The Worst Best Man

I love him so much I can’t breathe because I feel like a piece of me is missing.”

I love him so much it scares me,”

Don’t argue about not belonging to me. I belong to you. I’m yours. All in, remember? It goes both ways.”

I love when you look at me like that,” he gritted out the words.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m the center of your universe.”

Tell me you want me. Tell me I can have you.”

“Take me, Aiden.”

When you love someone, when you really care about them, nothing is more important to you than seeing them happy.

“You’ll have a coat, and I requested a table by the fireplace. You’ll probably be sweating by the end of dinner,” Pru predicted, sashaying around in a sleek black sheath.

“Why aren’t your boobs on display for the world to see?” Frankie asked, glancing down at her own overflowing cleavage.

“I’m a married woman and a B cup, babe. There isn’t much to display. And you’re insane if you don’t buy that dress.”

Frankie studied herself in the mirror, barely recognizing herself. The hair, the dress, the diamond and—God, was that platinum?—bracelet that she’d just happened to have in her bag.

“You know what we need now?” Pru asked.

“I’m hoping you’re going to say froyo, but I have a feeling it’s shoes,” Frankie sighed.

“Shoes!”

When Pru ducked back into her own fitting room, Frankie checked the price tag on the dress again. It made her feel ill.

She pulled out her phone.

Frankie: When you gave me this credit card, what kind of budget were you thinking?

Aiden: I doubt very much that there’s anything you’d buy that would cause me to so much as blink.

Frankie looked down at the dress again. Wanna bet?

Frankie: I’d feel better if you could give me a number to stay under. I found a dress, but there are more digits than I’m used to. And Pru is chanting “shoes, shoes, shoes,” one dressing room over.

She could picture him chuckling to himself at his backwoods girlfriend panicking over pennies.

Aiden: I love seeing you treat yourself. And I love it more that I can be part of it. How about keeping it under fifty grand for today?

He had to be fucking with her. Frankie couldn’t begin to imagine a world in which fifty grand was blow money. Of course, knowing Aiden, he’d named a sum lower than usual to appease her.

He padded into the living room, his gaze settling on the decanter on the side table. It had become his habit to have a glass as soon as he walked in the door. And another one while he worked for another hour or two in his home office cleaning up what he hadn’t gotten to during the day. And a third while reading or catching the game.

He didn’t drink to get drunk. He drank to numb himself. It wasn’t pain that he felt. It was something more nebulous. Dissatisfaction? Emptiness? Loneliness?

Looking around the rest of the room, was it any wonder? He’d hired a designer. People of his stature didn’t choose their own furnishings. The company had done a reasonable job filling the place with things that he mostly liked or at least didn’t have to think about. The leather couch was a little too modern, a little too hard. But it looked right in the space.

His father always commented that the wealthy didn’t have time to sit around on their furniture. They were too busy making money.

Aiden’s mother had always rolled her eyes at the sentiment and insisted that Ferris sit and talk. They’d usually get five, maybe ten, minutes out of him before he heaved himself out of the silk upholstered wingback chair and headed back to work. Everything to his father was work. Success was defined by the number of hours a man put in and the number of zeroes in his portfolio. It was a cold way to look at the world. And Aiden had fallen into the same trap.

He traced a finger over the marble surround of the fireplace he never sat in front of. The leather club chairs flanking the fire had never held guests. The fully stocked bar built into the bookcase served only one.

He’d considered this place to be his sanctuary, but today it felt like a two-dimensional replica of a home, a life.

Aiden’s gaze flicked back to the scotch. There was no siren’s song coming from the crystal. Only a habit. He hated weakness, and the fact that he’d managed to develop a crutch without noticing it was embarrassing. He’d confessed to Frankie that he thought he drank too much. Why had he told her that? Why had he given her that weapon?

He scraped a hand over his face and wandered over to the piano he didn’t know how to play. He didn’t feel safe sharing things with her. Not when she’d clearly marked it as a one-way street. But he couldn’t stop from offering up pieces of himself to her. Sacrifices to a cruel goddess, he mused.