One Last Time (Loveless Brothers 5)

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Please don’t burn my brewery down,” I tell him, standing. “Come on. What did you do? Do we have enough fire extinguishers for tonight?”

“We’re fine,” he says, soothingly. “I don’t even start worrying until the flames are three feet high.”

As I walk past him, through the door, I shoot him a not today glare.

He just grins at me.Chapter ThreeDelilahThe doorman opens the door, and I thank him as I step across the threshold and into the cold winter night.

“Please?” Ava says, still behind me. “Come on, Delilah. It’ll be fun. Come on. Come on!”

“Ava, I —”

“Come on.”

“I don’t want—”

“Come onnnnnnnnnnn. Delilah. Come on. Come on!”

I stop in the middle of the brick walkway, keys in my hand, my car already pulled into the circular driveway of the Blue Ridge Country Club, where Ava’s rehearsal dinner has just concluded.

“It’ll be fun,” my little sister says, stopping in front of me and looking up, hair swept back from her bright blue eyes. “You do remember fun, right? It’s the thing you do when you’re having fun?”

I didn’t count how many glasses of wine she had at the dinner, but it was several.

“I like fun,” I say, a little defensively. “But I have to get up early tomorrow because someone is getting married and decided that I have to get my hair done first in case it takes, and I quote, ‘ten hours to wrestle into shape.’”

She blinks up at me like she can’t believe her ears.

“Delilah,” she says. “It’s nine-thirty.”

“I also want to call Lainey and see how her match went,” I say, grabbing my keys from my purse, then shrugging it back onto my shoulder. “They were playing the Blacksburg Brawlers tonight, and you know those college girls are all twenty years old and completely fearless.”

That’s all true, but I also just want to talk to Lainey because I feel like I almost got into it with Seth today and I don’t even know why. I just know I’ve got that distant, trampled feeling I get after we fight, like I’m a patch of grass in front of an elementary school.

Ava rolls her eyes, tosses her hair, and plunges her hand into her own purse, coming out with her phone and typing furiously. Behind her, the door opens again, and our cousins Wyatt and Georgia walk out.

“Seth won’t be there,” she says, half-distracted, her face glowing with the reflected light. “He’s the owner, not the bartender.”

I feel like my heart slips a gear. Kerthunk.

“What? I don’t care if Seth is there,” I tell her. “That’s not why I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go because —”

“You get weird every time I mention his name,” she says, still looking at her phone.

Well, we can barely see each other without either fucking or fighting, I think.

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re weird now,” she says, glancing up at me and raising one eyebrow.

“I’m not weird, I’m tired and slightly annoyed and you’re being a total Bridezilla,” I say.

“Ooh, throw a shoe,” says a voice off to the side.

“No one is throwing a shoe,” I say, calmly, as Georgia and Wyatt join us on the walkway.

“I could throw a shoe,” Ava says, tilting her head to one side. “And I’d get away with it. I’m the bride.”

“Probably,” Wyatt agrees.

“See?” Ava says brightly, and then her phone dings. “Ah! Cool, Lainey’s gonna meet us there.”

“What?”

“Lainey,” Ava says, loudly and slowly. “Is going to meet us —” she circles her forefinger overhead, indicating the four people standing there, “— at the brewery.”

“You’re a monster,” I tell her.

“A Bridezilla,” she grins. “Come on. Lainey’s expecting you and it’ll be a fun, exciting family time! And your hot ex won’t even be there.”

Thank God it’s dark, because I can feel my face warming up.

“I already told you, I don’t care —”

“Being weird!”

“Your ex is coming?” asks Georgia. “Wait, is your hot ex Nolan?”

She sounds confused, and I can’t blame her. Hot isn’t the first word most people associate with my ex-husband.

“She’s talking about a guy I dated in high school,” I explain.

“Sethhhhhhhh,” Ava says, sounding like a drunk, lisping snake. “And he’s not going to be there, which is the whole point. When I bring him up, Delilah gets weird.”

“I do not —"

“Seth. Seth. Seth. SETH. SEE—”

“Okay!” I hiss at my increasingly-loud little sister. “Fine. I’ll go for half an hour, but I am thirty years old and I can’t get wasted until three in the morning and get up at seven and be fine anymore.”

“My God, thirty,” says Georgia. “Positively ancient. How are you standing there without blowing away into dust?”

Georgia is twenty-nine.

“Must be a miracle,” I tell her, as Ava steps closer to me.

Then she sandwiches my face in her hands, points my head toward her, and stares deep into my eyes.

“Delilah,” she whispers. “You are not old. You are a wonderful, beautiful unicorn. You are a tiger. You are a fierce, strong, unicorn tigress and I believe in you.”