“It’s perfect timing. We were just saying you need to visit your dad. This is fate talking to you, telling you to do this.”

  “I think it’s mostly you and Ben telling me that.”

  “I was more convincing though. You gotta give me that.”

  He grinned. “You were very convincing. In fact, I think we need to argue about this at home.”

  I felt my cheeks burn as my blood flowed hot through my veins. “We’ll have a very heated discussion.”

  “The neighbors will complain.”

  “Yours or mine.”

  He hesitated, his face clouding. “Do you think it’s time to do something about that?”

  “Not much we can do about the neighbors besides move.”

  “That’s what I mean. Let’s move. You leave your place, I’m dying to leave mine, and we’ll move in together.”

  My boiling blood turned tepid. “You want to get a place together?”

  “I want to buy a house together.”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. Shaken from this bombshell. The man who couldn’t commit to anything or anyone had put a ring on my finger only a week ago, broken all his boundaries to make love to me like a dying man devouring his last meal, and now he wanted to buy a house with me.

  I was going to get vertigo from the myriad of changes happening in my world.

  And then my phone rang.

  “Hello?” I answered weakly, still staring at Kellen.

  He stared steadily back. He was serious. He meant it. He wanted this. And I knew I wanted it too.

  I smiled at him and when he smiled back I couldn’t imagine a better feeling than being there with him.

  “Jenna!”

  “Laney,” I blurted, snapping to attention. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  I was met with silence and immediately my smile began to fade. I knew she was there. I could hear her on the other end, her breathing soft and a little erratic.

  “What’s wrong?” I nudged her gently.

  She sniffled and forced a shaky laugh. “Nothing. Oh my God, nothing. How are you? How was Ireland?”

  “You’re crying.”

  “It’s nothing,” she insisted, her voice growing loud and almost angry in volume, but there was a desperation to it. She was struggling for bravado and coming up short. “How’s Dickbag? Is he good? Did he meet his family?”

  “Laney. What is it?”

  She paused, her breath hiccupping over the line before going silent, but when she broke that silence she didn’t just break it. She shattered it.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Kellen

  I knocked on the door to the Monroe mansion, tugging at my tie and trying to quickly straighten my appearance. That alone felt weird – knocking on the door of a house that I had a key to. That I’d let myself into like I lived there for the better part of a decade. But today was the first time I was going inside since I’d walked out over a year ago when Laney and I broke up for the final time.

  This would be the second of Laney’s engagement parties that I’d been forced into a suit for. The first had been my own, one of the biggest mistakes of my life to date, and now this one. Jenna and I hadn’t met the guy Laney was marrying. All I knew about him was that he worked at her dad’s law firm, they’d been dating for over six months, and he’d knocked her up. Now three weeks after finding out she was pregnant Laney was in a rush to get married before she started to show because appearances mattered to her more than anything else. It made me wonder about the guy. If he was rich and good looking she would have been flaunting him around town, shoving him in everyone’s face the way she used to do with me. Either he was poor or ugly or both, but whatever her reasons for hiding him she had to get over them and fast. We were meeting the unlucky guy tonight.

  The fact that I was invited at all was shocking. And weird. I wish she had said I wasn’t allowed, but according to Jenna she really did seem to be over her anger about Jenna and I dating. She knew we were engaged and while she’d asked us to postpone announcing ours until she could throw her party and celebrate hers, she didn’t have a problem with it. Laney was getting married so now everyone was allowed to get married. She was in love so we all should be. She was moving forward at full speed and she was taking all of us with her.

  It was imperialist bullshit.

  It was pure Laney.

  Jenna opened the door, her face flushed and her eyes scanning my appearance.

  “You’re late,” she scolded mildly, reaching for my tie.

  “I’m good, how are you?”

  She laughed. “I’m good, Kellen. How are you?”

  “Uncomfortable.”

  “Join the club.”

  I looked her over as she moved from my tie to my suit jacket, flattening the lapels. Her hair was piled high on her head, showing off her long neck and small, dangling earrings. They were basic – black stones instead of diamonds that matched the long, thin strand of stones around her neck that hung over her dark gray dress. It was modest, simple. I knew immediately that it was her mom’s influence, but no matter how much Karen had undoubtedly pushed for her to cover up, Jenna was sleeveless. Her tattoos were bursting with life over her skin, set off by the gray color of the dress. She was a walking work of art.

  “You look beautiful,” I told her deeply.

  She paused to smile at me. “Thank you. So do you.”

  “Are you really okay?”

  “More or less. I’m tired. I’ve been busy.”

  “Planning a wedding isn’t easy.”

  “It could be.”

  “Not this one.”

  She scrunched her nose. “No. Not this one. And I’m sorry about missing the match today. That sucked, but we got stuck at the caterers and there was no escaping.”

  “No, it’s fine. It was a lock. Nothing more than sparring.”

  “Two down, one to go.”

  “Yay,” I cheered unenthusiastically.

  Jenna yanked on my tie playfully. “Brighten up, would you? It’s a party.”

  “One more win and I’ll be back in Vegas sharing air with my shitbox dad. I’m not celebrating that. That or this shotgun wedding.”

  “Well,” Jenna sighed, pushing the door closed behind me, “this should be fun.”

  I grabbed her around the waist as she went to walk past me and pulled her close. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I’ll be good. I promise.”

  “You said that in Ireland.”

  “And I delivered.”

  “No, you didn’t. You bitched out your grandma.”

  I frowned. “Not my grandma and how did you know that?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Sorcha.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Maybe. Know-it-all.”

  I let her go, stepping back to stuff my hands in my pants pockets. It would wrinkle the suit but I did not give one solid shit about it. “I didn’t bitch her out. I told her in no uncertain terms that I didn’t need her advice.”

  “Well, if that was your version of being good maybe you could try a different angle today.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Not talking at all would probably be best.”

  I stepped around her toward the kitchen. “Drinking would be better.”

  “One beer.”

  I laughed. “That’s cute. Where are you hiding it?”

  “Hiding what?” she asked innocently.

  I turned in the pristine, white kitchen covered in hors d'oeuvres trays and champagne bottles. “The tequila.”

  “Kellen,” she warned ominously, “no.”

  “Jenna, yes.”

  “You plan on getting wasted at all of Laney’s engagements?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  I checked the entrance to the kitchen to make sure we were alone. I could hear voices in the other room, music playing and people laughing. The party was in full swing and out there somewhere was her sister, my ex, her new boyfriend, and about thirty stuffy friends of their parents’ who would look down on her and her tattoos and me for being me because they all knew. Everyone knew exactly what had happened between us and there was no way in hell that it wasn’t going to be one of the most awkward afternoons of both of our lives.

  “Do you really want to go out there and face that mess without a little help from Jose Cuervo?” I whispered.

  She wavered. I saw it in her eyes. In the shift of her eyes that told me where the bottle was but I waited. I let her commit to it because I knew she would. I knew neither of us wanted to be here because we were the black sheep. The ugly stepsisters at Cinderella’s ball and wouldn’t it all be so much sweeter, run so much smoother on the afterburn of a shot of the hard stuff.

  “Behind the bread maker,” Jenna finally relented, heading for the refrigerator. “Grab a knife while you’re over there. I’ll get a lime.”

  Less than a minute later and we were clinking shot glasses, licking salt off each other’s wrist, and kicking back the drink. It was bad. It wasn’t the good stuff after all. It was some off brand thing she probably grabbed in a hurry during one of her million errands she was running with Laney every day. I didn’t complain though. I handed her a slice of lime, took one of my own, and smiled at her as we sucked them dry.

  “Reminds me of Mexico,” she choked out.

  “Spring Break?”

  She nodded, her face still pinched from the bad booze and the tart of the lime. “That was my first tequila shot.”

  “You learned from the best.”

  “You’re a terrible influence. I was so hung over the next day I couldn’t even eat.”

  “That was Laney’s fault,” I reminded her. “I cut you off. Laney snuck you drinks behind my back for another hour.”

  She smiled faintly. “I forgot about that. Yeah. You yelled at her when you realized what she was doing. Then you carried me back to the hotel.”

  I snorted. “I had to. You couldn’t walk. Sam was carrying your shoes because you kept losing them.”

  “You were so angry at Laney.”

  “I knew you were going to hurt in the morning. I was pissed.”

  She smiled at me again, soft and affectionate. Not romantic or meaningful, just loving. Tender in a way that thanked me without words, which was good because it didn’t need to be said. Even back then I’d have done anything for her. She was my friend. She was my girl. Always.

  “I need to ask your advice,” I told her seriously.

  “What’s up?”

  I cleared my throat, again checking the door of the kitchen. We were in the clear. “I got offered a job.”

  Her eyes lit up with excitement. “Did you really? Where?”

  “Hermosa Beach.”

  “The ones who brought you in to check it out and then dropped off the face of the planet?”

  “Yeah. Apparently the guy they lost talked about coming back. He said he was good to go, that he missed the job, so they gave him another shot. Washed out again.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Couldn’t take the pressure I guess. They were sketchy on the details, but the guy I talked to—“

  “Baxter?”

  I smiled, amazed she remembered. “Yeah, Baxter. He said they wanted me if I was ready to go full time.”

  “And you told him hell yes, right?”

  “No. I told him I needed to talk to you first.”

  “Oh.” She closed her mouth sharply. “Really?”

  “Yeah. This is the rest of my life, Jen. This is the career I want, but not if you’re not okay with it. I know it scares you.”

  She nodded her head, her eyes falling to the floor. “It does.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “I think you should do it,” she answered immediately. “It makes you happy. You love it, and I don’t want to stop you from that.”

  “But if you’re gonna be—“

  “I’d be more afraid of you going back to Zombie Kellen if you weren’t doing something you love,” she interrupted. “I like this Kellen. I love this Kellen.”

  I nodded slowly. “I do too.”

  She smiled. “You’re Ireland Kellen when you’re fighting fires. You’re content and calm. It’s good to see.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “Then you need to do it. Whatever you need, I’ll be with you. I’m on your side.”

  “Even if I go crazy and agree to open a gym with Callum?”

  “Ha,” she laughed, stepping into my space. Into my arms. “You’d never go that crazy.”

  “He keeps asking.”

  “Because he’s relentless. It’s how he got Sam to go out with him.”

  “How is that still going on?”

  “She’s lonely and broken hearted and he’s funny. She needs a guy like him for now.” Jenna cocked her head at me. “What? What’s that look?”

  “What look?”

  “You look worried. It’s weird. You do angry and you do confused but you don’t really do worried.”

  I settled back against the counter, holding her to me. “I don’t know. I think he’s taking it more seriously than being fun for her.”

  “I hope not because that’s all he is. She still misses Carter.”

  “Hmm,” I hummed.

  “You gonna warn him about that?”

  “No. Are you going to warn her he’s getting serious?”

  “Not my business.”

  “Not mine either.” I looked beyond her to the party waiting for us. The crowd of people dying to hate us to our faces. “I think we’re the wrong people to go to for relationship advice.”

  “Amen,” she laughed. She stepped out of my embrace and nodded toward the tequila. “Hide that bottle, would you? We might need it later.”

  “No one’s going to steal that shit, Jen.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I was desperate, okay?”

  “So was I.” I tucked it back in its hiding spot, out of sight.

  She straightened her dress, the soft fabric hugging her body in ways that made me burn deeper than the tequila. “You ready for this?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  We left the kitchen together, side by side. A united front, like soldiers going to war.

  First step out of that kitchen and we triggered a land mine.

  Laney was there, her back to us and a suit at her side. They turned together to face us, all smiles and glasses of wine that must have been cider for Laney. Her face faltered when she saw me. Her brow lowered, her eyes darkened, and I worried for one brief moment that she’d throw her drink in my face.

  But this was her party, her engagement party, and there was no way she was going to ruin it with feelings.

  “Jenna, Kellen,” she said warmly, my name sounding brittle on her tongue. “You’re finally here. We worried you wouldn’t make it.”

  “I had a fight,” I explained.

  She grinned. “Don’t you always.”

  “You’re a boxer, aren’t you?” the guy asked.

  He was just an inch or two shorter than me, his hair a slightly darker brown. His eyes were almost the exact same color as his hair, big and puppy doggish. His smile was genuine, though, and his tone was friendly. Not fake or forced. Natural and real.

  “I am, yeah. Recreationally.”

  “Me too. Mortal Combat. I have thumbs of fury.”

  I smiled. “We’ll have to play sometime.”

  “I’d like that, definitely.” He shook his head, his smile broadening. “Sorry, I’m being rude. My name is Max. It’s nice to meet you.”

  I slowly took the hand offered to me, a dull hum in my ears. “What did you say your name is?”

  “Why do you need to know his name?” Laney’s voice echoed in my ear. “It won’t change anything.”

  “Max.”

  “I know,” my own voice answered, almost drowned out by the swish of the wiper blades over the windshield. The splash of rainwater under the tires of the cab.

  “Then why?” Laney insisted.

  “Maxwell?” I clarified, feeling dizzy.

  He laughed. “Only to my mom.”

  “It’s an old family name. They came over on the Mayflower,” Laney supplied proudly. Her voice was confident but her eyes were tight and telling. Just the way they’d been that night in New York.

  “You’re right,” I told her, looking out the window into the rain. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s the way my grandma tells it, anyway,” Max countered with another smile. The guy was full of them. “She’s from New York originally and out there if you’re not a Kennedy or a Vanderbilt you better have someone in your family tree who contracted scurvy coming over on the Mayflower.”

  “Here you have to be a Kardashian,” Jenna told him.

  “I think I’d rather have scurvy.”

  They laughed, all three of them, and I wanted to join them but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I couldn’t escape the vibration in my veins or the voices in my head.

  “Then what?” she demanded. “What do you want from me?”

  Jenna nudged me gently. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What’s your last name?” I blurted out, surprising everyone.

  Max’s smile faltered. “Uh, Campbell.”

  “His name is Maxwell Campbell.”

  My sight went white, glaring and blind while my ears filled with the bang of metal against metal, tires torn over wet ground, and a woman’s scream in my ear, piercing and painful. It only lasted a second, just a heartbeat, but then I was back and breathing fire.

  I looked dead at Laney, right into her panicked blue eyes, and I suddenly remembered everything about that night.

  Our last night.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jenna

  Holy shit, he knows, I thought. My stomach tightened with dread as I watched him stare daggers into her eyes. To her credit, Laney didn’t flinch.

  “How do I know that name, Lane?” Kellen asked her calmly.

  Laney stared back, dead eyed. She didn’t bother answering him.