Page 55

“Perfect.”

“Oz did say that he’s finding the source of the feed mobile. You know what that means.”

“It’s on someone’s phone.” Jonas laughed like Rory had told him a great joke. “Okay. Keep tracking it.”

“Will do,” Rory replied, signaling the bartender for a beer. “But first I’m going to sit here and watch the game for a minute.”

His bland smile made it clear that the game he planned to watch was Jonas pretending a bunch of drunken frat brothers could take him at pool. Or anything else.

Jonas laughed, because all he did in character was laugh, and made his way back to the group of groomsmen to lose in style.

***

“How was your day as a run-of-the-mill groomsman?” Bethan asked him later that evening, smirking.

The smirk was a gift. It was grounding. Because Jonas was still recovering from the shock of the sight of Bethan dressed in a skimpy little thing that hugged her body andsparkled. Little boots that made him remember, in excruciating detail, all the things she was capable of doing with those legs of hers. And her hair a deliberate sort of tousle that he knew perfectly well would have any man who looked at her thinking about what it would be like to get his hands in there.

It was certainly all he could think about.

As if he’d actually gone and turned into a regular man today, despite himself—but Jonas knew it wasn’t the frat boys or the beer. It was her.

Always and again, it was her.

His chest felt uncomfortably hollow, which was the last thing he needed at this rehearsal dinner for a wedding that had already required more attendance at various events—not to mention war plotting the night before—than entire years of missions he’d executed.

“I’m apparently an honorary member of Pi Kappa whatever,” he said. “Be amazed.”

But he couldn’t seem to keep himself from smiling at that, and it wasn’t as fake as it should have been.

Bethan threaded her arm through his as they walked with everyone else into the grand courtyard of the space Matthew’s parents had rented for tonight’s dinner. “I really didn’t expect there to be quite so much family stuff. Here at this family wedding. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I was under the impression that my family had all agreed on a hands-off policy. Years ago.”

Jonas didn’t point out that all the hands-off policies he’d ever known about had failed. Spectacularly. All around him.

“This is the part I don’t get,” he said, even while inside him there was something far more worrying than the usual ice and stone. Or even that hollowness. It was as if something had melted, or the stone had crumbled, but he didn’tknow what to do about any of that. He’d been playing a part all day, and playing it well, but now she was here. And the way she looked at him, her green eyes too bright and every last inch of her delectable and lethal at once, made him...feel.

And left him disarmed.

Not a state he enjoyed. Or had experienced very often.

In fact, he’d experienced that sensation more often with her than with anyone else alive, because he usually got the better of individuals who actually disarmed him. And made certain they didn’t repeat that favor with anyone else.

“The rehearsal dinner?” Bethan leaned in closer to him, so he could note that she smelled of sunshine and flowers.Not helpful, idiot. “Some people only invite out-of-town guests to rehearsal dinners, which is supposedly all that’s required. Others don’t do anything at all, depending. Matthew’s family has obviously taken the opposite approach.”

“I don’t mean that.”

Inside the white-walled courtyard there were flowers bursting everywhere, cheerful lanterns strewn about overhead, and a Spanish-style fountain in the center. It was all very festive and brightly lit, with deferential waitstaff circulating among the guests, bearing platters filled with delicious finger foods and drinks at the ready.

Jonas was used to feeling out of place. Usually he used whatever role he was playing to ease his way, but that felt harder when it was only the two of them. Much harder than it should have been. “You’ve always made it seem like you don’t get along with your family at all.”

Bethan wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t, really.”

And maybe it was something about how intimate all this already was. She was standing so close to him, hugging his arm the way she might have if they really were a couple. And he’d succumbed to that ache inside of him and given in to his darkest yearnings after years of containing those things within him—and the world hadn’t ended as he’dexpected it would. If anything, all that longing and yearning was worse.

A small taste had only made him want to drown himself in her.

But where he normally might have said something cold or cutting to put them back on footing he understood, tonight he studied her face instead.

“Maybe you don’t want to live with them again, but you all seem to get along just fine,” he said. The way a boyfriend might because he wasconcernedabout his girlfriend andinvestedin her feelings. About anything and everything. It should have felt as foreign to him as all the rest of the parts he played on demand, but it didn’t. Because it was Bethan. “Even your father.”