Page 3 of Married Into Love

ChapterTwo

Alec

Bachelor partiesin Vegas were supposed to be wild and crazy nights, filled with stories so insane that there’d better not be photographic evidence or else the wedding might never happen. The key phrase there was “supposed to be” since the party I was currently attending was for my friend and teammate on the Chicago Cavaliers hockey team, Jason Campbell, wasn’t just a bachelor party. It was also a bachelorette party for my long-time friend, Cee-Cee Thompson. Not only were two friends of mine getting married and having their last-night-out parties together, but it seemed like everyone around me was already paired up with the love of their lives and uninterested in partying it up in Vegas. As the lone man standing in our crew, it fell to me to talk the rest of them into getting their buttsmoving.

“Enough of that, you two!” I yanked on Jason’s arm, trying to pull him away from Cee-Cee, but he didn’t budge more than an inch. “You’ve got one more night of freedom. We should hit the Strip and close the bars down. This is basically your bachelor and etteparty!”

My older brother, Andrew, and his wife, Josie— another long-time friend of mine and Cee-Cee’s—were right behind me. “You can count us out. My wife needsherrest.”

“Rest, right,” Josie snorted. I cringed a little inside at the thought of all the sex my brother and my friend were probably having while we were in Vegas, shaking my head to try to dislodge the images that popped into mybrain.

“I think I could use some rest, too.” Cee-Cee burst into a fit of giggles. “A lotofit.”

I groaned and scrubbed my hands over my eyes, wishing someone would come up with brain bleach because I could have seriously used some rightaboutthen.

“You guys are more than welcome to use the limo to go do whatever you’d like, but my bride and I are going to head up to our room for a private, co-ed party. Just the two of us,” Jasonoffered.

“Anyone else want to go out and celebrate without the bachelor and bachelorette?” I asked. There was no way in hell I was going to stick around the hotel tonight. Not when my room was on the same floor as the two happy couples. With my luck lately, Andrew and Josie would be loud enough that I’d have sounds to go with the images I’d kill to have wiped from my brain. Don’t get me wrong...there wasn’t anything wrong with a little voyeurism; just so long as it didn’t involve my brother and a woman I’d long considered to be my little sister. Talk about a bonerkiller.

A couple of guys who were childhood friends of Jason’s said it sounded like fun. Since I didn’t know them that well, I turned my attention to Ryan Forrester. He was Jason’s defensive line mate and my neighbor—and currently flying solo since his girlfriend couldn’t make it to Vegas this weekend. “C’mon, dude. Tamara isn’t here, so you don’t have an excuse to head up to your room early. You’re comingwithus.”

“Fine, I’ll go,” he conceded. “But I’m not making any promises about how long I’llstayout.”

“Because you’re so pussy-whipped it even works when you’re seventeen-hundred miles away from her,” I muttered to myself as our little group walked through the hotel lobby. It wasn’t soft enough, though, because it earned me a jab in the ribs from Ryan and some laughs from the other guys. After we climbed into the back of the limo, I poured him a shot of vodka and handed it to him as an olive branch. “Sorry,man.”

“It’s fine.” He waved my apology off and slung back the shot, handing the glass back to me when it was empty. “If the price to pay for having Tamara in my life is a little bit of razzing from my still-single friends about being pussy-whipped, I’ll take it. She’s more thanworthit.”

“I still can’t believe how fast all you guys fell for your women. You. Andrew. Jason.” I took a shot of vodka, and poured us both another one. “Not a single one of you were into the whole relationship thing at all, and then bam! You’ve got eyes for only one woman and a possessive streak a mile wide when it comestoher.”

Ryan took the vodka from me and gulped it down, shrugging his shoulders. “When you meet the one, you’ll know. Just don’t make the same mistake that I did with Tamara and let her get awayfromyou.”

“That’s another thing all three of you have in common.” I chuckled and shook my head. “I’m not the kind of guy to fall head over heels for a woman at first sight like you guys did. But if hell froze over”—I paused to glare at Ryan as he burst into a fit of laughter—“and I get all riled up over some chick I barely know, I won’t make the same mistake you all did. No walking away from her, even if I think she belongs to someone else like Andrew did with Josie. No letting her run from me because she thinks I’m a douchebag who hits on a woman all night long, only to get up close and personal with some other chick while she’s in the bathroom, like what happened with Jason and Cee-Cee. And I sure as shit won’t let her sneak out on me the morning after like you did with Tamara. I’ll exhaust the hell out of her so leaving me is the last thing onhermind.”

We reversed roles, and it was Ryan who was glaring at my reminder of how he’d fucked up with Tamara and lost contact with her for months. Then he narrowed his eyes at me, and a smug grin tilted his lips. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable with how pleased he suddenlylooked.

“What?” I asked sharply, and the limo got quiet as Jason’s childhood friends stopped talking and turned to look at Ryanandme.

“Nothing.” His grin turned into a full-fledged, shit-eatinggrin.

“Bullshit, dude. What the fuck’s up with you? You went from being totally pissed at me to grinning like you know something I don’t. Don’t be a douche. Fill me in on thesecret.”

“Karma, man. She’s a bitch,” hechuckled.

“You’re gonna have to do better than that,” Igrowled.

“That’s the second time I’ve heard you say that hell would have to freeze over for you to fall for a woman. And now you’ve paired it with bragging about how you’d handle it better than wealldid.”

“Dude,” one of Jason’s friends drawled. “Talk about tempting fate. You’ve got to have brass balls to put shit like that out in the universe and think it’s not gonna come back to bite you intheass.”

Hockey players tended to be a superstitious lot, but I hadn’t expected the wealthy, preppy guys Jason grew up with to believe in stuff like karma. Not that I grew up poor—my parents did very well for themselves, but they weren’t in the same league as Jason’s family and their closestfriends.

“It is,” Ryan agreed. “And I’m going to enjoy every second of watching you squirm when ithappens.”

I spouted off some bullshit about being pissed off and how they were going to jinx me, but there was a little voice in my head that reminded me how I half hoped they were right. Although I gave my brother and friends a lot of shit over how insane they were about their women, a part of me was also jealous of what they’d found. I’d more than sewn my oats over the years—being a hockey player made it damn easy—but as I’d watched the guys closest to me fall one-by-one it’dgrownold.

I was willing to admit I was a jaded asshole when it came to the women I’d slept with in the past, but I knew true love and finding the one for you were real things. I’d grown up with the perfect example of it; my parents. I’d just never met a woman who’d even remotely tempted me to give her anything but a good time between the sheets. Then again, I hadn’t been looking in places where I’d find the kind of girl I’d want to take home to meet my mom. Not that I judged the puck bunnies I’d slept with since I hadn’t been any better than them when it came to sleeping around. But falling for a woman who’d also been with tons of guys in the league would be one hell of a thing to handle if my dad’s possessiveness over my mom was passed down to me the same way it’d been to my brother when it came toJosie.

We all took one last shot of vodka as we pulled up in front of a popular nightclub on thestrip.

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