Page 6 of My One
“Not imposing. It will be fun having a bigger group.”
“Okay.” I grinned wider. We all used the restroom and freshened up before following our new friend to a red leather booth.
“Ladies, I made some new friends,” Joss stated, and three other women looked up.
I smiled. “Hi. I’m Nicole, and this is Brooke, Kym, and Jenna.”
“The bride-to-be is Cat,” Joss introduced us. “This is Autumn, and this is the very pregnant Tessa.”
We all waved awkwardly, and then somehow managed to fit into the moon shaped booth. “When are you getting married?” I asked Cat.
She smiled. “Next week. You?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Congrats.” She reached for a bottle of vodka on the table. “Let’s do a shot to celebrate.”
I grinned. “Sounds good.”
“Do you live in Vegas or just here to get married?” Autumn asked me as Cat poured us the shots.
“Brooke and I live in New York, and Jenna and Kym live in Boston.”
“East coasters? I used to live in D.C.,” Joss stated.
“And Florida. We grew up together in Miami.” Cat slid each of us a shot of the clear liquid.
“I’m born and raised here in Sin City, and this one”—Autumn hooked her thumb toward Tessa—“is from California.”
“How do you know each other if you’re all from different places?” Brooke asked.
Our new friends looked at each other and smirked. Autumn raised her shot glass. “Let’s take our shots and then I’ll tell you how all of us—except Cat—got the male escorts of Saddles & Racks to commit.”
Icouldn’t believe I was getting married. You’d think that after watching my best friend go through a nasty divorce, I’d be a bachelor my entire life, scared of going down the same path. But I’d always wanted to find the one who made me happy and accepted me for me and not for my looks, and I’d found the perfect woman to marry. Getting divorced wasn’t in my thoughts. Nicole had been my light in the darkness even when we were going through our miscarriage. We were both depressed for months after we found out she lost the baby. But every time I looked at her, I knew she was my one and only—the one who would bring me happiness. Nicole was the one I wanted to spend forever with. Hell, she was exactly the woman I was looking for. She was the reason why I’d booked the singles cruise that had changed my and Easton’s lives.
I smiled to myself as I ironed my button-up, long-sleeved, blue shirt. Who would have thought that getting Easton to go on a singles cruise with me would lead that man, who had no intention of ever settling down again, to find the perfect woman—a woman who had caused his heart to open again? We sure the hell hadn’t. But now, he was engaged too.
“What are you smiling about?” Easton asked, shrugging on his own button-up, long-sleeved shirt. His was black, though.
I glanced up at him and then back down to the ironing board. “Who would have thought that the next time we would share a room together, I’d be getting married?”
He chuckled slightly. “At least we have bigger beds in this room.”
“Yeah.” My grin widened as I remembered the twin beds on the cruise. When Nicole and I had gone to the tiny room, we’d had to push the beds together. Of course, we fell through them because we were going at it hard, which also made the condom break.
And then she got pregnant.
Would we still be getting married if she were pregnant, or would we have waited until after the baby was born?Who knew?What I did know was that I couldn’t wait to tell her in front of our friends and family that I was going to love her until my last breath. However, I didn’t expect my parents to be there. I’d called and left my mother a voicemail message, but she’d never returned my call. She didn’t even send a fucking pigeon to tell me that they were coming to see their one and only son get married.
I glanced up to see Easton staring at me. “What the fuck are you frowning about now?” he asked.
I shrugged and then set the iron right side up. “My parents never called me back.” I grabbed my shirt off the ironing board. “I was hoping they’d at least come to my fucking wedding.”
“They still might.”
My gaze met Easton’s as I stared into the full-length mirror, buttoning my shirt. “They won’t.” I never understood why my parents hated me so much. Looking back, I was a good kid. I even got a scholarship to Florida State for baseball and graduated with a business degree. My father wanted me to turn pro, but that was never inmycards because I didn’t want that life, and over the years, we slowly lost touch. It had been over five years since I’d seen them, and that was the night Easton and I opened Halo.
Over the car horns and the hustle and bustle of New York City, I heard my heart pounding in my chest. I wasn’t sure why I was nervous. Tonight was our soft opening for Halo, and only our friends and family were coming. But Easton and I had put everything into this bar, and we needed to succeed. I’d invested more money than Easton, but I was okay with that because he had to take care of his daughter, Cheyenne, and needed all the extra money he could get. I also knew that in time, he’d pay me back. We’d been friends since we could talk, and I trusted him with my life.
