“You know how Mom is, especially after Dad died. She likes to have us all here. She’s thrilled you’re home, though I can’t see why. It’s not like her favorite child hasn’t been around.”

  “Keep telling yourself you’re the favorite.” I scratch my beard, that I’d finally gotten around to shaving to an appropriate length. I’d let it grow a little rampant while I was in Mexico, letting it grow for weeks at a time before trimming it. Now that it’s back to the stubble I used to have, my face feels fucking strange without the extra hair.

  I stare out the window as we haven’t moved yet with all the midday LAX traffic and note a man and woman seemingly reunite for the first time. She drops her luggage and launches herself into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and I notice her shoulders move up and down and I wonder if she’s crying. She pulls away and then their lips connect and my heart begins to pound in my chest at the thought of having a similar reunion with Whitney.

  She’s fucking engaged. I ball my hands into fists. How did this happen? What the fuck do Kev and Miche think? I think to myself.

  “So, we’re just ignoring the elephant in the room?” I don’t respond because frankly I’m tired from traveling and don’t feel like dealing with Trey’s relentless line of questioning. “That the only reason you’re even home is because you got your panties in a twist about Whitney getting married? You’re not going to do anything stupid, right? I called Chloe and she says Whitney is excited.”

  I raise an eyebrow, knowing that this is a sure way to get the heat off me for now. “I didn’t know you were still talking to Chloe.” Chloe Monroe, Whitney’s older cousin, and my brother, had a relationship as complicated as mine and Whitney’s. Of course, it wasn’t a huge deal to anyone with there being only a nine-year age difference between them versus mine and Whitney’s over twenty year difference. Not to mention, no one was anyone’s parental figure so that fucking helps. They’d met at one of Michelle and Kevin’s holiday parties and proceeded to spend the next year and a half fucking without any kind of label which led to the age-old question from Chloe of “what are we?” to which my fuckboy of a brother at the time could not provide an answer.

  So, in typical fashion, she’d moved on and now it seems he’s still pining over her although claims he’s over it. Tale as old as time.

  “We talk from time to time but I called her yesterday when you got all territorial and possessive on the phone about Whitney to figure out if you guys were still talking and you just hadn’t told me.”

  “You fucking told her you talked to me?” I groan, knowing that it’s definitely gotten back to Whitney by now that I was asking about her.

  “No, dick,” he says as he merges onto the freeway after getting through the last of the airport traffic. “I kept it nonchalant. I said the same thing I said to you. I didn’t realize it was that serious. Apparently, no one did and the guy proposing was kind of a shock to everyone, including Whitney.” I feel his gaze trying to read my expression, but I try my best to appear unfazed by the news. “I can hear your thoughts bro, she’s happy. It took her a year to get over you.”

  “And then somehow met someone and is engaged two years later?” My anger rises again at the thought of anyone touching her. Kissing her. Fuck. I pinch the bridge of my nose, willing the headache away that I feel coming on and wishing I hadn’t had two Scotch on the rocks on the plane. “I need to see for myself that she’s happy.”

  I stare out the window as my thoughts drift back to the last time I returned home after being gone for a little over a year. The first time I saw Whitney since she turned eighteen and the first time, I saw her as a woman.

  Five Years Ago:

  After stopping by to see my mother, I went straight to Kevin and Michelle’s for dinner. Michelle was easily the best cook I knew and she always prepared one of my favorite meals whenever I returned. I walk into the house without so much as a knock and I’m hit with the smell of lasagna. Fuck. Yes.

  “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” Michelle comes bounding down the stairs and tackles me and wraps her arms around me tightly. “We missed you so much! How are you? You’ve lost weight.” She pinches my arm. “Were you not eating enough? I’ll send more food next time. You look good though! Except this hair. You need a haircut.” She pulls at my hair as she’s firing off her questions and comments a mile a minute in true Michelle Monroe fashion. “KEVIN!” she screeches before pushing her glasses up into her blonde hair. “Mason and Whitney aren’t here yet but they should be home shortly,” she informs me.

  “Mason is coming home?” Their oldest child, Mason was in his final semester at UCLA and from what I’ve seen from social media and more than a few panicked texts regarding a flavor of the week’s missed period, I know that he’s had more than his share of fun so I am surprised that he’d miss out on one of his last weekends at college just to come home to see me.

  “Of course. Well, I think just for tonight and he’s driving back in the morning. Whitney is at graduation practice but she should be home soon.” That was one of the reasons I’d opted to come home now, because both of my godchildren were graduating from college and high school and I wouldn’t have missed either for the world.

  “You left your mom’s house like an hour ago. What, did you walk here?” Kevin says as he moves up the stairs from his mancave in the basement. It’s crazy that it looks as if Michelle hasn’t aged and yet Kevin looks older every time I see him. “You can thank Whitney Monroe for that.” I remember him saying when I’d made a joke about starting to dye his hair. “Every single one of my gray hairs comes from having a daughter.”

  “I stopped at home first, give me a break.” I chuckle as he pulls me in for a hug.

  “After all this time, he’s still clingier with you than he is with me.” Michelle rolls her eyes and walks toward the kitchen leaving me with my best friend.

  About an hour after I’d arrived, I hear the front door open and the sound of heels against the hardwood floors of the foyer. I smile, preparing for Whitney to make her entrance and I stand to give her a hug.

  “I would know that car in the driveway anywhere,” I hear her familiar voice and then she enters the room.

  I mean, I think it’s Whitney.

  My eyes widen and for a second, I wonder if this is a friend of Whitney’s because unlike the voice, this face and body are not familiar. “JP!!” she squeals, and it takes less than a second until she’s in my arms. “I can’t believe you’re here! I’ve missed you so much!”

  I am glad that Kevin and Michelle aren’t in the room at the moment because I’m unable to hide my absolute shock that this woman currently pressed up against me is my goddaughter. I pull back and I am at a loss for words. Her braces are gone, leaving perfect blindingly white teeth. Her strawberry blonde hair that she used to keep pin straight was full of volume that fell around her shoulders in dark mahogany luscious waves. Her waist was slim but her hips were full and just below her shoulders sat the perkiest, full breasts I’d ever seen on a woman. I take a step back, dropping my hands from her shoulder as if I’ve been burned. I mean, maybe I had; I have to be in hell for looking at Whitney this way. For even noticing her breasts or the slope of her hips or picturing what she’d look like from behind.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Her head tilts to the side and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she knew exactly what I was thinking at this very moment and why I was looking at her with a look of complete and utter shock and maybe… intrigue.

  “You… you just look so grown up.” I try my best to come up with something more eloquent but the words get caught in my throat. I’m struggling to find words other than: “Where did those come from?” as I point at her chest.

  She bites her bottom lip and scrunches her nose in a way I’m sure I’ve seen her do a thousand times and yet this time makes my blood begin to heat in my veins. Heat… and rush south. FUCK. “A lot can happen in a year.” She lets out a sigh before tucking a hair behind her ear. “I mean, I am eighteen now.” She winks, actually fucking winks at me before turning around and calling for her mother leaving me with a scent that I could only equate with pure sex.

  I shift in my seat, trying my best to keep my cock from rising as I remember sitting through the most painfully awkward dinner with Kevin, Michelle, Mason and the innocent girl who used to be my goddaughter. I was hyper aware of every move she made, every time she spoke, every time those bright brown eyes found mine across the dinner table.

  “This is going to be a fucking shitshow,” Trey mumbles under his breath breaking my thoughts of that night I decided to blow up my entire life. “Am I taking you home first? Or we going to Mom’s?”

  I stare down at the text message from my older brother, Mason wishing that the words would morph into something else. Literally anything else. Once upon a time they were my favorite words and ones I looked forward to hearing but now it just gave me a feeling that a tornado was about to rip apart my life.

  Mason: Mom just called, Jacob just showed up at the house. They want us to come over tonight for a small get together.

  Mason: Did you know he was coming?

  Now I realize why Mom called me earlier. I didn’t answer because I’ve had to limit her to two phone calls a day because ever since I got engaged, she’s felt the need to call me every hour on the hour with ideas for the wedding.

  Me: Not a clue.

  Mason: I guess your good news travels fast.

  Me: Fuck off.

  Mason was four years older than me and yet we were still pretty close growing up and I’d probably call him my best friend now. We rarely argued even when we were younger and he’s always been one person I knew I could always depend on. He was never judgmental and only offered his opinions when they were solicited. He was overprotective without being overbearing and was easily the one person I’d call if I ever needed help burying a body.

  I might just have to call in that favor tonight.

  When Jacob ended things and left for Mexico, I tried my best to keep it in, but after two weeks, one night I broke down and called Mason hysterically after too much tequila and confessed everything.

  His response? “I knew it.” He then proceeded to let me cry for the next four and a half hours. Okay, weeks.

  Fine, months. Whatever.

  My phone begins to ring in my hand and I know it’s him without even looking. “I’m not going,” I say as I answer the phone. I lean against the island in Parker’s pristine all white kitchen wondering if I should fix myself a drink to calm my nerves.

  “So, you’re just going to avoid him… forever?”

  “No, but it’s going to be on my terms how I decide to see him and it’s not going to be alone and without Parker.” My fiancé was currently out of town on business in New York and wouldn’t be back for almost a week. Normally, I would go with him but I was in my first year of law school and it just so happened to be my midterms this week and jet setting across the country with my fiancé wasn’t exactly an excuse to get me out of my exams plus I had a paper due Monday.

  “Why? Do you not trust yourself?” Mason asks and part of me thinks he’s being a smartass, but the rational part of me knows that he’s genuinely curious if the feelings are still there. If there was still a spike in my heart rate at the thought of seeing him tonight. If I wasn’t already going through my closet to find the sexiest dress I had that didn’t appear that I was trying too hard, but actually that I didn’t give a fuck. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. I begin chanting to myself.

  Clearly the answer is no to all of these questions.

  “It’s not that, I just… it’s going to be awkward.” I hadn’t seen or talked to him since I left his house the day he broke up with me. He’d left for Mexico the next day and this was the first time he’d been home in three years. I’d texted him a few times and called him even more during the first month post breakup when I’d had too much to drink but he never answered.

  “That’s fair. Do you really think he’s here because he heard about you and Parker?” It’s hard to say. I got engaged a month ago and the engagement party invitations went out earlier this week. But there is no way that my parents would have waited until he got the invitation to tell him. I would be surprised if they hadn’t called him the night I got engaged. My dad and JP told each other literally everything. Their bromance is actually kind of cute even after all these years.

  “Part of me thinks yes, but do you really think Mom and Dad didn’t tell him before now? If that were the case, wouldn’t he have come home a month ago?” I know he’s not on social media anymore, I remember the exact day he deleted everything about two months after we’d broken up. I spiraled even further after that. I liked having a little bit of a connection to him and he severed that without so much as a reason or warning. One day he had a Facebook and Instagram and the next both were gone. I’d been stalking him almost hourly at that point, so I guess he’d done me a favor but it had hurt like hell to just be completely cut off from him. The only things I learned was through my parents here and there when they’d mention that they had talked to him and it took everything out of me not to go crazy with questioning whenever his name came up.

  “Maybe it’s best if you just rip the Band-Aid off. What can really happen with Mom and Dad around and whoever the fuck else they invited over. Probably half the neighborhood. You’ll be safe from any awkward interactions or conversations,” he says and I make my way out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the bedroom I share with my fiancé. Parker was eight years older than me and there were definitely times that I felt our age gap. Like the fact that he owns his own house, invests in the stock market and knows the difference between an IRA and a 401k. (I think he has both.) He was in a much different phase in his life but I never felt like he treated me like I was that much younger. There could be an air of condescension in age gap relationships sometimes without even trying to and I never felt that with Parker.

  Unlike with Jacob who told me that I’d understand why we couldn’t be together when I got older.

  As if love was something I didn’t understand at nineteen.

  I push those thoughts out of my head as I stare into my closet wondering what I should wear tonight knowing that I was going to see Jacob Price tonight for the first time since I was sobbing into his arms begging him not to break us. Break me. The humiliation washes over me for the millionth time.

  “Fine. But you better not leave my side, Mase, I mean it.” I’m not sure if Jacob knows that Mason knows about our affair, but I do know that Mason could become a little less polite about Jacob’s presence and his intentions especially after a few drinks.

  “I got you. Mom says be there around eight.”

  I’m just getting out of the shower when my doorbell begins ringing nonstop like someone is pressing it over and over again. “What the fuck?” I yell, wondering who in God’s name is showing up to my house unannounced and ringing my doorbell like it’s an emergency. I look down at my phone and roll my eyes when I see I have three missed calls from Chloe. I move swiftly down the stairs, keeping the towel wrapped around me tightly before I open the door. “Seriously?”

  “Jesus, can’t you hear?” Chloe steps in with a bottle of champagne in one hand and her leather jacket and clutch tucked under her other arm.

  Her shoulder-length blonde hair had that sexy tousled look like she’d just rolled out of bed and as usual she had on a full face of makeup complete with lashes and bright red lipstick. She was wearing a two-piece cropped black short-sleeved top and a black skirt that fell to just below her knees with her favorite open toe Givenchy heels that wrap around the ankle. Which leads me to believe that her and Mason are probably trying to go into the city later. Count me in. The less I’m around Jacob the better.

  “I was in the shower and you didn’t tell me you were coming over.” I narrow my eyes and close the door behind her as she makes her way into the kitchen. “Pour me a glass, I’m going to go put on a bra and some underwear,” I say as I run up the stairs. I pull on a pair of white panties and a matching strapless lace bra before pulling my hair out of the towel. I plan to let it air dry a little before diffusing it to give my hair some natural beach waves so I part my hair and let it fall around my shoulders.

  My hair is longer than the last time he saw me. I wonder if he’ll notice. The wayward thought sneaks into my head and I shake it, trying my best to rid it from my brain.

  No. I let out a breath. Whitney, no. Get this out of your head. You’re with Parker. You’re happy. He’s kind and sweet and takes care of you. He fixed what Jacob broke. You cannot do this.

  Do not let “The Notebook” romanticize it. Allie was still a cheater and her fiancé deserved better.

  “I thought you might need a little liquid courage for this.” Chloe hands me the champagne flute full of bubbles and I resist the urge to down it all in one gulp knowing that if I’m drunk when I get to my parents’ house, it will make this situation worse. “Did you honestly think you were going to be able to avoid JP forever?”

  “Jacob,” I respond without thinking. I was the only person that called him JP and I used to be very territorial about that nickname. Evidently, I still am.

  She rolls her eyes. “Yes, I forgot that’s your special name but you know what I’m saying, Whit. You knew this was inevitable. You’re getting married and he’s your parent’s best friend.”

  I shut my eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. “I know, and I did expect it. I guess I wasn’t expecting it this soon and while Parker was out of town.”

  She cocks an eyebrow at me and gives me a wicked grin. “Are you worried something might… like happen between you two?”

  My eyes widen. “No!” I shriek.

  “Okay ow.” She winces. “And liar.” She blinks her eyes several times before sitting her drink down on my nightstand and hopping on my bed.