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There were a lot of things about himself that Laurel Van Marcke liked. He had money, great hair, good teeth, and an impressive pedigree. He was educated, great at talking to people. Well-traveled. Just under six feet.

But none of that mattered as he sat in the back of the car his mother had hired, an abyss of self-loathing stretching out in front of him.

Of course, that might have had something to do with the cocaine he’d done the night before. Or the fact that he’d stayed up talking with Melody until dawn had streamed in through the windows, the infernal morning sounds of birdsong and traffic boring into his brain. Or maybe it was because, now that he was no longer high, the drinks he’d had last night were hitting him like a freight train.

Or maybe he just hated coming home.

Laurel pressed his cheek against the cool pane of the window. Outside, the familiar live oaks reached out over his mother’s front drive like witchy arms, streamers of Spanish moss dripping from them. He was sweating, despite the AC, his heart pinging around like a pinball. His sinuses were fucked, the back of his mouth tasted like paint, and there was a slow, liquid stupidity seeping into his head that told him that the rest of the day was going to be an exercise in torture.

As if it wouldn’t have been already.

There was something morbidly surreal about going to a dog wedding on a hot day. Or any day, really. Laurel stumbled getting out of the car, the humidity slapping him in the face like a wet towel. His mother’s front lawn was a confectionary whirlwind of floral arrangements and tulle drapery, beige clusters of balloons sprouting up everywhere like some kind of medical anomaly. A string quartet was, absurdly, playing an instrumental cover of Who Let the Dogs Out , which made him burst into nervous laughter before quickly covering his mouth.

There was a heart-shaped arch set up at the end of an aisle of chairs, but the ceremony hadn’t started yet. The guest of honor, his mother’s lachrymose basset hound, Jasper, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was his intended bride, a lhasa apso who had an extensive Instagram following. Laurel felt a little twinge of envy that the dogs got to be inside while he was out here fighting for his life. The wedding was ostensibly a charity event, raising donations for the local humane society, but Laurel knew its real purpose was to feed his mother’s ego. She had never turned down an excuse to throw a party.

Someone circulating with a tray offered Laurel something called a “pup-mosa,” which he took with a wince, almost wanting to apologize to the server—that they had to work for his mom, or that the word pup-mosa had to exit their mouth in any context, he wasn’t sure. The drink tasted like it would make his headache worse. He blotted his forehead with a napkin. God, it was hot out. He hadn’t been sure of the dress code, but a suit coat seemed to have been a bad idea.

No one had noticed him yet. Across the lawn, a flash of white and a garish hat: his mother, at the center of a knot of other ladies. He recognized most of them from years of society functions past. Laurel felt claustrophobia climbing up his throat at the thought of the inevitable swarm, the flurry of probing yet polite questions. What was he doing with his life? When would he settle down, get married, free his poor mother from the world of canine-only nuptials?

He wiped his face again, blinking sweat out of his eyes, and caught sight of Chip Reyes, alone at a table, a glass of bourbon in his hand. Thank God, he had come. Laurel hadn’t been sure he would make the drive. Chip lived up closer to Charleston, where most of his clients were. He looked good, his dark curls cropped shorter than Laurel was used to and his lightweight jacket hanging off him in an expensive way. His face broke into a smile as he saw Laurel waving at him.

“Laurel, hey.”

Laurel gave him a hug, clapping him on the back.

“Good to see you, man.”

“You, too.” Chip gave him an assessing look. “Late night?”

Laurel ran a hand through his hair, wondering how dark his under-eye circles were. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Hung out with Melody.”

Chip sighed. “Partying?”

Laurel shrugged and tried another excruciating sip of the pup-mosa. Every time he came back into town, he felt a little worse, blundering into Chip’s life. Chip had a successful law practice and a sense of personal responsibility and probably just wanted to leave his wayward college friends behind.

“Well, how did it go?” Chip asked. He looked at Laurel, then down into his glass as if the ice were particularly fascinating.

“You know,” Laurel said. Friendship with Melody Harper wasn’t even a one-way street, more of a parking lot full of problems and sad shit that Laurel didn’t feel qualified to deal with. He’d barely gotten a word in edgewise; he wasn’t even sure he’d told her about the guy he’d met in Vegas, the guy whose name he hadn’t learned and who had completely rocked his world, rearranged his guts, shifted his paradigm, etc. If anyone would appreciate a torrid hookup story, it was Melody. But Laurel didn’t think it had come up during the many hours they’d spent talking. She’d been asleep in front of the TV when he’d left, a bright yellow Bojangles box cradled in her lap.

“Well. God bless her, as my mom would say.”

“Yeah.” Laurel scanned the crowd for Howie Bonard’s handsome, punchable face, but the man who had ruined Melody’s life didn’t seem to be in attendance. Good. Laurel wasn’t sure he could have tolerated making nice with him today.

“Denise has outdone herself. This is way more elaborate than I was expecting for a charity event.”

“I know. She was raving on the phone about this new party planner she has.”

“Oh yeah? Isn’t that the third one in—”

“Like a year? Yeah.” Laurel grimaced. His mother’s new ange genie —as she had described him in questionable French—was probably one of the many creative young gay men that she and her best friend collected like Pokemon, showed off like fancy cats, and eventually discarded. He felt sorry for the guy. “She must be terrible to work for. And—”

“Here she comes, by the way.”

Laurel swallowed the rest of his drink and squared his shoulders, preparing for the onslaught. Denise Cabot Van Marke looked great: tanned and toned, her face tweaked and pinched and stretched into something resembling a tasteful forty-five, her long brown hair swept over one shoulder. It always gave Laurel an uncomfortable little sensation of coldness in his stomach, realizing how similar they looked. She could have been his sister.

He felt his jaw clench as she swept him into a hug, her perfume overwhelmingly strong, something powdery and sweet. “Laurel, honey. Oh, let me look at you. How are you, darling?” She pulled back, holding him at arm’s length. “You look tired.”

“Yeah.” Laurel forced himself to smile. “Jetlag.”

“How was Belgium?”

“Great,” he said. “Cold.”

“And how’s your father?”

“Good, good.” Ancient, good-natured, obscenely rich. Rattling around in his estate, laughing at his own obscure jokes in French. Laurel’s dad was a baron, which was probably why Denise had married him, and he was remarkably easygoing and didn’t speak a lot of English, which was probably why they had stayed married for eight years, getting divorced when Laurel was three. Laurel could barely communicate with his dad, and he’d really only gotten to know him recently, as an adult. But he liked the guy.

“You’ll have to tell me everything,” his mother said, in a way that suggested the complete opposite. Seeming to notice Chip for the first time, she exclaimed, “Oh, Chip! I’m so glad you could make it. How’s the practice?”

Laurel stared into space while his mother and Chip talked, willing the buzzing in his head to go away. It was too bright out, the sunlight searing and inescapable, and his teeth, when he ran his tongue across them, tasted like artificial sweetener and something fouler. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Chip was complimenting the decorations, and Denise had Laurel by the arm, saying, “Oh, thank you, but I can’t take responsibility for it. This was all Casey’s brain child. You’ll have to meet him, he’s just fabulous. And you must come talk to the girls, Laurel. They all can’t wait to see you again.”

It was the last thing he wanted, to be paraded around in front of the “girls”, his mother’s society friends who had all left girlhood behind eons ago, trying to brush off their mentions of eligible young daughters and nieces. And he was even less interested in meeting the poor, beleaguered party planner. God, he should have woken Melody up before leaving and seen if she had any Xanax, because the pup-mosa had made everything worse, and he could feel his stomach churning, a slick, cold layer of sweat gathering on the back of his neck.

Laurel focused on his feet as his mother pulled him across the yard. He could feel the sun beating down on his scalp, even through the thick mass of his hair. The afternoon bugs had come out, flies and midges droning in his ears. His teeth were on edge as his mother presented him to Meredith, her most current best friend and the owner of the other half of the dog couple. He had met almost everyone before, grown up with them, but the faces were a blur. A sea of big hats and big smiles and even bigger hair surrounded him, muslin and crepe and floral mumus. There were too many people here, so many that Laurel felt like he was drowning, and he cast around for an excuse, a way out the crowd. Someone caught his eye: a tall, slender figure over by the marital arch, readjusting a streamer of ribbon. An achingly familiar shock of bleach-blond hair.

It couldn’t be. He was seeing things. The heat was getting to him, and he was still all messed up from last night—

“Oh, there he is!” Laurel’s mother cried, clapping her hands. The man turned, and Laurel forgot how to breathe for a second. “Laurel, meet Casey Bright, the genius behind this whole operation.”

But he didn’t need to meet Casey Bright. Laurel was very, very familiar with every inch of Casey Bright, and if he’d still been holding a glass, he would have dropped it, or maybe fainted dead away like a true southern belle, because the last time he’d been face-to-face with this man had been three months ago, and they’d been kissing in the hot tub attached to his suite in Vegas, with the neon city sprawling out beneath them and dawn starting to creep into the sky.

You look like you could ruin my life , Laurel had said, sidling up to him at the bar.

The mystery man—Casey’s—dark gaze flicking over him, amusement and heat simmering under the surface. Looking at you? I think I might want to .

Laurel forced himself back to the present, clearing his throat. Casey was only a couple of inches taller than him, but right now it could have been miles. He looked down at Laurel, face unreadable, just as it had been before. Something in his eyes spoke of disdain, or desire, or both.

Laurel held out a hand, hoping his palm wasn’t too sweaty. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

*

The ceremony passed in a blur. Laurel was vaguely aware of the damp hair curling at his temples, the white wicker chair digging into his thighs. A fan shaped like a paw was dangling from his fingers; he wasn’t sure who’d given it to him. Blood was roaring in his ears, and the world had a white-hot glare to it, like an overexposed photograph, the edges of everything indistinct. A camera shutter was going off incessantly. Jasper seemed more interested in eating floral arrangements than in getting married, and the string quartet had circled back through Who Let the Dogs Out a second time and were now playing I Want to Be Your Dog , which was an odd choice for any kind of wedding and made Laurel have to wipe his hands off on his shirtfront as an impression flashed in his head, the memory of the rough hotel carpet against his bare knees—

A shock of lust lurched through his stomach. The soles of his feet were tingling.

God, this was embarrassing.

Why in the fuck was Casey Bright working for his mom? They hadn’t shared professions, or even names, had agreed to keep everything anonymous, but just the same, he’d gotten the impression that Casey wasn’t the kind of person who compromised, let alone allowed himself to be bossed around or made a spectacle of. So why was he here, wrangling dogs for photos and readjusting the draperies and making sure everything was just so? Why was he making nice with the girls, letting them squeeze his arm and ruffle his hair and manhandle him, his head cocked, an easy smile across his face, his cream suit and pastel tie perfectly complementing his tan skin? Why was someone so effortlessly elegant at an event as tacky as a dog wedding, let alone spearheading it? Laurel felt like a big puddle of sweat and nervous twitches, watching him, and he looked away too late, heat flooding his face as he realized that Casey had noticed him staring.

He could feel Casey’s gaze sliding down his cheek, cool and deliberate as a caress.

They’d shaken hands. Casey had given no indication that they knew each other. Laurel couldn’t remember what he had said. Some dumb words, most likely; he’d always been good at smiling and nodding and saying dumb words.

And he was good at hiding things, too. You had to be, in a place where appearances mattered so much. But his heart was fluttering like a trapped bird, and he was having a hard time brushing this off. If he was being honest with himself, Casey had felt— significant . In a way that he knew he wouldn’t forget. In a way that was safe, because he could tuck the memory away and take it out for special occasions and compare every other guy to it and conveniently find them lacking.

Meeting him again had torpedoed all of that.

Laurel had to talk to him. Maybe if he talked to him, Casey wouldn’t seem so wonderful anymore. Maybe whatever spell he’d cast on him would be lifted. It was worth a try, anyway.

He got up, straightening his collar, and looked around for another drink.

*

His name hadn’t always been Casey Bright, but it was now, and would be for as long as he needed it to. Names didn’t really matter to the people he tended to work for—at least, not the names of their staff. What mattered was the persona, and the experience it sold. The perfect party planner. Friendly, non-threatening. An expert and an accessory. Glamorous, but not in a way that would upstage anyone. A shoulder to cry on and an ear to gossip into. (Never mind that Denise’s mean-spirited gossip left a bad taste in his mouth, and her tears meant nothing to him.)

Casey had been selling it flawlessly. Until this afternoon.

One of the flowers in the arrangement on the kitchen counter was sticking up a little too far above the others, and Casey pushed it down, bruising the petals. Shit. Now it was mangled, and even more noticeable than before. His hands were trembling. He couldn’t trust himself. He hoped they hadn’t been trembling when he’d shaken the hand of Denise’s son. He hoped Laurel hadn’t been able to feel his skin burning, the throb of blood in his palms.

Yes, he had known Laurel was rich. They hadn’t shared much about their backgrounds, but there had been an unmissable sense of moneyed self-satisfaction to him. Plenty of people were rich, though. And Laurel had been on his way to Belgium.

(Belgium, where Denise’s ex-husband, the baron, lived. Somehow, Casey hadn’t made the connection.)

A headache was starting up behind his left eye. The room was too hot and smelled overwhelmingly of petunias, and he stared down at the counter in a daze, forgetting why he’d come in here. To get ice, maybe, or to escape. He thought for a moment about putting his head in the freezer, resting his cheek on a packet of frozen vegetables. The little galley kitchen of the old plantation house was seldom used—Denise had had a newer, modern kitchen put in—so Casey had known he would be alone in here. By now he was extremely familiar with the layout of Denise’s house, as well as the inner workings of her mind. And yet he’d somehow missed that her wayward son was the same man he’d slept with. Had missed that Laurel was the same person as the little boy in all of her family photos. To be fair, the way she’d spoken about her son had always made Casey imagine he was straight. But the omission made Casey feel stupid, just the same. He hated feeling that way. It was suffocating in here, even more so than it was outside, and the patterns on the wallpaper were frenetic and too loud, making him dizzy.

He made himself take a breath, the air soupy and bathtub-warm.

“Okay,” Casey said out loud. He’d had his little moment. He flexed his shoulders, forcing his spine to straighten up. He’d put himself back together and go back out there. It wasn’t even that big of an issue, anyway. Surely Laurel knew how to be discreet. He had to; he probably had a pile of dirty little secrets even higher than Casey’s, so of course he wouldn’t say anything—

But that wasn’t the problem, his brain whispered. The problem was that things were overlapping in a way that he didn’t like. The carefully-curated sections of his life were scraping up against each other, and it set his teeth on edge.

He nearly let out a yelp as the door opened, his nails digging into the counter.

“I wasn’t looking for you,” Laurel Van Marcke said, standing in the doorway. “Or, I kind of was. But I also might throw up or have a heart attack if I have another one of those sugary drinks, and I know Mom keeps the good bourbon in here.” A sheepish grin crossed his face, and Casey, annoyingly, felt his heart do a little flutter.

He pressed his lips together. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Laurel’s presence here was like a stain on his suit, out-of-place, demanding his attention. An imperfection that threw off the whole.

There wasn’t anything remarkable about Laurel Van Marcke. At least, that had been Casey’s first impression. He was blandly handsome, harmlessly affable, and obviously spoiled. The kind of low-achieving golden boy that Casey had loathed in high school. And that had been the whole point, right? The loathing. That had been the premise behind the hookup. A kind of revenge against all those boys who were rewarded just for existing.

A weird way to get revenge, and not one Casey particularly wanted to unpack. But it had felt so good to have Laurel at his mercy.

He cleared his throat. “I trust we can both be adults about this.” His voice sounded obnoxiously prim to his own ears.

“Sure.” Laurel was still smiling. There were freckles on his cheeks, and Casey knew they also scattered down his neck and across his shoulders. “Do you mind?”

“You being here?”

“No, I mean, can you move? I need to get into that cabinet.”

Casey shifted to the side wordlessly, not enough to keep Laurel’s arm from brushing against him. He allowed it, as a test of endurance.

“Aha.” Laurel pulled a dusty brown bottle out of the cabinet at Casey’s elbow. “Told you. Do you want some? I guess maybe we should toast. To—memories, or something.” He looked up, brown eyes shining. One of his canine teeth was slightly longer than the other, and it caught on his lip when he grinned. Casey wasn’t sure why he found it so compelling.

“No thanks,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Oh yeah. You don’t drink much, do you.”

“I like to be in control.”

“I gathered that.” There was a sly expression on Laurel’s face as he poured himself a glass, then leaned against the counter, studying Casey. The little galley kitchen was far too narrow, their feet nearly touching, the air between them perfumey and humid. Casey could feel the edge of the sink digging into his hip.

“It’s good to see you,” Laurel said finally. “You look great. That skincare routine’s been paying off.”

A memory: kissing in the hot tub as dawn seeped up from the horizon, Las Vegas laid out like a carpet of tarnished rhinestones. Stay here , Laurel had said. We can sleep in. Get room service .

Sorry , Casey had told him. My morning skincare routine is more important than you .

“Thanks.” It was hot, hotter than it had been in the tub, a vein in Casey’s temple throbbing, and he could feel Laurel’s face pressed against his neck as vividly as if it had been tattooed there. He hadn’t done his skincare routine that morning, despite what he’d said. He had sat staring out over the city, face hot and blotchy, stomach cold and fingers tingling, a stack of pancakes that he had ordered but couldn’t bring himself to eat growing cold on the table. “You look tired.”

“Long night.” Laurel took another drink, and wiped self-consciously at the shadows under one eye.

“I bet.” Up late with another stranger you met in a bar? he thought about asking—but of course he didn’t. Because it didn’t matter either way. Casey pushed off from the sink, standing up straight. “Listen, Laurel. I think it’s best if we—”

“Oh, I agree completely. Nothing happened and we’ve never met before.” And, infuriatingly, he fucking winked , and made a lazy little toast before draining his glass. “I just have to ask though, how in the hell did you end up working for my mom? You don’t strike me as a party planner, and I can’t imagine you like—”

Oh no. They wouldn’t have this conversation. This conversation was dangerous. “Control,” Casey cut him off, voice cool. “I like control. And putting things in their place. And money, Laurel. I love making money. So if you don’t mind, I need to get back to—”

The door burst open, making Casey flinch for the second time that day, and Denise Van Marcke, hat wobbling, eyes wide, stood there in a sea of tulle, her creamy pink complexion, so much like Laurel’s, spotted with red. “Laurel!” she exclaimed. “There you are! Oh, and Casey, honey, are we still on schedule for the cake cutting? Jasper is starting to get restless.” Before he could answer, she had turned back to her son, grabbing his arm. “Laurel, we need you out here. Your friend is making a scene.”

Casey could see Laurel suppress a sigh. Funny how many of his expressions were familiar, either because they mirrored Denise’s or—more disturbingly—because Casey had remembered them. The thought flooded Casey with spite, and he was happy to abandon Laurel to his mother. Let him deal with Denise’s endless drama for once. Casey had his own problems, like how to get two dogs to pose with a cake without going full land shark on it before any pictures were taken. And how to recalibrate himself after this encounter.

“My friend?” Laurel asked. “Chip? He wouldn’t—”

“No, of course not.” Denise gestured impatiently. “That Melody girl. She’s here, and she wasn’t invited, and she’s going to ruin everything if you don’t get her under control.”