Mister Wrong

  “Yesterday, before the wedding, I couldn’t find Jacob.” It was clear he was choosing his words carefully. I wasn’t focusing on what he was saying so much as what he wasn’t saying. “I figured something must have come up and I figured he’d show up soon, so instead of calling off the whole wedding because he’d been held up in traffic and forgotten to charge his phone, or whatever the hell happened, I just figured I’d step in temporarily.”

  My head was throbbing. There was an ache between my legs too, but God, I didn’t want to focus on that or what I’d been doing, repeatedly, to cause it. “You’d just step in when I was supposed to be promising forever to the man I was marrying?”

  “Looking back, I know I made the wrong choice,” he said, exhaling. “But in the moment, when that church was packed full of people and they were expecting to find a groom waiting for you at that altar in five minutes, that was the best idea I was capable of coming up with.”

  His voice sounded clearer, which meant he was standing closer. I could feel his closeness. In a way, I’d always been able to tell when Matt was near, but I supposed after last night, I was aware of his nearness for another reason.

  “But you didn’t just ‘stand in’ for Jacob at the ceremony.” The light breeze shifted into something stronger, pulling at the folds of my sheet.

  I heard Matt move closer. “I know. That’s how I planned it, but when Jacob didn’t show up and I couldn’t get ahold of him, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure when to tell you, or even what to tell you, so I waited. I figured by the time the reception was done, Jacob would have shown up. But when he didn’t, when I found out . . . I didn’t want to see you hurt. I knew Jacob wouldn’t want to see you hurt. I just wanted to protect you from any more heartache.”

  “And your idea of protecting me from pain was having me marry the wrong guy then go on my honeymoon with me and fuck me?” I had to pause long enough to take a breath. “That’s your definition of protecting me?”

  His sigh didn’t seem to end. “My best intentions went a little—a lot—off course. I didn’t stroll up to that altar yesterday thinking or hoping last night would unfold the way it did.”

  Every time either one of us mentioned anything about last night, my mind went there. As a result, my body reacted to the memories. Like right now, I could feel my nipples hardening as I remembered the way he’d moved inside me, the way he’d demanded I look into his eyes each time he made me come.

  I hated my body for reacting to him how it was. I hated him for being responsible for it.

  “Sorry if I have a hard time buying that. I’m not exactly in a giving-the-benefit-of-the-doubt type of mood.” Right then, the sun caught my wedding ring and blinded me. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it seemed pretty damn symbolic of something given my present situation.

  “You have every right to hate me—”

  “Damn right I do,” I snapped, twisting the ring around so the diamond couldn’t catch the light anymore.

  “I had no right to do what I did. Any of it,” he added, sounding ashamed for the first time.

  “Why, Matt? Why did you do it?” I tipped my head back so I could make out his outline. “Why did you really do it?” I needed to know. I needed to know if he’d done it because he’d been trying to help me, or if it was because he couldn’t help himself.

  “I already told you why.”

  “Yeah, and now I’m asking you to cut the shit and give me the real reason.”

  He was quiet for so long, I almost thought he was going to tell me. “I don’t see how me answering that will help either of us right now.”

  My heart stopped. I swore it stopped. What did he mean by that? What I hoped he did? Or something else?

  When I realized what I was hoping for, guilt washed over me so fast and heavy I felt like I was drowning in it. Jacob. He was the one I’d been in a relationship with for years. He was the one I’d said yes to marrying. He was the one whose name was on the marriage certificate we’d filed at the courthouse. He was the one who loved me and wanted me to be his wife.

  I couldn’t fight off the voice chiming in my head that kept asking me why he was gone and Matt was here if that was the truth.

  My breath came out all at once, like I’d been holding it forever. “Where’s Jacob?”

  He was quiet. His silence told me everything I needed to know. And nothing I wanted to acknowledge.

  “Matt?” Finally, I made eye contact with him.

  He was looking at me like he’d been expecting the question. “I don’t know.”

  A breath seeped past my lips. Matt had been covering for Jacob for their whole lives, as quick to protect his brother as he was me. His experience had made him a proficient liar, but I knew that. I knew he was lying. Or withholding the truth.

  What I didn’t know was how bad that truth he was keeping from me was.

  “Where is he?”

  “I—”

  “Yes, you do. You know where he is.” My gaze dropped, unable to hold his stare any longer. “Or who he’s with.”

  My voice had been so quiet, I didn’t think he’d heard me. As silent as those words had been, I wished I could take them back. I wished I could swallow them back down into the dark hole they’d crawled from, because thinking it was one thing, but acknowledging it made it real.

  Matt crouched behind me, keeping a careful distance when I tensed at his proximity to me. “If he’s with anyone else when he’s got you waiting for him, he’s a goddamned idiot.” He was trying to ease the tension, trying to sway my mood.

  “You’ve been calling him a goddamned Idiot since you were kids.” A sad smile formed when I accepted why Jacob hadn’t shown up for his wedding day.

  “Cora . . .” Matt’s hand lowered over my back, his familiar warmth seeping into my skin. But something else was spreading inside, winding deeper. It was new, a remnant of what had resulted from our union last night.

  I should have flinched away or slapped him or, hell, done a lot more, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. My life had just taken a direct flight to messed up, but for this one stolen moment, I was just going to pretend everything was fine. I was going to pretend that Matt had every right to touch me and I had every right to want him to touch me. Once this moment was done, I’d return to reality, but for right now . . . fuck off, reality.

  “Last night, when you told me . . .” My throat felt like it was closing in on itself, so I had to swallow. “When you said you . . .”

  I couldn’t get it out. For some reason, I couldn’t say those three words he’d uttered to me before, during, and after, each time, every time. Instead of torturing myself trying to get them out, I lifted my eyes to his. His eyes. Matt’s eyes. God, what had I been thinking? They were so different from Jacob’s. The emotions that tortured his were so different from the ones that toyed with Jacob’s.

  “Did you mean it?”

  His jaw ground, but he didn’t look away. He didn’t blink. His eyes stayed on mine. As he was opening his mouth, something chimed between us. Call it divine intervention . . . in the form of a phone call.

  “Shit. Sorry.” Matt blew out a breath and shook his head like he was trying to shake himself out of a spell. When he pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen, his expression went dark.

  “Who is it?” I asked, but I already knew.

  Matt lifted the screen so I could see. I was right.

  “What are you going to tell him?” That whimsical moment was gone, reality pouring over me.

  “What do you want me to tell him?” He hit the silence on his ringer, waiting for me to answer. “What happened last night . . . if you don’t want anyone to know, I swear I won’t tell a soul. I’ll take it to the grave. Just tell me what you want.” His voice got tighter with each word as he searched my face for any hint of what to do next.

  “Are you saying you’d be okay with lying to your own brother about the two of us sleeping together?” I scooted away from him, trying to ignore Jacob’s
second call coming in.

  “I’m saying I’d be okay with anything if it’s what you wanted.”

  When I wanted to cry from his words, I forced my eyes to narrow and my body to continue scooting away. “I want you to leave me alone. You had your chance to explain. You gave me your side of the story. Now leave me alone.” I shoved to my feet, adjusting the sheet so it was still covering me. “I don’t want you, Matt. I never have.”

  His face remained unaffected, but his eyes gave him away. The look in them made me feel like I was being ripped apart from the inside out. I was breaking him, one word at a time, and I hated myself more for what I was doing to Matt now than for how I’d betrayed Jacob last night.

  “I want Jacob.”

  In the end, they say it’s the lies we tell that define us more than the truths we admit. I already knew that. The lie I’d been telling for years had been defining me for just as long.

  I loved Jacob. Not Matt.

  That was the only version of myself I knew.

  Just when a guy thought he might finally have a shot at the girl, she looked him point-blank in the eyes and told him she never had and never would want him. She wanted his brother. The same guy who was too busy getting a piece of ass to show up for his own damn wedding day.

  Talk about a reality check. For a few minutes there when we’d been talking, I’d almost thought . . . I’d been foolish enough to hope . . . goddammit. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. Cora Matthews was my weakness. My addiction. Everything I wanted and everything I had to let go of.

  I’d known that for years, but I hadn’t accepted it until today. When I saw how broken she’d ended up as a result of what I’d done. When I realized how broken I was because of watching her fall in love with my brother.

  I had to let her go. It wasn’t a choice anymore, it was a requirement. Before we fucked up each other’s lives any more than we already had.

  Another call from Jacob popped up on my screen. If he wasn’t already en route, he was about to be. It would be better to take his call now than wait until we were within arm’s reach of each other and took out our emotions on each other’s faces via our fists.

  Cora had left a few minutes ago, having nothing else to say. She didn’t want me—she wanted him. What else was there?

  I didn’t say anything when I finally answered his call.

  I heard my brother suck in a breath. “Did you fuck her?”

  My hand curled around the phone. He’d missed the wedding. He’d missed the whole entire day because he’d been screwing some girl he’d met in a bar. And me having sex with Cora was the first thing on his mind?

  “You fucked her over enough all on your own.” I didn’t recognize my voice.

  From the moment of silence on the other end, I guessed my brother didn’t either. “You know what I mean, Matt.”

  Yeah, I did. And I wasn’t going to tell him. Not until Cora made up her mind. If she wanted to tell him what had happened between us last night, I’d support that. If she didn’t, I’d support that too. This wasn’t about what I wanted to tell Jacob or what he wanted to know; this was about what Cora needed.

  “Where were you?” I asked, rising from the crouched position I’d been in ever since she left. I couldn’t kneel while having this conversation with my brother.

  “None of your damn business where I was,” he fired back. “Who the hell are you to think you could just slide into my spot when I wasn’t looking?”

  “It wasn’t that you weren’t looking. You were fucking some tramp when you should have been exchanging vows with your fiancée.”

  There was only the briefest beat of silence. “You don’t know what I was doing. You don’t know what happened.”

  “Yes, I do. Because you’re you, and I’m me.” My jaw locked when I pictured Jacob with someone else on Cora’s and his wedding day. “Don’t try to lie to me. I’m not like her, happy to overlook your faults.”

  “No, you’re just happy to make your play for my girl when you saw the chance. You’ve been trying for years. You must have shit yourself when you saw your chance had finally arrived.” From the sound of his voice, Jacob was drunk.

  Trying to have a logical conversation with an illogical Jacob was a doomed endeavor.

  “Do me a favor and call me back when you’re sober. We can talk then.” My thumb was hovering above the end button when Jacob laughed.

  “I’ll do you one better by showing up and talking to your face in a few hours. How about that?” Jacob let me process that for a few moments. “My plane’s landing in St. Thomas at 3:25, so I’ll see you soon. We can ‘talk’ this whole thing out. Oh, do me a favor and let Cora know, would you? For some reason, she doesn’t seem to be answering her phone.” The tone in Jacob’s voice suggested exactly why she might not have been eager to answer his call.

  I started heading back toward the cabin, needing to find Cora. If Jacob was going to be here in mere hours, I needed to find out what her plan was. I needed her to tell me what she wanted to admit to Jacob, if anything. As it was, he already knew I’d posed as him for the wedding and reception, and he suspected that I’d kept with the theme into the wedding night.

  “Good, I think we could all benefit from a ‘talk.’ Cora has a few questions as to where her fiancé was yesterday when he was supposed to be at his wedding.” I gave him a moment to process that. “I have my suspicions, and so does she, but it will be nice to have it all cleared up once you get here.”

  “Matt—”

  “Oh, and those Ass Clowns you call friends might have let a few things slip about your whereabouts when we were chatting at the reception when, you know, they thought I was you.” I jogged down the beach, my emotions fueling my body.

  “Matt—”

  “Save it for later. When you have to look me in the eye and try to lie to me. When you have to look her in the eye and try to lie to her.” It probably wouldn’t make much of a difference to Jacob, because he’d been lying to Cora’s face for years now. From small white lies to the grand-scale version such as where he was on their wedding day.

  He might have been about to say something else, but I hung up. That phone conversation wasn’t going anywhere—he had a reason to be pissed with me, and I had a reason to be pissed at him. No matter what we worked out on the phone, we’d have to work it out all over again when we came face-to-face. That was Jacob’s and my way.

  As soon as the cabin came into view, I knew she wasn’t there. Whether it was that sixth sense or intuition, I knew I wouldn’t find Cora inside. It didn’t stop me from loping inside and checking though.

  Housekeeping was there, trying to untangle the cyclone of sheets and blankets from last night. I didn’t miss that Cora’s purse and bags were missing. Even her clothes that had wound up scattered on the floor last night had been picked up and removed. It was like she’d vanished. Like she’d never even been here. With housekeeping making the bed and righting lamps that had tumbled over and cleaning bathroom mirrors that had been streaked with handprints, it was as though I’d made up all of last night.

  God knew I’d pictured plenty of last nights in my head.

  “The young woman? Did you see her?” I asked the two ladies cleaning the cabin.

  They both avoided making eye contact, like they were afraid to answer me.

  Finally, the one still wrestling with the sheets nodded. “She was here to get her bags.”

  I was pacing in circles, feeling like the whole world was going mad with myself leading the charge. “Did she mention where she was going?” I guessed the airport, either to meet Jacob when he arrived later or to catch her own plane out of here.

  The woman focused extra intently on smoothing the sheet over the pillows.

  “Please?” I added, not above getting on my knees and begging the woman if she had any idea where Cora had run off to. “I need to find her.”

  When she took a look at my face, she sighed. I must have looked really desperate. Good to know my expre
ssion matched the way I felt.

  “The main hotel, sir,” the woman answered. “She said she was checking into a room in the hotel.”

  At the same time I exhaled with relief, my heart kind of seized. She hadn’t rushed to the airport as I’d expected, but she’d rushed to get out of this cabin and away from me. For her, last night had been a mistake, probably a moment she’d look back on and regret forever. But for me—pathetic, stupid me—last night had been the highlight of my existence, in this life and any and every other.

  “Thank you,” I said, fishing a couple of bills out of my wallet to leave as a tip before hurrying out the door.

  She might not have wanted to see me, but too bad. She couldn’t hide from this—she couldn’t hide from me. What happened happened, and she could hate me to her dying breath if it made things easier for her, but I needed to know how she wanted to deal with Jacob. I needed to know what she was going to tell him so I knew what to expect. So I knew if the moment I saw him, I should start running because a moving target was harder to hit, or if I just needed to play it cool as the dutiful brother who’d stepped in to save the day and was stepping down now that the golden brother was back.

  The path back to the hotel was a long one, but it didn’t take more than a few minutes with the way I was running. My journey took me past the beach, and something caught my eye. I broke to a stop the moment I saw her. Tropical storm approaching or not, the beach was crowded with people. There was a little tiki bar toward the back, where people in brightly colored swimsuits were sipping brightly colored drinks. A few lines of lounge chairs accompanied striped umbrellas, and the thin swath of empty beach left over was fair game for people to sprawl out with their beach towels and toys.

  In the middle of it all was Cora, in her basic white bikini, looking anything but ordinary. She was standing ankle-deep in the turquoise water, staring at the horizon like it was coming to get her. Dangling from one hand was a snorkel and in her other, a pair of fins. The water was calm and still, the storm having no effect on it yet, but she still surveyed the water like it was capable of growing fangs and coming for her.