Page 45 of The Player + The Pact = I Do

She reaches across the table and links her fingers into mine. I can’t tell if it’s for show or because she’s trying to provide comfort. Whatever the reason, I like it. Too much.

Our waitress comes over and we order, after I promise that Jules can have a taste of my potatoes.

“Why don’t I just get the kitchen to do you a separate order of potatoes?” I ask.

“Because it’s launch night and the chefs and waitstaff have got enough to do. I bet it’s chaos in the kitchen. I’d put money on someone getting killed by the end of the night.” She pauses and narrows her eyes. “Or at least punched.”

“What a happy thought. Behind the scenes in hospitality sounds brutal.”

Her eyes widen. “It’s like the Hunger Games, but worse, because you never get out. And the odds areneverin your favor.”

I can’t help but laugh.

“And he’s back,” she says, grinning at me. “I thought I lost you for a minute back there.”

“Sorry, I just?—”

“You don’t need to explain,” she says brightly.

I should tell her. After all, the awards are coming up soon and she should know before then. If she was my real fiancée, I would have told her. “I just saw a woman from my past.”

She looks at me, her eyebrows raised like she’s waiting for a punchline.

“We were engaged for a minute there. I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

She swallows down the bread she was chewing. “You had arealfiancée? And she’s here tonight?”

“It didn’t last long.” Her father had her enrolled at Berkeley ten days after she told him about the engagement. And then two weeks after that, she ended it. Officially. “I was eighteen, but yes, I asked to marry her. I was… I thought we were in love.” Looking back, Caroline was clearly never in love with me, but I was so besotted by her. I worshipped her. She seemed wise and sophisticated, and the fact that she’d picked me… I’d felt like the luckiest guy in New York.

“But you weren’t in love?” Jules asks.

“Can anyone be in love at eighteen?”

“Why not?” she says. “Is there an age threshold I don’t know about—you know, beyond the age of consent and stuff?”

“I was a very different man back then.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Really? I’m not sure I believe that.”

“I was still working for my dad, doing bread deliveries around the city starting at four in the morning. I had nothing.”I was nothing, I don’t add.

“But what you have doesn’t make you who you are,” she replies simply. “I imagine you are much the man you are now. Handsome. Kind. Hardworking. Not the slightest bit interested in owning a hotel.”

I grin at her. “Maybe you’re right on that last bit.”

“And this woman you were engaged to, what happened? Did she break your heart?”

“And soul and spirit.”

“Whoa. Dramatic much?” She laughs and the corners of my lips twitch despite the unanticipated stress of the evening. “What in the hell happened? Did she knock you out and sell one of your kidneys?” She narrows her eyes like she’s actually waiting for me to confirm she’s right.

I sit back. “Fuck.You heard about it?”

Her jaw goes slack and she covers her mouth with her hand.

I roll my eyes. “No, she didn’t sell my kidney. Are you for real?”

She starts to laugh. Tears are forming in her eyes. “You see? It’s not as bad as it could have been.”

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