She wore the dress.

I’ve been watching the door for the past hour, because I’m mentally defective and because I wanted to see her when she walked in. Jesus, she looks good. Better than good. She looks—

“What the fuck?”

I’m not even aware that I said it out loud until some snotty blue-blood gives me some serious side-eye over her shoulder.

“Pardon me,” I mutter even though I couldn’t give two shits about my language or her delicate sensibilities. She sniffs at me and goes back to stroking her mink stole. I hardly even notice.

Tess is here with Ryan. He had his arm around her, his hand pressed into the small of her back. I expected that tatted-up dickhead she used to date or maybe even someone I don’t know. I didn’t expect her to walk in on the arm of someone I consider family.

I didn’t expect him to looks so fucking happy about it either.

“Champagne, sir?”

I look at the tuxedoed waiter, a tray of flutes practically shoved up my nose. Whatever he sees on my face has him lowering the tray and scuttling off to find his next victims.

Ryan.

Jesus Christ.

Needing something a little stiffer than champagne, I weave through the crowd, making my way toward the open bar set up in the corner of the gallery.

“Jameson. Neat,” I practically growl at the bartender, tossing a twenty into his tip jar to make up for my total lack of social skills. When he slides it to me across the bar, I grab for it like I’m dying of thirst, slamming it in a couple of hard gulps that set my throat on fire.

Because he’s obviously some sort of angel, sent here to save me, the next one he pours me is a triple.

I’m about one gulp in when I hear his voice.

“I’ll take a club soda and—”

“Two fingers of Jameson. One ice cube,” I mutter it into my glass, loud enough for him to hear me. When I look up, Ryan is standing less than two feet away and the bartender is mixing drinks like his life depends on it while making a spectacular show of not looking at either of us.

“Long time, no see,” he says, his tone even. Almost flat. To be fair, I’m not sure if his lack of affect is about me or if that’s just who he is now. Probably a bit of both.

When Conner brought him home, I was at the hospital constantly. It didn’t take long for the guilt to start eating at me. As soon as we got him settled in at Sojourn, I stopped visiting. Started making excuses. Avoided the fact that everything that happened to him is my fault. That I’m the reason he was forced into the military. The reason he almost died. Why he came home broken.

“Yeah. I’ve been busy.” I clear my throat and take a drink. “You’re looking...”

“Less homeless?” he laughs, the sound a strange mixture of amusement and bitterness. “Yeah. That’s what Tess said.” Taking the drinks offered to him by the bartender, he turns to me. “Where’s Jess?”

Where’s Jess.

Now it’s my turn to laugh. “I’m not sure. The last time I saw her she was in an elevator with Ephraim Viaga’s hand shoved up her skirt.”

He stares at me for a second, like he’s waiting for a punchline. When I don’t deliver, he lets out a hard breath. “Sorry, man. That sucks.”

“Not really.” I give him a shrug and empty my glass before setting it on the bar. “Have a good night,” I say, pushing my way through the crowd before I give in to the urge to punch him in the mouth.