MOIRA
“Morning, wife.”
I smile in my sleep, reaching my hand out until my fingers brush over something warm and solid. It’s hard, the ridges of muscle curving beneath the pads of my fingers as they dip through small tufts of hair, leading down past the navel.
Suddenly, I freeze, my hand hovering just before the waistband of a pair of briefs, my body turning cold.
Lucas isn’t this ripped. He’s softer, smoother, with absolutely no body hair to speak of. No marks. No scars marring his chest.
As if someone dumped a bucket of ice-cold water over me, I spring up in bed so fast my head nearly rolls from my shoulders. The room is bright, sending needles through my eye sockets, but I pry my eyes open, blinking rapidly, willing them to adjust on the man next to me.
Grant Carter.
The brother of the man I was supposed to marry yesterday, before he stood me up, of course.
The memories come back in fractured, agonizing snippets.
The day before, I was pacing the bridal suite like a caged animal. Maddie, my maid of honor, called Lucas over and over, her voice light as she reassured me. My mom insisted he was probably just stuck in traffic. Lucas’s mom acted as if nothing was amiss as she blotted her face in the mirror.
And then, finally, Grant, the man I didn’t even want to be a part of my wedding, came bearing bad news.
It was precisely what I feared: Lucas ran off. He said he couldn’t do it, that I wasn’t the one he was supposed to marry.
So just like him, I ran.
I grabbed my shit and ran out of the chapel, still in my ridiculous white dress, ripping off my heels and throwing them into the manicured bushes as blurred faces of guests watched in stunned confusion.
I practically dove into my car, fumbling with the keys, and before I could even put it in drive, the passenger door opened. Grant slid into the seat, tie undone, suit jacket long forgotten, sleeves rolled up to reveal two black-inked forearms. He settled into the space, somehow managing to look relaxed despite it all. His salt-and-peppered jaw was taut, and those silver, cold eyes met mine.
“What are you doing?” I asked him through the sobs tearing through me. I’m certain mascara was bleeding down my cheeks in thick, black rivers.
“Making sure you don’t do something monumentally stupid,” he grumbled, the slight Kiwi accent he’d picked up over the years spent overseas, playing professional rugby in New Zealand, bleeding into his words as he fastened his seat belt.
Suddenly, he reached across me, grabbed my seat belt, and fastened it, his face unnervingly close to mine. His gaze dropped to my mouth for a fraction of a second before snapping back up to my eyes.
“So,” he asked, his voice low, “where are we going?”
“We?” I asked in a pathetic squeak. “We aren’t going anywh—”
“Either we go together right now,” he cut me off, “or your mother is going to pull you from this car, and you won’t be going anywhere at all.”
I peered back through the rear window to see my frantic mother stumbling down the chapel steps, her arms waving wildly like a distressed bird, her mouth open in a silent yell I couldn’t quite hear over the pounding in my ears.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Without a choice, I slammed the car into drive and sped off, the chapel shrinking in my rearview mirror.
“So?” Grant prompted after a few quiet beats. He sat back in the seat, parting his knees, his presence taking up every available inch of space. He looked ridiculously large in the confines of my car.
Lucas was tall too, and had good biceps, but whenever Grant was around, he seemed to cast everyone, including his own brother, into shadow. He was built from his many years playing rugby, and as one of the most notorious players, he was effortlessly charming when he wanted to be. He wasn’t afraid to take up space, to dominate a room, and he was annoyingly smug.
Throughout our relationship, Lucas always tried to force Grant and me to get along, pushing us together at family gatherings, but we were opposites. It was like trying to get a wary deer to befriend a predatory bear. It was never going to work.