But so what? I’d be gone.
And this time, I was never coming back.
CHAPTER TWO
Brody
The floatplane landed in the calm waters of Cathedral Cove just as the sun was setting at our backs, the light fading over the seemingly-boundless waters of the Pacific Ocean. The cove, a tiny inlet lined with towering spruce, hemlock and western cedar trees, was tucked up along the coastline of Vancouver Island, accessible only by water and air.
Even I could admit it was an epic location for a wedding.
The main lodge building, where the ceremony would take place, appeared through the trees on a rocky promontory, overlooking the water with its towering front walls of glass and what I could only assume were heart-stopping views of the cove and the Pacific beyond; it wasn’t called Cathedral Cove Resort for nothing. I could already see why Katie chose it.
And why her best friend, Devi, had sent flowers and steak dinners to my house for a week after I called a guy I knew, who knew the owners of the resort, and twisted a few rubber arms.
Really wasn’t all that difficult to convince them to book out the entire place for Jesse Mayes’ rock star wedding on semi-short notice. Turned out, they were fans. But I enjoyed the steak anyway.
As the plane growled up to the docks, it occurred to me that I really hadn’t been out of the city, into nature, in far too fucking long. This wedding would be a great excuse to—mostly—forget about work for a couple of days, unplug, and breathe some clean, green air.
I should really be happy right now.
Or at the very least, looking forward to spending the next couple of days with my best friends, my friends who’d become, over the years, my family, at what was sure to be one of the best parties of the year, probably the best party of Jesse’s life—because we were celebrating his marriage to Katie Bloom, a woman who made him ridiculously happy.
But I wasn’t happy.
I was far from happy.
Fortunately, the loud drone of the plane and the distractingly stunning view made convenient cover for the fact that I couldn’t manage conversation with Amanda, much less look her in the eye. But as the plane settled and we climbed out, the crisp, cold wind off the water smacking me in the face, I knew I had to get my head together. I couldn’t exactly mope around like some adolescent asshole for the next two days.
If you don’t know me now, you never did.
Jesus, that girl knew what to say to piss me the fuck off.
No; not girl. Woman.
No mistake, she was a woman now, and didn’t that just drop-kick me right in the guts. Because I’d missed it. All of it.
Everything Jessa Mayes would become… she’d gone and become it without me.
And now, with one shitty little comment, she thought she could just wipe away the years I had known her? All the time we’d spent together as kids, and then, as we got older… She could just take that all away from me?
Well, fuck her.
Maybe it meant nothing to her, but she didn’t get to decide what it meant to me. She didn’t get to tell me what I knew or didn’t know, and she sure as shit didn’t get to tell me how I felt about it.
You’re angry with me.
Yeah. No shit.
I was also more than a little pissed at myself for losing my cool. But I just couldn’t fucking handle it. Being that close to her… every caveman urge I’d ever had rearing up in violent protest that I had her, that close, again, and she was gonna slip through my fingers, again.
Consider me dead to you.
Jesus. What a fucking asshole.
Amanda turned to me and smiled, her short blonde hair dancing in the breeze. She looked like a Canadian beer commercial with her white teeth, tight jeans and short bomber jacket, her plaid shirt tied above her navel.
I smiled back.
Our bags were whisked away as a guide from the resort gave us a quick tour of the grounds, which pretty much consisted of a maze-like cedar-planked boardwalk winding through the ancient trees. It was suspended over the rocky, uneven ground, and far below, a stream that meandered through the rainforest, feeding the hot springs on the rim of the cove. We were already late, so once we’d stopped off at our cabin and changed into our dinner clothes, we headed straight up to the lodge. The tiny amber lights that had been strung along the boardwalk had begun to sparkle in the dusk; I had no idea if the lights were always there or if they’d been hung for the wedding, but it was beautiful.
Along with the scents of cool, damp cedar, fresh spruce needles and moss, the bird calls and chirps among the trees, the water crashing on the rocks below… the whole scene was pretty breathtaking. So breathtaking, I was pretty sure Amanda hadn’t yet noticed that I hadn’t said a word to her since the plane hit air.
Or maybe that was wishful thinking.
The scents of cooking—lemon, dill, something buttery and something else kind of sweet, like fresh baking—wafted out from the back of the lodge, and the scent of a wood-burning fire, smoky and inviting, clung in the slightly misty air off the water. I took a few slow, deep breaths, just trying to soak it all in, collect my thoughts the way I might before a particularly unsavory business meeting.
But this unease had nothing to do with business.
As we approached the lodge, I could make out the thump of bass and the unmistakable, bittersweet rhythm of The Black Keys’ “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Which was really fucking unfortunate, since a Black Keys song had once imprinted on me in a way that I’d never be able to separate hearing this band from the memory of
