan.”

She moved again, rolled over, raised her head and looked at me. Her gray-green eyes were only half open. “What? What is it?”

“Time to get up. We have a long way to go today to get to this wedding.”

She groaned and sat up further. The sheets drooped down her chest, and I caught the curve of her breast and the shadow of a nipple before she unselfconsciously put a hand to her chest and held the sheet there. She moved her legs, and more of the thigh showed up.

I was enjoying the show. She looked like a woman who had been well and truly fucked. Many times. By me. I wanted to climb back under the sheets with her and wake her up with my cock deep inside her, but instead I crossed one ankle over the other knee while my dick twitched in my jeans.

“You’re awake,” she said, blinking her eyes further open and looking me up and down. “You’re dressed. And showered.”

“I am,” I said, lifting my hands so she could see my jeans and t-shirt, which had a retro 1965 Ford Thunderbird logo on it. “You didn’t even wake up.” I dropped my hands and made my expression go dark and serious. “I’ve been sitting here for hours, watching you sleep.”

Her jaw dropped for a split second, and then she grabbed one of the pillows and threw it at me. “God, you creep.”

“You actually believed that for a second,” I said, laughing and throwing the pillow back at her. “Jesus. I went to get coffee. Want one?” I lifted one of the cups from the takeout holder.

“Yes. God, yes, I do.” She took the cup I handed her and sipped it. “You even remembered how I take my coffee.”

And there it was. It took a split second, the way lightning flashes, but the air grew tight. She was naked, and I knew how she took her coffee. It felt intimate. It
was
intimate.

We didn’t know what we were doing. There was no plan. Everything was backwards with us; we’d pretty much had a four-year breakup before we’d ever fucked or had a single date. We’d had a night of sex that wasn’t a one-night stand and wasn’t anything else, either. Not yet. And only
after
all of this were we going on our first date, to her ex’s wedding.

It should have made me crazy. It did, a little. But I knew what she looked like naked. All that smooth white skin. I knew what she felt like, what she tasted like. Fucking amazing. Those breasts in my hands. She was the sexiest woman I’d ever seen. She’d trusted me with her biggest problem, and she’d listened to mine.

And sometimes, when I was lucky, she laughed at my jokes.

At seven o’clock in the morning, I’d take it.

I stood up. “I already put my stuff in the car,” I said. “I’ll wait downstairs. Get ready.” I tapped my watch. “Twenty minutes.”

She licked a drop of coffee off her lip. “Okay.”

Oh, hell. I walked toward the door, but stopped and turned back.

She was watching me. “What is it?” she asked.

“Are we okay?” I asked her. “After last night? Because I don’t want us to be awkward.”

Something intense flashed across her expression, some deep emotion that she fought down hard. I thought maybe it was fear. “No,” she said. “We’re not awkward.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

* * *

T
he lady at the inn
—she seemed to really like me—gave me directions, and by the time Megan was due to come downstairs, I knew how to get back to the interstate. I pulled the car up to the front doors and waited, leaning against it and checking my phone.

Charlotte had texted once already this morning. Apparently, when it came to tormenting me, she was an early riser. I scrolled back through the texts she’d been sending me.

I talked to Deanna. What is going on?

It seems soon, Jason. Are you sure?

Who is she? Deanna says you didn’t say and no one knows about this.

I guess you’re still mad at me but I’m concerned. I do care about you. Apparently you were in a fight? Deanna said you had a bruise.

Sarah doesn’t know who this girlfriend is either. No one has heard you’re dating someone. Is this new?

You’re vulnerable right now, Jason. Please be careful.

It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so infuriating. But this was classic Charlotte. While I was deployed, her cousin got engaged to a guy Charlotte thought was no good for her. It had set something off in her, and she’d badgered the girl relentlessly about it. She’d talked to every family member repeatedly, talking about how worried she was. She organized a family intervention. The cousin had finally given in and put off the wedding. The last I heard, the wedding date was in limbo, delayed to probably never. Charlotte won.

When I first met Charlotte, she seemed like the kind of girl everyone liked. Tall, slim, blonde, pretty. I’d dated a lot of girls just like her, or so I thought. She seemed like she really cared. I was two months from my twentieth birthday.

From day one, I was her project. What did I want to do with my life? Where did I think I was going? What kind of plan did I have? I had just graduated as the golden boy of Eden High, and I hadn’t thought about any of those things, but I humored her, because she was right. I was done high school. It was time to figure out the rest of my life. I worked at the bank, like she suggested. I enlisted in the Marines. None of it was quite good enough for her. Close, but no cigar.

Unlike my mother, who put me on a pedestal, nothing about me was good enough for Charlotte. Not my family, because my mother had raised Holly and me alone. Not my friends, especially Dean, who she hated to the bottom of her soul, mostly because he did whatever the fuck he wanted and cared nothing about what anyone thought. Not my attitude or my ambition or my sense of humor. And, of course, not the sex.

I’d be so furious if someone fucked with my head like that,
Megan had said.
I’d be on a rage path.
I hadn’t let on how close she’d come to the mark. I
was
mad. Mad enough to get fired from the bank and bounce college idiots from Puke Patrol. Mad enough to let my life drop out while I lived in an angry fog. The only saving grace was that Charlotte had decided I was hopeless, and after we broke up I was no longer one of her projects.

Until now.

I looked at her latest text, from this morning.
Why aren’t you talking to me?

I’d give her one reply. Exactly one.
There’s nothing to talk about,
I wrote.
It’s over.

There was another flurry after that, my phone vibrating, but I turned it off and put it in my pocket, because the doors were opening and Megan was coming out, bag in hand.

She was wearing worn jeans that sat just a little loose on her body. A sleeveless flowy top, the bohemian kind she liked to wear, white printed with little purple flowers. Flip flops on her feet, peeking from beneath her jeans. She’d tied her dark brown curls into a loose ponytail, and a couple of strands escaped down her long, white neck. She’d put on a little makeup, maybe something around the eyes, but that was it. A few silver rings on her fingers. She looked relaxed and sexy, like a woman who has spent the night getting properly, repeatedly, and unapologetically screwed, and doesn’t particularly care who knows it.

Her beauty was complete, in every part of her, and she didn’t even have to try. It was just effortless. Megan didn’t put me on a pedestal, and she didn’t treat me like a disappointment. She got mad when I fucked up and she called me on my bullshit, but she recognized my honesty and my willingness to try. And when we were in bed together… Jesus Christ.

There’s a fact about men. I don’t know whether women understand it; maybe they don’t. But there is nothing better to a man than the knowledge that a woman—a beautiful woman, a hot woman, a strong woman who can pick and choose—loves to fuck him. Not just that there’s a negotiation between two consenting adults. Not just that sex is something he wants, and that she agrees to when he gets lucky.

No. It’s that changed dynamic, where he knows that without a doubt he just completely fucking turns her on. That if he kisses her just so, and moves in close, she’ll start to thrum with anticipation and want. That heat will start to come off her skin. That she loves sex, but more specifically, she loves sex with
him
. That she’ll ask for it. And ask for it again.

It isn’t just ego. It’s
everything.
A man who has a woman who loves to fuck him can leap tall buildings in a single bound. He can move mountains if he has to. I’d spent four years without that, four years with a woman who made me feel like sex with me was something she had to put up with, a pill she had to swallow once a year. And every time Megan looked at me, she ripped off every shred of my clothes with her eyes. The difference was profound.

It made me feel like something was changing.

It also made me feel very, very possessive. In a deep, crazy way.

But I had to remember that that was me, not her. Megan had never asked me for anything more than a wedding date and my A-game in bed so she could forget her problems. She’d never hinted that she needed me for anything else. And there had been that flash of fear on her face before I’d left the hotel room. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know what she was afraid of, and I already knew she wouldn’t tell me.

I stepped forward as she came toward me and took her bag from her hand. She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t stop me. There was no stopping me. Standing by like an asshole while a woman hefts her own bags into the car is not what I do.

I slammed the trunk and looked at her. “You ready?”

“You paid the bill,” she said, her tone accusing.

“Sure,” I said, and looked at her face. “Forget it. I have extra money.”

“Extra money? What does that mean?”

“It means the guy who owns the club three doors down from Zoot Bar hired me for extra shifts last week and paid me cash.”

“That isn’t
extra
money, Jason,” Megan said. “That’s just money.”

“Cash is extra money. It doesn’t count.”

“It counts. You’re spending it on this trip, which you’re taking because of me.”

“Of course I’m spending it on the trip,” I said. “Why do you think I worked the extra shifts?”

She stopped and bit her lip, took a deep breath. Looked away from me.

I watched her for a minute, and then I figured it out. “You have a hard time when people help you, don’t you?” I said to her.

“I’m supposed to handle this myself,” she said.

“Well, the rule just changed,” I replied. “You’re handling it with me. You ready to go see Mr. Wonderful Ex-Boyfriend? You look smoking hot, by the way. He’s going to go down on one perfect knee and beg for you back.”

“I don’t—” She frowned. “He’s marrying my cousin. I don’t want him back.”

“Well, he’s going to weep perfect preppy tears from his preppy eyes when he sees you,” I said. Like I said, possessive. “He might get salt water on his tasselled shoes.”

“You think Kyle is preppy?” she asked.

“His name is Kyle. And he’s spending a billion dollars to get married on Cape Cod. So yes, he’s preppy.”

The skin high on her cheekbones flushed for a second, and she shook her head. She looked like she was about to say something. Then, without warning, she turned and moved her body up against mine. I could feel the press of her breasts beneath her top. She rose up on her toes, put an arm around my neck, pulled me down, and kissed me. Long and deep. I put my hands on her waist, under the top, and felt her skin beneath my palms.

When we broke off, I didn’t let her go. “Megan?”

She ran a hand lightly down the side of my face, stroking my cheekbone in a gesture that was oddly affectionate. “I feel like there was some tension,” she said. “I broke it.” She smiled. “Let’s get going.”

M
egan

I
had never been
to Cape Cod before. I’d been to Michigan’s beaches, where people brought their kids, barbecued, dunked in the water, played music, and sometimes lit bonfires and smoked pot after the sun went down.

Cape Cod was nothing like that.

It was small and manicured and perfect. Even in September, just off the high tourist season, it was jammed with people, the little shops bustling, the sidewalks crowded. Jason maneuvered through the traffic like a pro while I navigated from the map. He’d long ago stopped giving me grief about the GPS.

I’d given him the rundown on my family on the drive. My aunt Janice, who was my mother’s sister, and a successful lawyer. Her daughter, my cousin Stephanie, who had also become a lawyer. A few of the other relatives I thought might be there.

“So the lawyers are the rich side of the family,” Jason said.

“That’s putting it mildly,” I said. “My mother tried to be a model in her twenties, but she never got very far. Then she married my dad, who never had any one job for very long, and they had me. We’re the black sheep of the family.”

“Got it,” Jason said. “What does your dad do now?”

“He runs the Mind Meld on O’Connor Avenue.”

“That shop with the weird African masks in the window?”

“That one. If you ever need some quality incense or a batik sarong, my dad can hook you up.”

He smiled. “Your dad sounds like a cool guy.”

“He is, I guess. But I have to look after him. Dad really doesn’t do well with the things the Man tells him to do, like pay utility bills or taxes, and it’s a lot worse since my mother died. I try to help him out.”

He tapped his fingers on the wheel, which I’d learned was his sign that he was thinking. I had quietly become an expert in every movement of Jason’s. “Okay, we should get our story straight,” he said as we got closer to Yarmouth and the wedding venue. It was dinnertime, and the sun was setting. We could see flashes of the water between the houses. “How long have we been going out?”

My heart did a little flip in my chest. “A few months,” I said. “Since you came home from the Marines. Early July.”

“Okay. And how do we know each other?”

“High school.” True, of course.

“Fine. And how did I first ask you out?”

“Um.” I couldn’t think. I’d spent last night in bed with him, having the best orgasms of my life, but the idea of Jason asking me out made me temporarily stupid.

“How’s this?” he said, oblivious, as he signalled and made a left turn. “I called you the day after I got back, because I’d been thinking about you all that time, and hoping you were still free.”

“Okay,” I said through numb lips. “That sounds, uh, good.”

He snapped his fingers. “Oh, and on our first date I took you to that swanky seafood restaurant uptown. What’s it called—Pescatore’s. That place. And I didn’t have enough money to take you, so I borrowed money from Dean to pay the bill.”

I looked out the window, watched the pretty houses and B and B’s go by. “That sounds nice. It sounds sweet.”

“Good,” Jason said. “Okay, now, what do I do for a living? We can’t tell your rich family that I’m a bouncer, calling cabs for topless girls before they puke. That isn’t going to impress anyone.”

I turned my head and stared at him. “Are the girls really topless?”

“Constantly.” Jason rolled his eyes. “I guess girls who drink too much like to show them off. I don’t remember the girls doing that at Eden High.”

“Only after football games,” I joked, trying not to think about Jason looking at a parade of tits every night.

Jason shook his head. “You obviously never went to one of our games, chess club girl. Eden High’s football team sucked—that’s why I was their best player. Girls don’t take their shirts off for losing teams. Now think of something I do for a living that doesn’t sound like I’m a sleazebag.”

“Turn right here,” I said. “Can you be in med school?”

“Fuck no. If anyone asks me anything, I’ll be lost.” He thought about it. “I have another idea, though. I can be an EMT.”

“Like a paramedic?” I asked.

“Like that. I think it takes a couple of years to be a paramedic, so I can be in training. We learned a lot of emergency stuff in the Marines, so I know what I’m talking about. That sounds better, right?”

I nodded. Something about this was bothering me. Probably the fact that I didn’t really have a hot, gorgeous Marine-paramedic boyfriend who had spent his deployment dreaming about me. But this was what I’d asked for. “It sounds good.”

“Okay. What do we say you do for a living?”

“I work at Drug-Rite.”

He glanced at me, then gently poked my thigh. “Come on,” he said. “You’re supposed to impress these people. Let’s come up with something. We’ll tell them you make websites, which is true.”

“I just do it on the side.”

“They don’t know that. We’ll make it sound like you’re a big deal. You made Holly’s site, after all.”

We were pulling up a winding drive. I could see a complex of buildings at the end of it, a chapel and a few beautiful old houses in a row. “Fine,” I said. But I suddenly had the sinking feeling that no one would be impressed. With Jason, yes. But not with me.

There was no time to say anything after that. At long last, we’d arrived.