With a chuckle, he had moved to the other side of the elevator, but his eyes hadn’t left us once. We hadn’t been wearing anything revealing, just T-shirts and jeans, but he’d looked at us like we were naked. I hated guys like that. The sexist fuckers who thought they were entitled to anything and everything they saw just because they had a dick.
“Keep your eyes to yourself, dickhead,” I’d tossed at him as I gave him my usual greeting of flipping him off.
“Where’s the fun in that?” he’d said with a leer as the elevator had stopped on his floor.
With a wink, he’d walked away, but that wasn’t the last I had seen of him in the intervening few weeks. Every time I had the misfortune of riding the elevator with him, he was just as creepy, just as sleazy. I could practically read the lewd thoughts in his eyes, and I was tempted time and again to throat-punch the fucker. I was starting to think he was a stalker, one who knew when I was going to be without Marcus or Harris—or fuck, without any other male on the planet—because that seemed to be the only time I ever saw this jerk-off.
Thankfully, the creeper got off on the ground floor, and no one else stepped into the elevator with us. Jace and Kin’s kiss was still going strong when the doors opened once again to find Marcus already sitting behind the wheel of my Range Rover that was idling close by.
r /> “Kin!” I called loudly. “Hello? Could you come up for air? I don’t want to be late.”
With a small whimper, she pushed Jace back, and I saw her lipstick was worth every penny she had thought she was wasting on it. She quickly smoothed out Jace’s shirt and then brushed her fingers over her hair. On visibly shaking legs, she took his hand and followed him out.
Seeing us, Marcus jumped out and opened the door for me. Kin and I climbed into the back while Jace took the front passenger seat. Something I was eternally grateful for because I wasn’t sure I could sit beside them while they devoured each other’s mouths. Especially if Kin was going to make those little noises that were part whimper, part mewling sound. If I’d had to endure that, I would most likely have jumped Harris the second I saw him.
“Sorry,” Kin whispered as Marcus shifted into drive and headed out.
I rolled my eyes at her. “Don’t be. I wouldn’t have even bothered you if I weren’t afraid of showing up late to this thing.”
She grasped my hand and entwined our fingers. “Remember. Banana.”
I fucking loved my best friend. She knew exactly how to make me feel calm and put a grin on my face. Giggling, I nodded to let her know I would remember, and Jace turned to lift a brow at us both.
Twenty minutes later, Marcus pulled up in front of Cliff’s Edge, and my heart melted as soon as I saw the man standing there waiting for us. Dressed in a suit that nearly matched Jace’s, Harris looked delicious, and I wanted to jump his bones the second he stepped forward and opened my door. As soon as I touched my fingers to his, I felt him jerk in reaction, and I didn’t even hesitate to clutch his tie and pull his head down for a hungry kiss.
I felt the ravenous growl vibrate his chest and smiled against his lips before he lifted his head. “You’re gonna make me go in there with a hard-on, sweetness. You want your dad to kill me in front of our friends and family?”
I scrunched my nose up at him teasingly. “We’re engaged, babe. I’m fairly sure they all know we see each other naked on a daily basis.”
“And I’m pretty sure your dad doesn’t care to see the evidence of how I respond to just the thought of you naked, Lu.” With a wink, he grasped my hips and lifted me from the seat. Seconds later I was on my feet, and his aquamarine eyes were eating up every inch of me. “Fucking hell. We’re leaving early from this damn thing.”
Pleasure filled me, and I could tell when he saw how much his comment pleased me. He bent and pressed his lips to my forehead. “Ready?”
I wasn’t, but it was now or never. I nodded because I couldn’t voice the lie aloud, and he took my hand as we entered the restaurant together.
As soon as we stepped inside, all eyes turned to look at us, and I tightened my fingers around his.
Breathe.
Shit, that was a lot of people. Two hundred people, in theory, was a lot, sure. But I had been to events with my family plenty of times where the numbers had been in the tens of thousands. This should have been simple, something I could breeze through easily and unaffected. Instead, I felt the beginnings of a panic attack and had to force myself to put up the walls that had fallen the second Harris had first seen my physical scars.
Feeling my tension, Harris lifted our joined hands and kissed the backs of my fingers. “We got this,” he promised me.
I melted against him, letting go of some of the tension that was trying to destroy all the progress I had made over the last year. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Lucy.”
“There’s my baby.” A deep voice that filled my heart with nearly as much love as Harris’s did sounded from right behind me.
I turned and hugged my dad, taking a moment to bury my face in his strong, wide chest before the rest of our engagement party guests swooped down on us. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see the people there; it just got a little overwhelming to see them all at the same time. Once upon a time, I had loved having get-togethers like this with all the people I loved. But that was before those closest to me found out about my coping mechanism. I knew no one who did know about my cutting would ever tell another soul, and only a handful of people in the room right then were aware of what I struggled with every single day. But now that my secret was out, I always felt like the entire world knew and was judging me.
Dad lowered his head, and he touched his lips to my temple. “I’m right here, baby. Not gonna let anyone hurt you. You know that, right?”
I lifted my head and gave him a beaming smile. It was the same smile I had always hidden behind, the one that masked everything I was really feeling and let me pretend that everything was perfect. That I was perfect. What a fucking lie. “Yeah, Daddy. I know.”
He tucked me close then draped his arm casually around Harris’s shoulders. Turning, Jesse Thornton spoke to the entire room. “Everyone, this party is to celebrate my baby girl marrying this…boy.”
I heard a snort and caught Devlin Cutter’s eyes. He winked at me as he tucked his daughter between him and her mother. Smiling back at him, I elbowed Dad in the stomach. I knew he loved Harris, but he was always grumbling and growling and calling him “boy.”