I grab Maggie and drag her aside. The others are chattering—I don’t think they’ve caught on that anything is wrong yet. Better to keep it that way if we can.

“She’s gone,” I whisper. “I mean, Runaway Bride Julia Roberts kind of gone.”

“What?” She takes in the room. Her eyes widen. “Shit. Where the hell could she be?”

“I don’t know! We’ve got to find her.” My gut twists. I have no idea what could have provoked Brooke to jet out of here, but I can’t imagine it’s anything short of horrible.

“I’ll get Lulu looking for her too,” Maggie says. “We can cover ground faster that way.”

“Just tell her not to mention it to anyone else.” If it turns out somehow we’re panicking over nothing, Brooke is not going to thank me for freaking out the rest of her family and friends.

You’re the best friend ever, Ruby, she was saying to me less than an hour ago. Don’t forget that, all right? I thought that was just drunken sentimentality, but maybe she’d already known she was about to totally freak me out.

My earlier buzz has died in the wash of adrenaline. Maggie and Lulu head for the elevators, making plans to check the beach and the recreation areas. I hurry back to my room just to make sure Brooke didn’t come looking for me. Then I head down to the main floor too.

The bar is empty other than an elderly couple. Beyond the back windows, the pool lights glow eerily through the still water. No one moves on the deck.

I duck out front where the van picked us up. One of the hotel’s black courtesy cars has just pulled up to the left of the entrance. With a lurch of my heart, I see my bestie hauling her luggage over to meet it, her head low to hide from view.

“Brooke!” I call as she grasps the door handle. Her head snaps up, and her grip on her suitcase tightens. I run up to her. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

She bites her lip. “I can’t do this, Ruby.”

“What—get married? What’s going on, Brooke?”

“It isn’t fair to Trevor,” she says miserably. “I can’t just—I’m too confused. I should be sure.”

Oh, my poor honorable-to-a-fault best friend. I rub her arm. “I’m pretty sure having doubts just means you’re a human being. Come on, you’ve got to at least talk to me before you press the eject button. As maid of honor I’m owed first dibs on all emotional crises.”

She manages to laugh, even if it comes out a little choked. She glances back at the car. The driver raises his hand. “I can return the car to the garage. You can request it again if you need it.”

Brooke drags in a shaky breath. “It’s going to sound so stupid.”

“Not possible,” I promise her. “And even if it does, I want to hear it anyway. Let’s just take a little walk, and you tell me what’s bothering you. Then we can figure out what to do about it. If it sounds like you really shouldn’t go through with tomorrow, I promise I’ll be honest.”

“Okay,” she says reluctantly. “Okay.”

We leave her luggage by the front desk and meander out onto the interlacing paths through the resort grounds. Brooke stays silent for the first few minutes. I clamp down on all my questions, giving her space to decide what she wants to say first.

“Do you remember Aaron?” she says finally.

“Sure.” I heard bits and pieces about him when Brooke and I talked during college. He was a friend, then a crush, then a budding relationship cut short when he’d gotten offered a placement in London too good to turn down. But she hasn’t mentioned him since. “What about him?”

“Well, I—I mean, there’s nothing going on,” she says quickly. “I haven’t seen him or talked to him since the end of junior year.” We reach the edge of the beach, and she slumps onto one of the lounge chairs, holding her face between her hands. “I hadn’t even thought about him in a long time.”

I sit down next to her. “So why are you thinking about him now?”

“It’s just . . . It always felt like we never really got a chance, you know? We got along so well—we just clicked, that way that hardly ever happens—and I was head over heels for him for so long, pretending not to be because he had his girlfriend. And then when they broke up, and he asked me out . . . It was like magic, those first few dates.”

“But then he left.”

“Yeah. And I don’t blame him.” Brooke rubs her eyes. “It was a great opportunity. We’d hardly been seeing each other a few weeks. Way too early for me to try to angle for some kind of cross-continental long-distance thing. I knew that wouldn’t make any sense. But I missed him so much all through senior year. It never totally stopped hurting until I met Trevor.”

I blink at her. “You never told me you were having that much trouble getting over him.”

“I didn’t want to sound pathetic,” she says sadly. “And it wasn’t like there was anything you could do about it.”

“I would have told you it wasn’t pathetic at all.” I comfort her. “Maybe that would have been useful. But you did meet Trevor. So why is this coming up now?”

Brooke hesitates. She looks down at her hands. “He’s back in the country. Aaron. I wasn’t keeping tabs, but I saw one of our mutual friends post about it about a year ago. His name comes up on my feed here and there. Not that it mattered to me,” she said quickly. “I really have been so happy with Trevor. It was just something I saw and then went on to thinking about other things. But then . . . the last few days . . .”

“The sand and surf stirred up memories of past loves?” I say, lightly teasing, when she doesn’t go on.

She lets out a little laugh. “No. Seeing you and Will made me wonder . . . if first love really is the right love.”

My body freezes. “What?”

“It’s not your fault,” Brooke says. “I’m so not implying that. But watching you two . . . seeing how crazy you obviously are about each other . . . I mean, you hadn’t seen each other in ages, and you thought he’d done something horrible, and you were still able to pick up the chemistry you had and run with it just like that.” She snaps her fingers. “You fit.”

“It’s not that easy.” My stomach knots as I remember my last conversation with Will.

“There’s something extra special there,” Brooke argues. “And I can’t help thinking—what would have happened if I’d fought to keep some kind of relationship with Aaron? If I’d told him I wanted to be with him enough to at least try long distance. If we’d run into each other now that he’s back . . .” She looks torn. “I can’t stop wondering about that. I’m supposed to be getting married tomorrow, and half of my mental energy is going to thinking about some other guy. What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you.” I wrap my arm around her. “I promise. Having those kinds of thoughts has got to be totally normal when you’re about to totally commit yourself to someone. You’ve just got to remember to focus on reality,” I remind her. “Sure, maybe you could have had some magical relationship with Aaron. But you hardly knew him as a boyfriend! It’s so much more likely some deal-breaker would have come up, or you two would have cooled off, or whatever . . . It’s a lot easier to imagine it’d have been perfect when it never actually happened, right?”

“But you and Will—”

“No.” I shake my head even as my throat tightens. “We’re not perfect either. Sure, it’s easy to have a quick fling while we’re off in paradise. But I know it’s not going anywhere. It’s not going to be anything more than that. We don’t have a future.” Because he never wanted one. I swallow thickly and go on. Maybe if I say it out loud, I’ll be able to convince myself of the lie again. “I’m just getting all that past attraction out of my system, having a little fun, like Maggie said, so I can move on. That’s all it is.”

Brooke peers at me. I’m not sure I was even convincing enough to persuade her.

“Don’t say that, Ruby.”

“It’s true!” I insist. “You can’t . . . You can’t look at some brief intense hook-up and judge your entire relationship in comparison. You love Trevor, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Brooke says softly.

“And you weren’t even thinking about Aaron until this week, were you?”

She shakes her head. “You know, I even . . . When I saw that post about him, my first thought was how glad I was I’d found a guy I was so happy with that seeing it didn’t bring up any of those old feelings.”

“Right,” I tell her, relieved. “Aaron didn’t matter to you, because you have such a great thing with Trevor. You’re happy, you’ve been building this future together, you know it’s going to be a great one.” I squeeze her shoulder. “I’ve watched you two together for years—I know it will be. You guys are the real thing. Next week we’ll all be back home, and I’ll be back to single life, and you’ll think it’s ridiculous you were ever stressing over that other guy at all,” I add, trying to sound upbeat, for her sake.

“Yeah.” Brooke exhales with a shaky giggle. “I’m so sorry, Ruby. I’m being such a flake.”

“Hey.” I smile. “Normally you’re the most put-together person I know. I think you’re still well below your flakiness quota for the week, let alone a lifetime. Are you feeling better now?”

“I think so.” She straightens up, looking calmer now. “It’s not like I ever didn’t want to marry Trevor. I just wasn’t sure—I want to know I’m doing the right thing. But you’re right. I should trust the way I’ve felt all that time before this, not a bunch of sudden doubts that don’t even make sense.”

“There you go.” I stand up and offer my hand to help her up too. “Now let’s get you back to the bridal suite. We still need to embarrass you with lingerie and sex toys before you can be allowed to walk down the aisle.”

Brooke groans, but she follows me. As we reach the steps to the pool deck, I see a figure just disappearing into the lobby. Was that Will’s muscular frame and dark hair? Damn. In my worrying over Brooke, I forgot we’d made maybe-plans.

“Will?” I call out, hurrying up the steps, but the guy doesn’t stop walking. By the time I reach the doors, he’s nowhere to be seen. Between the dim lighting outside and the brief moment I saw him for, I’m not all that sure it even was Will.

“Ruby?” Brooke asks, looking concerned. “Did you have plans? Because you should go, and meet him, or whatever—”

“Nope!” There’s no way I’m leaving Brooke’s side for the rest of the night after all this anyway. “I’m all yours.”

On our way to the elevator, I shoot him a quick text asking for a rain check. We’ve still got tomorrow night. No matter what I just told Brooke, parting ways with him at the end of this week is going to hurt. Bad. But it’ll take the apocalypse or worse to keep me from enjoying the sizzle between us all the way to the end.