Chapter 2

Grayson

Carter and I were on the golf course with John, Carter’s dad. But John had been like a father to me too. For the longest time, I’d turned to him for advice when I hadn’t been able to ask my own dad. I looked up to him, and I owed a lot of who I was to him.

“It’s so great out here,” John said, breathing in deeply as if smelling the air. “I didn’t know I would enjoy Austin so much. It’s different than Dallas, but it works.”

John had moved to Austin to open another branch for his business here. Since Abigail, Carter’s new fling, was from Austin, the wedding would be here too. Carter hated it when I called her a fling. They were engaged, after all. But they hadn’t been together nearly long enough to count as a long-term relationship. I thought getting married was a stupid idea.

But Carter was thirty and allowed to make his own choices. Pity, because I would have loved for John to tell him what an idiot he was being.

“How are the wedding plans coming along?” John asked Carter. I groaned. I wasn’t in the mood to chat about the wedding. It was all I heard about these days.

“It’s coming along fine. Abigail is on top of it, and she has a friend who does it for a living. I don’t have to stress too much.”

John clapped Carter on the back. “That’s the way to do it.” He laughed. “Sit back and let the women take over. Why do what someone else is willing to do?”

I chuckled and shook my head. John was still married. He believed in the whole concept of commitment. My dad had left ages ago, but I had a feeling I was better off. He had been a dick.

“Where are you going to live?” I asked Carter. “You’re not planning on sticking around Austin once the wedding is over, do you?”

Carter pulled up his shoulder. “I was thinking about it, yeah. Abigail wants to be close to her parents.”

“And what about what you want?”

Carter didn’t answer me. He positioned himself in front of the tee and squinted his eyes to decide where to place his shot. I watched him swing back and hit the ball, taking a clump of grass with it.

“Dammit,” he swore, as dirt rained down on him. Carter had left ditches in the course from hole one.

“They pay people to fix this shit,” I said. “You didn’t answer me.”

“I don’t mind moving here for her,” Carter said. “I can work at Dad’s company. He already offered me a position.”

I looked at John, surprised. The man nodded, looking pleased with himself.

“We’ll all be a big, happy family,” he said.

Yeah, everyone except me. I would head back home to Dallas after the wedding, and with my best friend and my father figure gone, what would I have left? My parents were divorced, my mother was traveling the globe now that her kids were out of the house, and I didn’t have my sister anymore. Thinking about Jenna drove a sharp pain into my chest, and I pushed away the thoughts of my little sister, gone forever. I would go home empty-handed, and everyone else would stay behind, happy. This wedding idea was bullshit.

Carter’s phone rang, and he smiled when he looked at the screen. “I have to take this,” he said and walked away from us for privacy.

“With a face like that, I can guess who it is,” John said. “Have you met Abigail?”

I nodded. “Carter introduced me last week.”

“And? What do you think?”

“She seemed okay, I guess,” I said.

“But?” John prompted.

I glanced at Carter who was far enough that we couldn’t hear his conversation and he couldn’t hear ours.

“I think it’s a mistake,” I said frankly. “He barely knows this girl. She seems nice and all, but they’re all nice at first. How the hell can he be happy? How can he know he’ll be happy forever if he knows nothing about her?”

John nodded. “I’m sure more people feel that way. Do you know how her family feels about it? Did Carter say?”

I shook my head. “He didn’t tell me about her family, but I met her friend. The girl doing the wedding. She’s right on board with this, set on creating the perfect wedding for Abigail.”

I didn’t tell John what I thought about her, that she was fucking annoying and I had wished from the moment I’d met her, she would just shut up. She had been gorgeous with light hair and blue eyes, and when introduced to her, I had thought the cliché of the two best friends hooking up would be beautiful. But she had been all about romance and fantasy, and it had been irritating. She had condoned the whole damn idea.

“I think Abigail is a nice girl. She might be good for Carter. We can’t know that she won’t,” John said.

I nodded. “You’re right. But Carter can’t know, either. Not this soon. They haven’t even been together for a year, and half the time they were dating, she was traveling all over the place. They met on the plane, you know. Does she give all the cute guys on her flights her number?”

John laughed as if I was trying to be funny. I wasn’t.

“Give Carter some credit. He’s always had good taste in women.”

I couldn’t argue with him on that, but I wasn’t happy. This wasn’t about Abigail taking him away from me, either. Sure, I was pissed off that he wanted to move here for her, leaving me behind alone. But it was about his happiness, and I was pretty damn sure he was throwing it away for pretty blue eyes and the Californian beach blonde hair.

John sighed, looking at Carter who was smiling, kicking at nothing on the grass. He was in a different world while talking to Abigail.

“I know it’s all a bit sudden,” John said. “And I wouldn’t have jumped into something so quickly. Hell, Deborah and I dated for four years before we got married, but we were high school sweethearts.” He sighed again. “If this is what Carter wants, we can’t do anything other than be happy for him. After everything he’s been through, he deserves that much.”

I agreed. Carter had been through hell and back, and he deserved a shot at forever. But I wasn’t sure he should have searched for it in Abigail.

“So, we should just let it slide?” I asked

John shook his head. “We can offer our concerns, but Carter’s old enough and mature enough to decide for himself. Maybe when you kids were young, I would have put a foot down. My role as a caregiver is over. I’m not here to tell him what to do. All I can be to my son now is a friend. You should be too.”

John’s words were wise, as always. But I didn’t share the same sentiment. John could believe he had no right to interfere with Carter’s decision to marry so soon, but I wasn’t going to let him make the mistake of his life. I was his best friend, and it was my job to look out for him.

“So, tell me about this wedding coordinator,” John said. “Will she be able to pull it off so quickly? The date they set is soon.”

I nodded. “Two months. It’s ridiculous. But she looks confident about it. She’s already throwing ideas around. I hope it doesn’t turn into a circus.”

John laughed. “You’re too skeptical. Anyone who can pull off a wedding that fast has to know what she’s doing. I think I’d like to meet her.”

I wanted John to meet her, so he could see what I saw. I wanted him to realize everyone was on some kind of trip thinking this was going to work out. Even Carter, who had always been so sensible, was caught in a spell of sorts if he thought this was going to work out.

“I guess you’ll meet her soon enough,” I said.

“Is she good-looking? A date for you, perhaps?” John asked and nudged me with his elbow.

I rolled my eyes. Was she good looking? Hell, yeah. Light hair that she wore on her shoulders in a long bob. Curves in all the right places and she rocked them when she walked. Hazel eyes. But a mouth on her and an attitude that rubbed me the wrong way. It was the perfect combination of sexy and irritating, so I couldn’t forget about her and got angry every time I thought about her.

I hated women like that. Dangerous, all of them.

“He’s headed back,” John said, and I noticed Carter had ended his call. “Have a little faith in him. This is hard enough as it is.”

“Sorry it took so long,” Carter said. “Abigail ran through a couple of wedding things with me. What did I miss?”

Of course, she did.

“We were talking about how likely it is to rain today,” John said, looking up at the sky. Clouds had gathered in the distance, but it didn’t look like rain clouds at all.

“I think we’ll be fine,” Carter said. “We’ll run through the rest of the course in no time.”

“With your swing?” I joked. “I don’t think so. Might be here all weekend. We can bunk in one of those ditches you’re leaving behind. It will offer us shelter for the night.”

“Your jokes haven’t improved since college,” Carter said.

“Neither did your swing,” I countered.

Carter swore at me, happily produced a string of colorful words, and John and I laughed. These were the best of times. It was a pity this was the last time we would be able to do this for a while. If Carter moved to Austin, I wasn’t going to see him nearly often enough to make time for senseless banter. We would see each other only over the holidays. We would catch up on all the important things, and all that would be left of the time we had together was reminiscing about the good old days.

If Carter were getting married to a woman I agreed with — there had been a time in his life when I had been more than happy for him — it wouldn’t have bothered me so much. But everything about this was wrong, and no matter how I felt about it, if Carter had set his mind to it, he was going to do whatever he wanted.

At least John agreed with me that it was a little too fast. It was better than nothing. John would support Carter no matter what, but at least I knew I wasn’t the only one being sensible.

We finished the hole and walked to the next. Carter complained about having to walk so far in the sun, and John and I ripped him about it. I watched Carter carefully as we played and joked, and I had to admit that my friend did look happy.

Happiness was the only thing I’d ever wanted for him, but it was too good to be true. That was what worried me. What if Carter got married, and he realized he’d made a mistake? It wasn’t as easy to say, “I don’t anymore” as it was to say, “I do.”

Maybe Carter needed an eye-opener, something that would show him how silly all this was. Maybe he needed someone to step in. As his best friend, I owed it to him to look out for him.