Not all men succumb to the demons lurking inside us.
Thesound of the door opening behind me pulls my attention from the window. But when I spin around expecting to see Fletcher re-enter the room, I’m thrown off by the appearance of Rhonan instead, a crinkled paper in his clenched fist.
My eyes land on the clock on the back wall, and that’s when I realize I’d been staring out the window lost in my thoughts for almost thirty minutes.
“Is she ready?” The eagerness in my voice is almost embarrassing, especially as I bounce on my toes. But I’m on edge envisioning what Tori looks like in her dress, the one that she’s been teasing me about for weeks.
Rhonan clears his throat. “Uh, Elliot…”
The clench of his jaw makes my pulse spike. I take a step toward him. “What’s going on, Rhonan?”
The heaviness of his sigh infiltrates the silence in the room. All I can hear is my pulse in my ears now, waiting for whatever comes next.
“Elliot…Tori is…gone.”
And with those four words, my entire world falls apart.
***
“What the fuck do you mean she’s gone?”
Rhonan clears his throat. “She left, Elliot. She took off and…”
Shaking my head, I huff out a laugh. “No, you must be mistaken. Where’s Laney?” My hand moves for the doorknob, but Rhonan slides between me and the barricade separating me from finding my fiancée and proving my friend wrong.
His palm lands on my chest. “Elliot…”
“Why the fuck would she leave, Rhonan? We’re…” I huff out another laugh as my anxiety builds. “We’re getting married…” My hand swings toward the window I was just daydreaming out of. “We’re…”
“No, you’re not, Elliot. She left with her boss about an hour ago.” He hands me the paper clutched in his hand. “Now, just how well do you know her boss, Barry?”
The mention of the dipshit she calls a boss makes my blood pressure rise as my eyes scan the background check my friend took the liberty of running without my consent.
Tori’s boss has been the one issue we’ve gone back and forth on over the course of our relationship. Her job with Barry Eggert Talent Agency in Nashville meant a lot to her, so I put up with the endless phone calls, late nights, and commuting back and forth between the two cities because I wanted to be supportive.
But now that nagging feeling comes back with a vengeance, and I’m wishing I wouldn’t have pushed it aside.
My stomach drops as my eyes scan the words proving my intuition was right, and I realize that if I’d just let Rhonan run a background check months ago like he asked, I wouldn’t be standing here right now in a tux with no bride. He tried to convince me it was the smart choice, given our complicated history with Tori and what he sees every day as a sheriff.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, right?
Hell, even Dilynne—Henley’s younger sister and the biggest pain in my ass—turned out to be right.
Jesus, she’s never going to let me live this down.
“He…she…” The paper starts to shake in my grasp and the words in black ink become blurry. My eyes lock onto Rhonan’s. “Move.”
“Elliot…”
“I said fucking move, Rhonan!” I can faintly hear the windows rattle behind me from the volume of my voice, but I don’t care.
Rhonan’s eyes bounce back and forth between mine before he reluctantly slides out of my way, a defeated sigh leaving his lips. I tear open the door and stomp down the hall to the bridal suite, where I’m hoping I’ll find my fiancée inside and this whole act Rhonan is putting on is just his idea of a joke.
But when I thrust the door open, the knob slamming into the wall behind it, the last thing I expected to see is my best man with his tongue down the throat of the maid of honor.
Laney and Fletcher?
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.