Page 2 of Commitment Issues
“You’re right, at least when it comes to the Elliot Hendricks everybody sees.ThatElliot Hendricks, successful CEO blah, blah, blah, knows exactly who he is and where he’s going. Buthe’snot the Elliot Hendricks I’m talking about.”
“Then what on earthareyou talking about? Come on, out with it and stop being so bloody cryptic.” I lock my gaze to his, meeting the challenge I see in his green eyes.
“I can’t let you go to the wedding—”
“Christ, James. Not this again.” The words explode from me, they’re loud and exasperated, and some nearby fellow customers turn and stare. I lower my voice. “Please. For the last time, I amnotletting Andrew and—”
“On your own.” James cuts across me.
“Well, I am,” I snap. “I’ll be going on my own, doing my duty by my friends, because the man I was supposed to be going with will no longer be going with me.” I spit the words out, every one of them ripping my throat to shreds.
Because they hurt.
I keep telling myself the break-up has been for the best, that Gavin and I had been drifting apart, that we would only damage each other if we stayed together. Finding the man I’d loved in bed — in our bed — with a couple of pick ups had been the last straw. I’d forgiven him so many times over the years, but this time had been different, because this time he hadn’t wanted to be forgiven. By the following day, Gavin had gone, leaving a decade-long relationship behind him which, despite everything, I’d told myself was for forever. That had been three months ago, but it felt like three minutes as much as it felt like three years.
“But he’ll be there. You’ll be thrust into his company, with no escape. Your ex, Elliot. Yourex-fiancé, for Christ’s sake,will be there. And that’s something you shouldn’t have to face alone.”
I stiffen. “You don’t think I can face Gavin? You think I’m going to break down and beg him to come back to me, that I can’t hold my head high? After everything he did? Do you really think I’d want him back?”
James says nothing, and anger sears through me, a sudden burning flash, but it dies away just as quickly. Because in those first days after Gavin left, I’d picked up my phone so many times, ready to abase myself. But my pride, battered though it’d been, had been just about strong enough to still my hand.
“I don’t doubt you can face him, the duplicitous, cheating little shit that he is. I just don’t want you facing him alone,” James’ voice is as calm and level as his gaze.
“I won’t be alone. I’ll be part of a wedding party, remember. Whatever there is, or isn’t, between us will be tucked away out of sight. We’ll be civil, and polite, and nice as pie as we behave like the reasonable adults we are. Andrew and Marcus are his friends as much as mine, and neither of us wants our relationship impinging on their day.”
They’re good words, but I’m not sure I believe half of them.
When the world had split into the hashtags Team Elliot and Team Gavin, Andrew and Marcus had done their best to stay neutral, but the bare truth was, Marcus had been Gavin’s friend years before Gavin and I had met, and the same had been for me and Andrew.
A stomach crashing thought occurs to me…
No, he can’t be…
“You’re not offering to come with me as my guest, are you?”
Christ, that really would be a shit show. James and Andrew have never been friends, disliking each other on sight. We’d all attended the same school and university and I was the link between them, and it was for my sake they tolerated each other. But that uneasy truce has been well and truly blown apart.
James is persona non grata in Andrew’s eyes now, and always will be. There’s no way he’ll be allowed within a fifty mile radius of the wedding. And no wonder, as it has more than a little to do with James and Marcus being found in a rather messy-looking drunken snog at a summer party we’d all attended, a good three or four years back. Andrew had been furious and had threatened to give James a kicking, and it’d taken three of us to stop Andrew doing just that. It’d all blown over, but it gave Andrew the excuse to cut James out of his life for good.
James snorts. “Andrew would have my balls ripped off, stuffed, and hung from the ceiling. I wouldn’t go anywhere near their wedding. And nor should you, but if you tediously insist on doing so, then I forbid you to go alone.”
“You—forbid?”
He waves my words away as though they’re nothing more than midges.
“If you insist on going, you need to do it in style. And that includes giving Gavin,” he says, the name sounding like acid on his tongue, “the two fingered salute, and there’s only one way to do that.”
“And that’s how?” I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath asking, because the creeping sensation deep in my stomach is all the warning I need that something’s coming that I don’t want to hear. I wait for the bombshell to drop, and it doesn’t.
“Ah,” he says, his smile wide and his voice overly cheery. “Here come our drinks.”
