I stalked a path back and forth across the porch, trying my best not to hyperventilate. Of all the men I could choose for my first—and last, I vowed with force—one night stand, I’d gone and picked the one who was about to become my step-brother. The world was playing an ugly, cruel joke on me and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

“Are you okay, dear?” my mom asked, passing me my bouquet.

Bursting with blue hydrangeas and white roses, it was a smaller replica of the one in her other hand. It was also nearly identical to the last one I’d carried. My mom, bless her heart, was not a superstitious woman. Roses and hydrangeas were her favorite flowers, and by god, that’s what she was going to carry on her wedding day.

“I’m fine,” I answered, drawing in a deep breath in hopes of calming my shattered nerves.

It was a lie. I was anything but fine—but I would be. Eventually. I just had to fake it until I made it.

I glanced at the clock hanging above the door. That meant approximately six more hours of smiling and gritting my teeth in hopes that no one would ever guess my dirty little secret.

“You don’t look fine.” She stepped closer to inspect my face, and laid a hand on my forehead. “You’re not warm, but you’re white as a sheet.”

“I probably had one too many gin and tonics with Drew earlier. You were smart in sticking to mimosas,” I lied.

I knew better than to overindulge in my brother’s cocktails. His g-and-t’s were ninety percent gin, ten percent tonic. You only drank them when your goal was to get shit-faced. Now, I wished I’d had half a dozen instead of the two mimosas I’d imbibed. Maybe then the reality of my situation wouldn’t seem so grim.

Undeterred, she pressed on. “Is it Richard?” Her brows scrunched with worry. “I know things moved fast with us, and we didn’t get to introduce all you kids the way we would have liked, but—”

“No, it’s not Richard. He seems great. I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”

The strange thing was, for once, I actually believed it. While I’d been blindsided by the fact that David was his son, I’d managed to keep myself from breaking down long enough to see how the elder Dick and my mom stared at one another. I didn’t know if those feelings would last—hell, they probably wouldn’t—but they were truly in love.

Which was, in large part, the problem.

If this was another one of her quickie marriages where the guy would be gone come the holidays, I wouldn’t be freaking out. It would have sucked to put the brakes on whatever was brewing between David and me, but I could have while we bided our time until we could be together.

But this felt different. I didn’t think Richard was a flash in the pan.

And that meant I couldn’t wait around for it to fall apart so that David and I could skip off into the sunset. Because as long as our parents were married, I couldn’t ever let myself think about him in that way. We’d had one amazing, toe-curling, soul shattering night together, and I’d have to live on the memory of it for the rest of my life.

There was simply no way we could ever repeat it.

And I’d gotten the impression he was on the same page when he’d introduced himself so cooly. As if we hadn’t just spent the night together. As if, when he’d dropped me off only hours before, we hadn’t made plans to see each other again later in the week.

As if I hadn’t been imagining what it would be like to have him in my life forever.

Now, he’d definitely be a fixture in it. Just not how I’d envisioned. Not how I wanted.

And I didn’t know how to handle that.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to stomp around. I wanted to lift my fist and rail at the fates. But most of all, I wanted to drink as much champagne as I possibly could and then get fat on wedding cake before retiring to my room—alone.

But first, we had a wedding ceremony to get through.

I pasted a smile on my face and clasped my mom’s hand. “Come on, let’s go get your married.”

“Are you okay?” Drew passed me a glass of champagne.

“I will be,” I said, taking a small sip of the bubbly. This was my sixth glass, and while I wasn’t as drunk as I wanted to be, I was starting to feel all the carbonation in my belly.

My brother’s eyes flashed with sympathy. “I’m sorry, sis.”

“I know.” I let out a long, protracted sigh. Looking out over the dance floor—my mother swaying in her new husband’s arms to some sappy eighties love song—I told myself that my unhappiness was at least for a good cause.

Drew’s eyes followed mine. “She seems happy. Then again, she always seems happy on her wedding day.”

Something about Drew’s tone made me drag my eyes away from the happy couple to find his again. “Does it bother you?”

He shrugged. “I’d by lying if said her constant quest for love hasn’t made me leery about relationships.”

I’d wanted to give Drew space after our earlier conversation, but this seemed like the perfect opening. “About this morning …”

He chuckled nervously and ran his hand through his hair. “At the moment, I … um … I kind of have a boyfriend and a girlfriend.” As if ashamed, he dropped his gaze to the carpet and shuffled his foot back and forth.

I let out a surprised laugh and held my hand up for a high five, like he’d done earlier. “Good for you!”

At least one of us should be getting some on the regular.

He raised his eyes and bit his lip guiltily. “They don’t know about each other. Obviously. And I’m not really sure I’d call Aaron my boyfriend. He’s just someone I, um, someone …” His cheeks turned pink and he glanced away. “Well, you know.”

Unbidden, my eyes searched for David, finding him deep in conversation with a man who looked as if he could be family. “Yeah, I do know.”

David Carstairs would forever be the guy I’d had the most perfect night of my life with. The sex had been epic, and I would have gladly gone back for seconds, thirds, and fourths, but that wasn’t an option anymore.

But this wasn’t about what had happened between David and me. My baby brother was opening up about something he’d kept hidden from us, and I didn’t want to derail the conversation with longing glances across the room and thoughts of what could have been.

“So this Aaron …”

Drew laughed, as if he knew what I was attempting to do. “Oh no, you don’t. We’re talking about your drama right now.” His tone sobered. “Seriously, Vick. Are you okay?”

I threw back the rest of my champagne and set the empty glass on the tray of a passing waiter. “I met David approximately thirty-six hours ago. I think I’ll manage.”

He looked at me skeptically. “You sounded pretty into him this morning. You had stars in your eyes and everything.”

“I did not!”

He laughed. “You did. And you said it was the best sex you’d ever had.”

I waved my hand in front of my face. I was pretty sure I looked exactly like our mother in that moment. “I must have been exaggerating. It was merely adequate.”

“Sure it was,” he replied, his lips quirking to the side in a smirk.

“What was merely adequate?” a deep, masculine voice asked from behind me.

I froze. I knew that voice. This morning it’d whispered in my ear how good I felt.

I swallowed, and turned to David with a grin plastered on my face. At least I hoped it was a grin. It might have been more like a grimace.

“Hi.” The greeting came out sounding like I had a frog trapped in my esophagus. I looked around for more champagne to coat my suddenly parched throat, but when I saw none immediately at hand, I swallowed and tried again. “Um, hello David.”

He grinned and slid his hands into the pockets of his tuxedo pants. That was probably for the best. I loved his hands; loved the things they could do to me. For a brief second, I allowed myself to linger over the memory of the way his fingers had molded my flesh in the shower this morning while his front had been pressed to my back, his cock resting snugly into the crease between my cheeks. I felt my body growing hot, and I blinked away the image with a sharp internal reprimand.

Focusing on the here and now, I held David’s gaze as best I could. “It was a lovely wedding.”

He nodded in agreement. “It was.”

“Your father seems nice.”

His gaze traveled across the room to land on our parents. “So does your mom.”

My head bobbed up and down. “She is.”

“While I’d love to stick around for this very stimulating conversation,” Drew said, squeezing my shoulder before slipping away, “Aunt Marie is beckoning me.”

I shot his retreating back a dirty look. That was a bald-faced lie and we both knew it. Our aunt had left immediately following the ceremony. Our father’s youngest sister dutifully showed up to all of my mom’s weddings, but I wasn’t sure if it was because she loved my mother like a sister, or if it was because she wanted to remind her she’d never find a man as wonderful as my father. Knowing Aunt Marie, it was probably a bit of both.

But I couldn’t be too mad at Drew for abandoning me. At the very least, it had put an end to the inane small talk David and I had been engaged in. Which was a good thing, because if it had gone on much longer I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to hold it together. It was one thing to have to avoid him for the rest of my natural life, but to have to stand there and pretend that everything was wonderful was probably more than I was capable of. Especially with six glasses of champagne clouding my judgement.

“So,” he said, rocking back on his heels, “this isn’t really how I saw this day going.”

I snorted. “Yeah, me neither.”

“I really liked you, Victoria,” he said, a look of profound unhappiness taking over his face.

Ah, there it was. Liked. As in past tense. As in what’s done is done and we can never revisit it.

It wasn’t just me then who thought we needed to move on.

A small part of me was disappointed.  Subconsciously, I’d been holding out hope that he’d try to talk me out of my decision to sacrifice my own happiness for my mother’s. Because even though I knew I should give him up, I didn’t want to. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hold on tight and never let go. I knew it was madness, that nothing about us made any sense, but no one ever said love was logical.

“I liked you too, David.” I sighed and slumped forward, my shoulders curving in on themselves as if they carried the weight of the world.

A few beats passed in silence, as if we were each waiting for the other to fill the void. When neither of us did, David glanced away. “I’m going to head out early, I think.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” I scanned the crowd for my mother, conscious that I should probably say goodbye before I snuck out. “I was thinking about leaving on the first ferry in the morning.”

“The six o’clock?” he asked, bringing his gaze back to mine, his eyebrows raised.

“I checked online after the toasts and they had a few seats available.”

He laughed and gripped the back of his neck. “I did the same thing. I could …” he trailed off.

“You could what?”

He dropped his hand from his neck and blew out a breath. “It’s probably a bad idea, but we could head over together?”

He was right, it was a very bad idea. If we were alone together, I didn’t know if I’d crawl into his lap and kiss him senseless, or if I’d wind up crying on his shoulder about how the world was so unfair.

Then again, a ferry full of end-of-season travelers didn’t exactly alone.

He nodded, almost like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince me. “It sounds like your mom and my dad might actually make a go of this whole marriage thing, which means we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. We should probably start practicing pretending like last night never happened.”

“Right,” I agreed, my stomach churning with unhappiness. “Like it never happened.”