Читать книгу Best Friends, Secret Lovers - Jessica Lemmon - Страница 10

Prologue

“Twenty minutes minimum, or else she’ll tell everyone you’re horrendous in bed.”

“If you’re down there for longer than seven minutes, you dumb Brit, you have no idea what you’re doing.”

“Spoken like a guy who has no idea what he’s doing.”

Flynn Parker leaned back in his chair, his broken leg propped on the ottoman, and listened to his two friends argue about sex. Pleasing women in particular.

“If either of you knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t be single,” he informed his buddies.

Gage Fleming and Reid Singleton blinked over at Flynn as if they’d forgotten he was sitting there. Drunk as they were, they might have. Gage grabbed the nearly empty whiskey bottle resting on Flynn’s footstool and splashed another inch into Reid’s glass and his own.

But not Flynn’s. Thanks to the pain medication he was on, the only buzz he would be enjoying was courtesy of Percocet.

“You’re one to talk,” Reid said, his British accent slurred from the drink. “Your ring finger is currently uninhabited.”

“The reason for this trip.” Gage clanked his glass with Reid’s, then with Flynn’s water bottle.

Flynn would drink to that. His recent split from Veronica was what drove them all up here, to the mountains in Colorado to go skiing. The last time they were in Flynn’s father’s cabin had been their sophomore year in college. The damn place must be a time machine because they’d devolved into kids just by being here.

Gage and Reid had been nonstop swapping stories, bragging about their alleged prowess, and Flynn had been foolish enough to try the challenging slope...again. His lack of practice led to his taking a snowy tumble down the hill. Just like the last time, he’d ended up in the hospital. Unlike the last time, he’d broken a bone.

Skiing wasn’t his forte.

So. Veronica.

The ex-wife who had recently ruined his life and his outlook. His buddies had come here under the guise of pulling him out of his funk, but he knew they were mostly here because they hadn’t left each other’s sides since they were in college. Sure, Reid had fled back home to London for a short time, but he’d come back. They’d all known he would.

Before he boarded the plane for this vacation, Flynn had learned two things: One, that his father’s diagnosis of “pneumonia” was terminal cancer and Emmons Parker would likely die soon, making fifty-three the age to beat for Flynn; and two, that when he returned home he’d be sitting in his father’s office with the title of president behind his name.

Running Monarch was all Flynn had ever wanted.

Was.

Despite years of showing an interest and trying to please his father, Emmons Parker had shooed Flynn away rather than pulled him in. Now the empire was on Flynn’s shoulders, and his alone.

Reid howled with laughter at something Gage said and Flynn blinked his friends into focus. No, he wasn’t alone. He had Reid, and Gage, and the best friend who’d been a part of his life longer than those two, Sabrina Douglas. His best friends worked at Monarch with him, and with them in his corner, Flynn knew he could get through this.

The senior employees were going to freak out when they found out Flynn was going to be president. He’d been accused of “coasting” before and would be in charge of all of their well-beings, which Flynn took as seriously as his next line of thought—the pact he’d been ruminating about since before his leg snapped in two on that slope.

“Remember that pact we made in college? The one where we swore never to get married.”

Reid let out a hearty “Ha!” UK-born Reid Singleton was planning on staying as unattached as his last name implied. “Right here in this room, I believe.”

Gage pursed his lips, his brows closing in the slightest bit over his nose. “We were hammered on Jägerbombs that night. God knows what else we said.”

“I didn’t adhere to it. I should have.” Flynn had been swept up by love and life. He hadn’t taken that pact seriously. A mistake.

Gage frowned. “It’s understandable why you’d say that now. You’ve been through the wringer. Back then no one expected to find permanence.”

“None of us wanted to,” Reid corrected.

Flynn pointed at Gage with his water bottle. “You and this new girl have been dating, what, a month?”

“Something like that.”

“Get out now.” Reid offered a hearty belch. He lifted his eyebrows and downed his portion of whiskey, cheeks filling before he swallowed it down. “You and I, Gage, we stuck to the pact.” He smiled, then added, “If you were Flynn, you’d have married her by now.”

Reid wasn’t exaggerating. Flynn and Veronica had been married on their thirty-day dating anniversary. Insanity. That they’d lasted three years was more a testament to Flynn’s stubbornness than their meant-to-be-ness.

The final straw had been Veronica screwing his brother.

Whatever, he thought, as the sting of betrayal shocked his system afresh. He’d never liked Julian much anyway.

“He’s doing the thing,” Reid muttered not quietly, given his state of inebriation. His gaze met Flynn’s, but he spoke to Gage. “Where he’s thinking of her.”

“I can hear you, wanker.” Flynn lost his marriage, not his hearing. Though “lost” would imply he’d misplaced it. It hadn’t been misplaced, it’d been disassembled. Piece by piece until the felling blow was Veronica’s head turning for none other than his older, more artsy brother. She was the free spirit, and Flynn was the numbers guy. The boring guy. The emotionally constipated guy.

Her words.

“Hey.” Gage snapped his fingers. “Knock it off, Flynn. We’re here to celebrate your divorce, not have you traipse down depression trail.”

But Flynn wasn’t budging on this. He’d given it a lot of thought since he’d tumbled down that hill. It was like life had to literally knock him on his ass to get him to wake up.

“I’m reinstating the pact,” Flynn said, his tone grave. Even Reid stopped smiling. “No marriage. Not ever. It’s not worth the heartache, or the broken leg, or hanging out with the two worst comrades in this solar system.”

At that Reid looked wounded, Gage affronted.

“Piss off, Parker.”

“Yeah,” Gage agreed. “What Reid said.”

With effort, Flynn sat up, carefully moving every other limb save his broken leg so he could lean forward. “I don’t want either of you to go through this. Not ever.”

“You’re serious,” Gage said after a prolonged silence.

Flynn remained silent.

Gage watched him a moment, a flash of sobriety in the depths of his brown eyes. “Okay. What’d we say?”

“We promised never to get married,” Reid said. “And then we swore on our tallywackers.”

Gage chuckled at Reid’s choice of phrasing.

“Which means yours should have fallen off by now.” Reid’s face contorted as he studied Flynn. “It didn’t, did it?”

“No.” Flynn gave him an impatient look. “It didn’t.”

Reid swiped his hand over his brow in mock relief.

“Come on, Parker, you’re high on drugs,” Gage said with a head shake. “We made that pact because your mom was sick and your dad was miserable, and because Natalie had just dumped me. We were all heartbroken then.” He considered Reid. “Except for Reid. I’m not sure why he did it.”

“Never getting married anyway.” Reid shrugged. “All for one.”

“So? Swear again,” Flynn repeated. “On your tallywackers.” That earned a smile from Reid. “Big or small, they count.”

The first time they’d made the pact none of them truly knew heartache. Breakups were hard, but the decimation of a marriage following the ultimate betrayal? Much worse. Reid and Gage didn’t know how bad things could get and Flynn would like to keep it that way. He didn’t want either of them to feel as eviscerated as he did right now—as he had for the last three months. All pain he could have avoided if he’d taken that pact seriously.

His buddies might never find themselves dating women who slept with their family members, but it wouldn’t matter how the divorce happened, only that it did. He’d heard the statistics. That 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce was up to around 75 nowadays.

He’d heard some people say they didn’t harbor regret because if they’d never married, and divorced, they wouldn’t have learned life’s lessons. Blah, blah, blah.

Bullshit.

Flynn regretted saying “I do” to Veronica all the way down to his churning stomach. The heartbreak over her choosing his brother would have been more bearable if she’d told him up front rather than three years into an insufferable marriage.

“I swear,” Reid said, almost too serious as he crashed his glass into Flynn’s water bottle, then looked at Gage expectantly.

“Fine. This is stupid, but fine.” Gage lifted his glass.

“Say it,” Flynn said, not cracking the slightest smile. “Or it doesn’t count.”

“I promise,” Gage said. “I won’t get married.”

“Say never, and we all drink,” Flynn said.

“Wait.” Reid held up a finger. “What if one of us caves again? Like hearts-and-flowers Gage over here.”

“Shut up, Reid.”

“One of your monthlong girlfriends could turn into the real thing if you’re not careful.”

“I’m careful,” Gage growled.

“You’d better be.” Flynn stared down his friends. The enormity of the situation settled around them, the only sound in the room the fire crackling in the background. “The lie of forever isn’t worth it in the end.”

Reid eyed Flynn’s broken leg, a reminder of what Flynn’s stupidity had cost him, and then exchanged glances with Gage. These men were more like Flynn’s brothers than his own flesh and blood. They’d do anything for him—including vowing to remain single forever.

“Never,” Gage agreed, holding up his own glass.

Reid and Flynn nodded in unison, and then they drank on it.