Ruined (A Barnes Brothers novel) (4 page)

Or rather he wouldn’t have to worry so much about dealing with them on a personal level. After all, weddings were chaos, right?

But clearly, he’d forgotten some things about his brother Zane.

Zane didn’t do chaos.

Apparently, neither did Keelie.

Keelie had somehow managed to book a venue that Sebastien would have thought was unbookable. But then again, it turned out that Keelie was loaded and money opened doors.

Apparently, Ressa and Trey were in on the
last minute
thing because Ressa was one of Keelie’s maids of honor. Abby was the other one. Zach and Trey stood up with Zane.

Travis sat next to him and as he reached up to rub at his skull, his brother held out a hand.

Sebastien scowled at the four orange pills. He’d popped enough ibuprofen over the past few months to recognize them, but it annoyed him that his brother was probably assuming he was hungover.

He hadn’t had a drink since a few hours before Marin had arrived on his doorstep, so he was sobered up and then some, but chances were the headache had to do with the
lack
of alcohol in his system.

That realization made him feel a little sick.

He pushed Travis’s hand down, refusing the pills, and focused on his brother.

An older man Sebastien didn’t know was giving Keelie away—the guy’s name was Paul Jenkins. Sebastien had caught that much, but he didn’t know the guy’s connection to Keelie.

He might have, if he’d spent any time of the past year involved in his family’s lives.

He heard his mother sniffling.

His dad cleared his throat.

The wedding was small, just the family and a few friends from the tattoo shop, a few guys Zane knew through his photography.

Sebastien had a feeling it was going to make it that much harder to avoid face time with everybody later.

He was right.

Instead of the big reception, there was an elaborate and delicious dinner, served right there, in the glitz and glamour of a high-rise hotel with the sprawling vista of Las Vegas all around them.

He’d managed to get through most of the meal with easy small talk. Marin deflected just about everything and if a few people gave them both speculative looks, then, so what?

But as the cake was cleared away, while Keelie curled up against Zane, Sebastien started planning his escape. His glance at the door didn’t go unnoticed.

Zach leaned in from his seat across the table and said, “You’re not leaving without talking to Mom. Don’t even think about it.”

The urge to tell his brother to fuck off leaped to his lips.

Abby bumped her shoulder against Zach’s. “Leave him alone, baby. He’s here, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but—” He broke off mid-sentence as their mom pushed back from her chair at the other end of the table.

Zach gave him a warning look. Abby gave Zach the same.

“You two, behave,” Marin said, shaking her head. She got up from her seat and gestured to Denise. “You want to sit here? Mediation might be needed in a moment.”

Denise looked from Zach to Sebastien, lips pursed. “No, it won’t. They wouldn’t dare start anything at their brother’s wedding.”

“Of course not.” Abby grinned at her. “They’re too afraid of you.”

“Well, there is that.” Denise sat down in the chair Marin had vacated, her wineglass in hand. “But there’s also the fact that they know Zane would hand them their asses and Keelie would have a piece of them, too.”

“Nobody is starting anything,” Zach said, his voice easy. “It’s all good right, Seb?”

“Sure.” He slid his mom a sidelong look.

Denise Barnes smiled at him and nodded.

Of course, she knew he was lying. He loved her all that much more for letting him have his dignity.

A low laugh came from down the table and he turned his head, stared at Keelie and Zane. “I . . . uh . . . I think I’ll go offer them my . . . well . . .” He got up and moved down toward Zane. Zane, at least, didn’t make him feel like he was failing. Zane might know it. Hell, Sebastien knew it. But he didn’t need to see it in the faces of everybody staring back at him and Zane kept all that bottled up inside.

When he sat down in front of his oldest brother, Zane lifted his head from Keelie’s ear and looked at him with a grin. It was a softer, easier smile than Sebastien normally associated with his brother, and something he thought he’d forgotten how to feel settled inside him.

“Am I so out of touch that I missed everything about this wedding?” he asked, shooting for a smile. It worked, mostly.

“No.” Zane looked amused, glancing up at his new wife. “It was a bet.”

“A bet?” Sebastien looked from his brother to Keelie. “You two were already engaged, right? I’m not
that
out of touch.”

“She’s talking about a bet with me.” Ressa leaned in, giving Sebastien an appraising look.

He tried another smile, ready to get shot down.

To his surprise, she smiled back. It wasn’t particularly warm, but she wasn’t shutting him out, either. “See, I told Blondie here that a wedding was a lot more work than she realized and if I wanted . . . What was the phrase you used, Keelie?”

“I believe I said you were running around like a chicken with your head cut off—and you needed to have a glass of wine and chill out.” Keelie studied her manicure, a faint smile on her face.

Ressa snorted. “Yeah, well, not all of us are Mrs. Moneybags.”

“It’s
Miss
Moneybags,” Zane said, looking around her. “She’s the one with the money—I’m just marrying her for it. I’m spending the rest of my life as her sex slave.”

Keelie and Ressa both laughed, while Zane’s mouth canted in his faint, familiar smile.

“Better not let Mom hear you talking about being a sex slave,” Sebastien said.

“If it gets me more grandkids, I don’t care if Keelie
did
make him promise to be her sex slave,” Denise said from behind Sebastien.

He froze, his face flaming red and hot.

Zane grinned at him while Keelie blushed.

Ressa hooted, clearly amused.

“I think you two were telling Sebastien about the bet?” Denise said, slipping into the vacant seat next to him.

Sebastien darted a look at her from the corner of his eye.

She was looking at Keelie as though everything was normal.

Normal
—he didn’t even know what
normal
was now.

“Yeah.” Keelie shrugged and glanced over at Ressa. “Well, after I told Ressa how she looked with the chicken thing and all, she got a little snippy.”

“I did
not
get snippy.” Ressa sniffed, looking put out. “I got
bitchy
, thank you.”

“Oh, well. My mistake.” Keelie tipped her glass of champagne in acknowledgement. “And she told me if I thought it was so easy, maybe I should just get to planning
my
wedding. After all, I’d had an entire year. What was I waiting for? I told her I was being polite—waiting for her. I could get it done in a week if I wanted. And she dared me.”

“Remind me to never do that again.” Ressa rolled her eyes. “I ended up having my bachelorette party here in Vegas.”

“Hey.” Keelie pointed at her. “I flew your guests out here. Don’t tell me y’all didn’t have fun last night.”

“Weeeellllllll . . .” Ressa winked at her.

They both laughed.

“So I’m here because of a bet,” Sebastien said.

“You’re here because it’s family.”

At his mother’s words, he looked over at her. He couldn’t avoid it any longer.

She wasn’t smiling. There were tears in her eyes and the sight of them hit him like a punch. “Mom . . .”

“Please, don’t.” She held up a hand and rose. “Weddings always make me emotional. Two of my boys now. Almost three.”

As she hurried off, Sebastien forced himself to stand up. “I . . . uh . . . I’ll be back. I should go talk to her.”

Sebastien found his mom standing out on the wide, extravagant balcony that faced most of the glittering sparkle of Las Vegas.

She dabbed at her eyes.

“Go back inside, baby. I’m fine.”

“I’m not.” He shoved his hands inside his pockets and waited for her to turn and look at him.

She did, but it was slow and Sebastien had the gut-wrenching feeling that his mother almost didn’t
want
to look at him.

Her eyes were kind, though.

“Sebastien, as soon as you decide you’re ready to be okay, you’ll get on that road soon enough.”

He laughed and the sound was hollow enough to his own ears. “Is it really that simple? I just have to
decide
?”

“As stubborn as you are?” Denise pursed her lips and pretended to mull it over. Then she nodded. “Yes.”

She came to him then and reached up, cupping his cheek.

He flinched as her thumb brushed against the scar but he didn’t pull away.

“You haven’t had a drink since you got here.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “When was the last time you had one?”

He flushed crimson. He didn’t even have to have a mirror on hand to know just how red his face was. He could feel the burn of it.

“Well?”

If he didn’t answer, she’d just continue to wait and it wasn’t like he’d turn his back on her. Not right now. If he was drunk, that was one thing. Sober, though . . .

Easing away from her, he made his way over the balcony and stared down. “Marin came to my place two days ago. I was sobering up when she knocked. Haven’t had anything since.”

“Two days. Wow. When was the last time you went two days without a drink?”

This time, he didn’t answer, but she didn’t push.

“You did it because you weren’t going to come to your brother’s wedding drunk and all you had to do was make that decision,” Denise said quietly. “You’re so stubborn, Sebastien. At times, that’s been a curse. Especially over this past year. You’ve got it in your mind that you’re to blame for what happened to Monica and you’re
not
. But it can also be a blessing.”

He held still as she moved closer and kissed him on the cheek. “Decide you’re ready to be okay, baby. You deserve better than this.”

She was walking away, was almost to the door when he said, “Mom?”

“Yes, Sebastien?”

“I’m sorry for . . .” He blew out a breath and lifted his eyes up to stare at the sky. The stars were impossible to see here so he just stared at the dark canopy overhead. “I’m sorry for everything. The past year, how I’ve acted. How I’ve hurt you—all of you.”

“Don’t be. You’ve hurt yourself more than any of us. Just . . . find yourself. We miss you.”

***

“I’m happy for you two.”

He’d stayed outside for more than thirty minutes before he went back inside, thinking about what his mother had said, trying to find the
wrong
in her words, but failing. He hadn’t expected otherwise, though.

Not really.

This was his mother, after all.

He realized that on some level she was mortal and had messed up before, but he sure as hell hadn’t ever seen proof of it.

He just wished he could figure out how to
be okay
again. How to find himself. He couldn’t.

The one thing he
could
do was fake it. It was just acting, after all. Playing a part. He could do that with the best of them and nobody would ever know. He’d pretend to be who he had been—or a close version. If he went in there all happy-go-lucky, they’d see through it and that wasn’t any good.

But he could come close.

Smile, shake hands. Be happy for them. And he was.

Still, as he sat in front of Keelie and Zane, smiling and offering the trite phrase, he knew they could see right through him.

Keelie rested her head on Zane’s shoulder. “I’m glad you came out of your cave, Sebastien.”

He winced a little, although the bluntness of her words was no surprise. Keelie wasn’t exactly known for sugarcoating things. “Yeah, well . . . I hope I don’t ruin things while I’m here.”

“Don’t worry about Zach.” Zane glanced down the table and shrugged. “Mom’s already got him in line.”

“I’m past the age when I need my mom to handle things,” Sebastien muttered. Yet part of him was glad to see his second-oldest brother standing at the end of the table, talking to his mother, shoulders hunched. Abby looked like she wanted to laugh but was hiding it.

When Denise walked away, Zach rubbed the back of his head and Abby leaned forward to kiss him, the laugh bubbling out.

“Was that about me?” Sebastien asked, although he knew the answer.

“Dollars to donuts.” Zane smirked. “Sometimes Zach’s mouth is bigger than his brain.”

“Sometimes?” Keelie arched her brows.

“You’re one to talk,” Sebastien said without thinking. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t said anything.

To his surprise, both Zane and Keelie laughed.

“Hey, at least
I
try to be mature,” Keelie said, shrugging. She and Zach weren’t all that dissimilar in some aspects, a fact both she and Zach knew all too well.

From a few feet away, Ressa laughed and Sebastien looked over at her and Trey as she leaned in, pressing her brow to Trey’s.

“You are going to his wedding, right?” Zane asked, his voice neutral.

“Yeah. Make me something of an asshole if I came to yours and not his.”

“Well, everybody knows I’m the coolest brother, but . . . yeah. You need to go to both.” Zane’s gaze slid to Travis, his mouth tightening slightly.

Sebastien knew why. Only a few seconds before the wedding had started, Travis had slid in, and if anybody had been more quiet than Sebastien, it was Travis. He spoke with the others and joked with his twin, but it was obvious things weren’t normal with him.

But then again, things hadn’t been
normal
with Travis for a long time.

Of course, who was he to make an issue of things being
normal
?

He’d lost touch with the idea of that a long time ago.

One of the bouncers who Zane had stayed friends with came up, congratulating the newlyweds, and Sebastien took advantage of it, getting up to head off to a quieter—and darker—corner.

On his way, he snagged a bottle of champagne from a server.

In the back of his mind, he heard his mother’s voice.

How long has it been . . .

He almost put the bottle down, but he wasn’t ready to do that yet.

He wasn’t sure he was ready to try to be okay.

So he smiled at the server from whom he’d taken the champagne and winked.

She blushed and smiled back.

***

I won’t get drunk,
he told himself.

The bottle was less than half full, not enough to
get
drunk on but enough to get his raging headache back under control, he figured.

And he might just have to share.

Travis was in the same dark corner, his eyes grim, mouth flat.

“You sure you need to be drinking?” Travis asked.

Sebastien eyed him up and down, taking in gaunt cheeks and hard eyes. “Do you?”

“Fuck off.”

“Same to you, brother.”

They leaned against the window and studied the merriment taking place in front of them.

Ten minutes might have passed. Or it could have been fifteen.

“You going to Trey’s wedding?” Travis asked.

They traded the bottle of champagne back and forth and Sebastien doubted he was the only one wishing it were something stronger. “Yes. I won’t bother asking if you are.”

Travis made a low noise under his breath and took a swig from the bottle.

Then abruptly he shoved himself off the floor-to-ceiling window and rounded on Sebastien. Finger pointed at Sebastien’s nose, Travis spoke, his voice hard and cold. “My life is fucked up. I set myself on this road and there’s not much I can do except finish walking it. You . . . Shit, Seb. You were the golden boy. You were going to make it. All of you . . .”

Travis looked away, blinked hard. “I know you’re pissed off. I know you’re mad. I know you’re hurting over Monica. But your life isn’t over. Stop acting like it is.”

The intensity beat in every word Travis said and for a moment, as the brothers stared at each other, Sebastien couldn’t even blink. He couldn’t look away, could barely breathe.

Then Travis spun away, still holding on to the bottle of champagne. Somebody called his name.

But it wasn’t Trey. Trey could still reach his twin . . . sometimes. It didn’t seem like anybody else could. Travis just kept walking.

Sebastien sagged back against the wall and closed his eyes.