“Ah, thanks. I really need a big, strong shoulder to cry on right now.” Jace snorted out a laugh, and I flipped him off. “I know, Harris. I know. Thanks anyway. But this is shit I gotta take care of on my own. I made this mess, and I’ll clean it up.”
That only had my eyes narrowing. “What kind of mess?”
“One I’ll deal with.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Emmie know about this mess?”
“Nope. And I’m not telling her either. I said this is my mess. Topic closed, dickhead. Change it.”
“Fine. Please tell me my dad and Lucy’s aren’t invited to the bachelor party. If my dad is there, I won’t be able to relax and enjoy it. If Lu’s is there, I’ll probably end up dead by the end of the night if we do all the shit you want to do.”
“I look that stupid to you?” Jace smirked. “Stop pissing your pants, man. Pretty sure this golf thing is their idea of a bachelor party that includes them. You think Nat was actually going to let your dad see a bunch of strippers in Vegas with us anyway?”
“Nat’s not that controlling of Dad. And Layla used to be a stripper before she got custody of Lucy and her sister back in the day. She would have been cool with that. Shane and Drake, though? Nik? Those three would have been the ones pissing themselves, scared shitless their wives would find out where they were.”
“Yeah, well, if Kin finds out were gonna do the stripper thing, I’ll be pissing myself too. And Gray, he already said he wasn’t going with us if we do a strip club crawl.”
“Dude, I don’t care about strippers. I don’t really want to do that anyway.” In college, going to strip clubs every other weekend had been a thing I did with my friends. Fuck, I’d even gone to a few with Jenna a time or two. Now, that shit just didn’t hold any appeal for me. “Booze and gambling are all I need.”
“I’m gonna throw in a few other things, but I don’t think you’ll have to worry about the strippers.” He started tossing his phone like a baseball again. “You know where you’re going on your honeymoon yet?”
“If I tell you, you gonna tell Kin?” I didn’t want Lucy to know where I was taking her until after our reception. While she was planning our
wedding, I was planning our own little private celebration afterward. But just as much as Kin didn’t want Jace to ruin the surprise for Lucy’s bachelorette party, I didn’t want him to ruin the honeymoon. Jace, though tight-lipped about what was going on with himself now, didn’t keep secrets well from Kin.
My friend and best man glared at me as he caught his phone midair. “You too? Fuck you, man.”
I snorted. “Dude, you gossip to me like a drunk sorority girl. You couldn’t keep a secret to save your own life.”
“Trust me, man. I’ve been keeping plenty from my girl lately.”
“Fine, but if Lucy finds out, I’ll know who to kill.” I closed the inventory file that was on my computer and shut it down. “I’m taking her to Saint Lucia. I went to college with a guy whose father is a silent partner in one of the resorts there. He hooked me up with a villa, and once the honeymoon is over, they ship the bed we slept in home to us. It’s one of those handcrafted beds we can carve our names into.”
“Whoa,” he said with eyes as wide as saucers. “That’s romantic as fuck, man. Lucy’s gonna love that.”
“You think? I’m hoping she can unwind there for the two weeks I have planned. She deserves to be pampered after the circus the moms are turning the wedding into. Has Kin mentioned the cake to you?”
“The cake?” He frowned. “Why would the cake cause drama?”
“It’s in the shape of a castle.”
“And?”
“It’s taller than me.” I hadn’t seen the cake Nat and Layla had picked out without telling Lucy. I’d gotten a text with a picture of a demo of it the week before from Lu, with her standing beside the thing. At five feet six inches, she had looked miniature beside the monstrosity.
“How many people are coming to this thing, man? Why would you need a seven-foot cake unless you were inviting a hundred thousand people?”
“Last time I asked about the guest list, Nat said it was somewhere around five hundred people.” To me, that number wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t care how many people showed up to the wedding. But for Lucy, who had become more introverted since she’d stopped self-harming, I knew it was going to be tough to handle such a large crowd. “I told Nat to trim the list down. She said she already had, by two hundred.”
“Sounds like you should take the moms in hand. Get them to chill out some for Lucy’s sake,” he advised.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and into my hair. “I’ve asked her if I needed to talk to Nat about anything. Asked her if she was okay with the guest list being so long. She said she was fine. That everything is fine.”
“You believe her?”
“I don’t fucking know. But I need her to tell me when shit is bothering her. I need her to trust me to have her back and support her. Even if it’s something little, she needs to tell me what’s going on.”
“Yeah, I understand that. But Lucy is a strong chick. She’s used to taking on the world by herself.”