I shut the door in her face, and she doesn’t take five seconds to rebound.

I’d be impressed if I wasn’t so pissed.

No hesitation. She knocks again as soon as it’s shut. “I don’t need luck,” she calls through the door, and then it swings open. Damn it. The lock didn’t engage.

Summer’s best friend strides into the room like I’ve been playing with her. I stop in front of the television, next to the aisle between the double beds, and face her. If she wants to do this, we can do this, but I’m not going to the wedding.

I’m not.

I haven’t slept. My neck aches. I push at it with my fingertips, trying to flatten the ache into submission, but it doesn’t respond.

After Day’s bachelor party, the cab taking us back to the hotel was in a fender-bender and I lost my fucking mind. Lost it.

Silently.

I wasn’t interested in letting it show and ruining my best friend’s bachelor party. It was supposed to pass, supposed to be over by the time we got out of the cab.

It wasn’t over.

It’s bullshit in a way that makes all other bullshit pale in comparison. I shouldn’t be affected like this. For one thing, I’m not a fucking weakling. For another, it was Dayton who got his leg blown off in Afghanistan, not me. I came away from the Humvee with cuts and bruises.

Whitney—I know her name is Whitney, but if anybody asked me her last name, I’d be fucked—assesses me, her dark eyes flicking down to my bare feet and back to my face. “You’re not dressed. I’m Whitney, by the way.”

“I know who you are. I’m not going.”

She cocks her head to the side and ignores my statement entirely. The sharp tone is lost on her. “Is your outfit in the garment bag or did you hang it in the bathroom?”

“You must not have heard me.”

Whitney cranes her neck, then points two fingers—very sensitive of her—to the black garment bag hanging in the closet and the bathroom door. “Bag or bathroom?”

It was a fender-bender. The worst part about it was the noise, the crush of metal on metal. Both the bumpers survived, as far as I know, but the sound triggered the one memory I struggle to forget every waking moment. I’ve been doing a good job of forgetting the day the Humvee I was driving hit an IED on the side of the road in Afghanistan. Dayton lost part of his leg, and I lost the part of my brain that believes the world’s not out to get me.

I’m not some sort of paranoid freak. I should be past that. I was in the Army. I went back to Afghanistan after that happened, and nothing came close. On the base, I could keep it at arm’s length. On the base, I didn’t have to think about what I did, or where I was going to go. The powers-that-be in the Army had my name on a list, and I went where that list told me to go. That was it.

I’m not going to the wedding.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “I’m not getting dressed. I’m not going to the wedding. Give my apologies to Summer.”

Whitney fixes me with a glare, her dark eyes narrow and sharp. Even making that face, she’s pretty.

She’s a little more than pretty.

She’s been dolled up for the wedding. Her makeup is flawless. Her dark hair has been sleekly pulled back and twisted into some kind of arrangement at the back of her head. Summer picked sage green dresses, and against her creamy skin, the fabric is shimmering and soft.

None of that matters at all.

“That’s not going to happen.” She squares her shoulders. “I’m already here because your mother didn’t want to commence the search by herself, and as maid of honor, it’s my duty to do whatever I can to make this day absolutely magical for my best friend.” She recites this like she’s reading it off a contract. “However, I am not going to apologize on your behalf. That’s fucking cowardly.”

Shock ricochets through me. All I can do is blink at her. Nobody ever calls me cowardly. I’m a war hero. I’ve been deployed to Afghanistan more times than some people have been to an airport. Blood rushes to my face, and my whole head heats up with an instant, undeniable anger. Fuck. I’m becoming my father.

“I’m not a coward.”

“I didn’t say you were a coward.” Whitney’s voice is level as she turns to the garment bag and unzips it with a precise flick of her wrist. It’s empty. The suit is out. “Ah. So you were planning to go.”

“I wasn’t—”

She marches into the bathroom, where my tuxedo hangs from the shower rod. I didn’t put it there. Dayton did. He came in laughing on the day of his bachelor party and took it out of the bag. We both looked at it hanging there. “We’re going to look slick as fuck,” he’d said.

That was before the taxi ride.

It shouldn’t be this much of a disruption. I should have been able to sleep that night—or early that morning, when I finally got back to the room and locked the door, testing it three times before I turned away. I couldn’t fucking sleep. I couldn’t get my eyes to shut. All the booze must have mixed with the nightmares hidden in my brain, and it put me on high alert.

High alert, looking for nothing. Nobody came to the door. Nobody shot a gun in the street. Nothing blew up. And still, it was after ten in the morning by the time my hands stopped shaking. By the time my brain ceased rocketing back to Afghanistan, to the crunch of metal at the very beginning of it all, when the shrapnel from the bomb made contact with the bottom of the Humvee. It tore through the whole fucking thing, but that sound—that sound ended everything. It ended life as I knew it, and I never saw it coming.

I should have seen it coming.

Whitney comes out of the bathroom with the tuxedo and accoutrements draped over her arm. “Undershirt first.” She tosses the shirt to me, and I put it on. It seems like the right thing to do. “I don’t want to hear any excuses. I’m running very short on time. Summer’s dress isn’t on.”

This last bit sounds nonsensical, and a dull pain throbs at my temples. This whole event is fucked. I didn’t even make the rehearsal dinner. Or the rehearsal. Shame boils in the pit of my gut. I couldn’t force myself into it. The sound from the car was still ringing in my ears.

“That’s too bad.” I don’t know if that’s the right answer or not. “She’ll have to put it on without me.”

“You?” Whitney scoffs. “She doesn’t care about you. She’s not going to put it on without me. Come on. I’ve got your pants.” She lays out the rest of the items on the bed. The cuff links. The coat. The shirt. There are fucking suspenders. What is this?

“You don’t put the pants on first.”

“Right. Sorry. My mind is addled because I had to look in three different bars before I realized that Dayton is an idiot. He’s adorable, but he’s an idiot.”

“He’s not an idiot.”

“He didn’t break the door down and haul you out. That makes him a little bit of an idiot in my book.”

“That’s my best friend you’re talking about.”

“That’s your best friend you’re standing up.” Whitney looks baffled, and she casts a glance into the corner of the hotel room, like she’s doing a reaction shot on The Office. “You can’t let him down like this. There’s nobody else who’s going to do the job for you.”

She tosses me the shirt and I catch it.

“Nice reflexes.”

“I’m not putting this on.” Sweat beads at the small of my back. I don’t know how I’m going to leave the fucking hotel, much less attend the wedding. A lot could happen between the room and the reception hall, and I have no way to control it. I have no way to wrap my hands around the choking dread that’s squeezing my airway.

“I did not anticipate having to dress a grown man, but”—Whitney purses her lips and comes toward me. She whips the shirt out of my hand and her fingers fly down over the button—”needs must.”

Needs must? Where the hell did she learn an expression like that? I’m not sure, but up close, all I can see is the delicate pink of her lips, the cheekbone beneath the shimmering blush, and when I breathe in—holy Jesus. In her high heels, our eyes are almost at the same level...but not quite. Her eyelashes are full and beautiful against her cheeks.

Then she looks up at me.

It’s a sudden move, the thing she does with her arms. The shirt flies around me, her hands come toward me, and I react. It’s a gut-level reaction, not one that I can stop, and before the shirt has met my shoulders, I have her wrists in my hands.

The adrenaline surges through my veins, cold under the heat of my irritation. Every muscle flexes, ready to defend. I take one breath in—there’s her scent again—and let it out. Dust motes in the air between us catch the light, and so do her dark eyes, streaked with a honey-gold that would take my breath away, if every part of me wasn’t focused on survival. Her mouth rounds in shock—those pretty, pink lips—and her eyebrows move upward toward the perfect line of her hair.

We’re frozen.

My heartbeat is loud in my ears. Thud. Thud. Thud.

On the fourth heartbeat, Whitney wriggles in my grasp. Her skin is soft, so soft, under my palms, her pulse pumping under the delicate flesh of her wrist. “Okay,” she says, her voice soft but direct. “You can put the shirt on, if it means that much to you.”

I drop her wrists and turn away.

Jesus Christ.

What the hell was that?

“Go,” I tell her, raw command behind the word. “Get out of here. Tell Summer I’m sorry.”

A pause.

“I’m not going to do that.”

I round on her, voice rising. “Then go. I don’t want you in here. I’m not going to the fucking wedding.” I’m still on that adrenaline high. I take two steps toward her, blood surging in my veins, and jab a finger in her direction. “Do you even know what could happen between here and that fucking reception hall?”

I’ve lost control.

I’ve lost control, and now she can see it—my naked, shameful dread.

Whitney blinks. “We could stop for a drink.”

“What?”

“There’s a bar between here and there. I know. I looked in there for you before I came up here.”

It subsides. The terror at the core of me subsides. How is she being so reasonable? How is she not running for the door?

The shirt dangles from her fingertips and she lifts it back up, holding it in front of her by the shoulders. “Shirt,” she says, “then drink.”

“No!” I thunder, and take a step closer. I’ll crowd her the hell out of here if that’s what I have to do. It’s not what I want to do, but this—this is too much. “No.”

“You need to get out of your own head,” she spits, and the assessment is so piercing that it cuts me to the the quick. “I don’t know what the hell you’re obsessing about, but it is your sister’s wedding day, and you are going. You’re going, Wes. I don’t really give a shit if you don’t want to.” She raises her fist, high color in her cheeks, and presses her knuckles into my chest. “Put your shirt on, or I’ll do it for you.”

The pressure on my chest is like a firecracker, a zing that goes all the way down to my cock. I’m so fucking pissed at her. She’s so fucking pretty.

“Don’t touch me,” I growl.

“Then grow up and do it yourself.”

“Get out of here.”

“I’ll get out when you’re dressed.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nothing makes any sense, Wes, but you look like a fucking crazy person. Snap out of it. What do I have to do to get you to snap out of it?” Urgency makes her louder, louder.

“There’s nothing you can do, you stupid little—”

“Don’t even go there, asshole.”

“Oh, that’s lovely,” I sneer, any semblance of restraint gone. “That’s a lovely mouth you’ve got on you. Do you kiss your mother with that—”

“For the love of Christ,” she says, fire in her eyes, that mouth inches from mine. “I was serious. What the hell do I have to do? We have four minutes. Four minutes, Wes, and I have to be back in that room. Are you going to ruin this for everyone? Are you?”

“I have other priorities.”

“Get over them, or I’ll—” Her eyes shine. Has she been drinking? They sent some almost-drunk beautiful girl to drag me to the wedding? Jesus. “I’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”

Another wave of rage. “Yeah?” My voice drips with contempt. “Like what?”

Whitney throws her arms around my neck and kisses me.