Seven Groomsmen from Hell (Love by Numbers 6)

“There’s gotta be something we can do,” David said. “She likes us, right? I mean, I told her how I feel.”

“We all did,” Bram said. “Nothing’s working.”

“Wow, you seven look like the sorriest pack of wolves I’ve ever seen.” I looked up and Kent was walking into the bar, back from his honeymoon. “Seems to me like you should have listened to your good friend Kent, but no. What do I know? I’m just the only one of us who actually managed to get a girl to spend more than a week with him.” He took Luke’s beer from in front of him and started drinking it. “Khloe’s smart, beautiful, funny, has her shit together, and was willing to fuck all of you. Why wouldn’t you fuck that up?”

“Dude, maybe you and Anna can have a barbecue or something?” Luke said. “Invite all of us and Anna can invite Khloe. We can all show up with a dozen roses, no, a dozen bouquets of roses. We can apologize in person and try and win her back.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work because Anna wants to murder all of you,” Kent responded.

“Women stick together like that,” Cody said.

“Well, that and the fact that Khloe’s moving to California,” Kent said.

All of us froze in place. “W-what?” Luke said.

“She’s going to stay with the woman who did our flowers, her friend Cece. Anna’s been trying to talk her out of it all week, but she called this morning to say that she booked a flight out tomorrow,” Kent explained.

I glared over at Luke and I noticed Christian glaring too. Even the other guys at the table, though not as angry, had their eyes on Luke with disdain. Not only had we lost Khloe in our relationship, but now she was moving out of Texas? We’d never see her again. My heart ached and I actually felt like I could cry. Never see Khloe again? I did not agree to that.

Luke stood up suddenly from the table. “I’m going after her.”

“What?” Kent said.

“I have to go. I have to tell her to her face that I’m sorry. I can convince her to forgive us, I know it,” Luke said.

Kent shook his head. “Dude, forget it. She’s torn up right now, the last thing she wants is to see you.”

“Yeah, you went after her back in Puerto Rico too, and you just made it worse,” Christian said.

“I wasn’t going to lie to her,” Luke demanded. “I have to go.”

“We can’t,” Mason said suddenly and all of our eyes shot to him. “We have to give her space now.”

Luke’s jaw dropped. “But—”

Mason grabbed Luke by the arm and pulled him back down into his chair. “They say if you love something, you have to let it go. Khloe will take the time she needs and if she feels like she can find it in her heart to forgive us, after everything we’ve said, then she’ll come back. If she doesn’t, then that’s her answer and we have to respect that.”

“Mason’s right,” Cody said. “We all fucked up when we agreed to diminish her to points like that. Whether Luke was the one who let her see it or not, this is our punishment. We’ve said all we can say, it’s up to her now.”

The table fell to silence as we realized that what Mason and Cody were saying was true. We had to just wait and hope that Khloe would come around. If she didn’t, we’d respect that. We’d have to.

22

Khloe

I sat in the airport waiting for my flight to California. I sent my friend Cecilia “Cece” Cassini a text to let her know I’d arrived at the airport and would see her in a few hours. She texted back almost instantly telling me that she couldn’t wait to see me, but wished that I wasn’t so heartbroken. I thought back a few weeks to when it was me comforting Jordan who was heartbroken from several men. When she was sitting on my couch, explaining her situation to me, all I could think to myself was, ‘the signs were right in front of you, how did you not see it?’ Maybe that same cruel god who’d been haunting me since I first saw Luke walk into the very first meeting of Kent’s groomsmen was still determined to see to it that I was punished for a sin I didn’t realize I’d committed. How cruelly ironic that it would be me sitting in the hot seat, wondering how I’d missed the signs and allowed myself to be hurt so badly. Of course those men didn’t actually think of me as anything more than meat; how could they? Luke hadn’t changed, he had just given over more power to his dick.

After getting back from Puerto Rico, I tried to return to normal. Jordan was still staying at my place and it was beginning to look like she’d be there for a while. Despite the fact that she had been through something similar, I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it with her. I was too embarrassed. I had only let the guys in for a few days; I chalked it up to getting swept up in the moment in a different country. That’s what I tried to convince Jordan of. There was nothing that happened that I couldn’t put behind me. That’s what I tried to convince myself, but suddenly the guys were everywhere. Even when they were just Kent’s stupid groomsmen, I could avoid them when I didn’t have to see them, but now that I had feelings for them, I couldn’t leave my house without finding one of them. At first, I thought they were trying to be places that I was, but then they started calling and texting me non-stop and I realized that if any of them realized they were in the same place as me, they would have acted on it.