Page 13

13

JAMIE

My older brother is a grumpy shit most of the time, but he has moments when he checks that part of his personality and welcomes a lighter vibe. Usually, that’s only when we’re around Mom, his fiancée, or he’s got his daughter in his arms.

I’ve never seen him as happy as he is with his new family. The one he found when he was certain he’d be spending the rest of his life with only a scowl to keep him company.

It’s wild how fast life can change. One minute, you’re laughing while your teenage brother chases you around your childhood home with an electric fly swatter because you wrote I like boobs on his favourite hat, and the next, you’re laughing with every male relative you have in a party bus for his bachelor party ten years later.

“There better not be any strippers, Jamie. Braxton already threatened to have me sleep in Hades’ doghouse if I stepped foot into a club,” my cousin Maddox grunts.

His brother, Noah, doesn’t threaten me with words. Instead, he glowers at me with the strength of a thousand suns, daring me to bring him anywhere close to a woman that isn’t his Tinsley. I toss him a wink and keep a wide berth while moving around him to the seat on Maddox’s other side .

That guy could cut through the trunk of a tree with his glare alone. I’d blame the whole rock star thing if he hadn’t been so ruthless from the moment I met him as an infant.

“Addie suggested strippers. She thought it would be fun,” Cooper chimes in.

The oldest of the group, Cooper, is not blood-related to any of us. His involvement in our group comes from his parents’ friendship with ours. He grew up with us and may as well be blood at this point. He, Maddox, and Braxton, Maddox’s wife, were the closest out of everyone growing up.

Now, he’s married to Maddox’s younger sister, and they have an adorable baby girl.

“Adalyn’s opinion of fun needs to be studied,” Maddox notes. “She’s not one to be trusted with this sort of thing.”

Oliver, the husband-to-be, rests an arm along the back of the opposite leather couch. “Avery had to talk her out of hiring their own strippers for the bachelorette party. We all need to be prepared to find half-naked cops in my living room when we get back in case she didn’t heed the warnings.”

“Not happening,” Noah states coolly.

He reaches up to untie the bandana from where it holds his long black hair back and wraps it around his knuckles instead, rubbing it back and forth.

The collection of face tattoos he’s sporting nowadays is intimidating as fuck, but the one at his temple is my favourite simply because I know the meaning behind it. Tinsley has one to match.

Her younger brother is here too, and that’s an odd change. Easton is the second youngest member of our little family, but he’s finally old enough to be able to go out with us now.

The kid is only two years younger than me, but compared to Cooper’s thirty-three, he’s just a baby. We both are, I guess.

Easton has always preferred Noah’s company, so it wasn’t surprising when he piled on the bus and went right to his side. He shares quite a few of Noah’s personality traits, including the dark shadow that lingers over his bluntly spoken words and lack of funny bone.

“If there were going to be strippers at your house tonight, they would be firefighters, not cops,” Cooper tells Oliver.

Maddox chuffs a laugh while the bus takes a right turn through traffic. “Are you not giving her enough strip shows in your gear, Olliepop?”

“I’m not talking about our sex life with you assholes,” my brother grunts.

I abandon the conversation for now and reach for the cooler sandwiched between me and Cooper. The array of Jell-O shots that the girls made us have been stacked in containers.

“Oh, fuck off, Jamie,” Maddox says, scraping a hand down over his bearded jaw. “I’m too old for Jell-O shots.”

I roll my eyes and start handing them out to everyone. “Nobody is too old for shots. I don’t hear Cooper complaining.”

“Are you hinting that I’m extra old?” he asks, already taking the lid off his plastic shot glass.

Noah’s glaring at his, his top lip curling in disgust. I ignore him, having seen him pound back bowls of the stuff when we were younger.

My brother squishes the sides of his shot and jiggles the contents into his open mouth. I copy him and immediately taste how much vodka the women used.

“Shit, they must have dumped the entire bottle in,” I hiss, shaking my head as my throat burns.

Cooper laughs, finished with his shot. “Did you expect them to measure properly?”

“I don’t think Braxton has ever used a measuring cup in the kitchen. She’s a measure with your heart type of woman,” Maddox puts in, wincing when he takes his shot.

What type of woman is Blakely? The follow the recipe type or one that measures with her heart? I already know she wouldn’t be using vodka, that’s for sure. These shots would be ten times stronger with whiskey or maybe even tequila .

A week after going over the contract and dropping her at the corner of her neighbourhood and I’m itching to see her again. Contact has been brief between us, but I haven’t stopped reminding her that I’m here.

Once Oliver’s wedding has come and gone, it’ll be our turn. She’ll be my wife, and that’s a crazy reminder.

“Is your food at least seasoned, then? I’ve been trying to help Addie with that, but she’s adamant that pepper is enough for almost everything,” Cooper muses.

Maddox snorts. “Yeah, not surprising. She used to offer to help with breakfast back when we were kids, and everything would be so bland that Dad started slipping us those tiny salt packets to use when she wasn’t looking. Sorry to say that’s a you problem now.”

“Seasonless food is more than worth it to be with her,” Cooper declares, squishing his second shot.

Oliver brushes the comment off and stares at me. “Adorable. But where are we even going right now, Jamie? What’s the plan?”

“Oh, we have a crazy one for tonight to celebrate your last night as an unmarried man. I’ve booked us three glorious hours of paintballing before we hit our reservation at the best Mexican restaurant in town that just so happens to also be your favourite.”

None of us have been paintballing in at least five years. Oliver got banned from the last venue after he shot our team leader four times in the groin when he tried saying that our dad was an overpaid, overrated bench warmer throughout his career. The ban has long since been lifted, but I played it safe and chose a different spot in case the same guy is working there tonight.

“You’re going to give Noah a paintball gun?” Cooper asks, glancing between me and Noah.

“Won’t be a problem because I call dibs for him to be on my team. ”

Noah lounges back on the seat, his arms crossed and legs spread wide enough that the rips in his jeans grow in size.

“If I were going to injure you, I would have done it when you came home from Europe married to my sister. Not at a bachelor party years later,” he drones.

Oliver hides a laugh behind a cough. “From what we heard, Maddox took care of that.”

“His punch was weak,” Noah rebuttals.

His older brother scowls. “You weren’t even there to see it.”

“His nose didn’t break. Nothing did.”

I pick up another shot and toss it back while they bicker. Oliver looks at me and signals for another one, and I give him a blue one.

He leans toward me, lowering his voice with taking his lid off. “Thank you for setting this up, Jamie. Means a lot to me.”

“You got it, big bro. Would have appreciated a bit more guidance on your part with what you wanted, but I think I made it work. How are you feeling? You’re getting fucking married in three days.”

His entire expression shifts, becoming so much lighter as the brown in his eyes warms. “The waiting is killing me. I need her to be my wife more than I need to breathe. I’ve been thinking about seeing her walk down the aisle and just—it nearly kills me. Her and Nova, man. They’re everything.”

“Love looks good on you. So does fatherhood.”

“Crazy to think that I’m a dad now. Even more than a husband. Nova feels like mine too. It doesn’t matter that her blood isn’t mine. She’s my daughter where it counts.”

Emotion builds in my throat, and I cough to clear it before I get choked up. I grab the back of his head and bring our temples together for a beat.

“You deserve all of this.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to believe that.”

“I hate to break up the moment, but where did you book this paintball at?” Maddox cuts in .

I release Oliver and turn my body to follow his stare out the tinted glass. The name of the venue is right, but the stickers on the windows look completely wrong. Splatter Studio is there in big painted letters above the door . . . yet the vibe is very wrong for what I was expecting.

“Did you look at the website for this place before booking?” Cooper asks, always the calmest person in any room.

“Of course I did.” Not .

I made an online reservation on the way to my post-game interviews weeks ago. It’s a miracle that I could even do that with cameras flashing in my eyes.

“It sounds like a paintball place,” Oliver says, trying to ease our growing worry.

Maddox shakes his head, amusement curving his lips. “Cream Filling can sound like a donut shop while also being a porn studio.”

“Who the fuck is naming a donut shop Cream Filling?” I choke out.

Maddox shakes his head. “I don’t know! You’re the one who booked us a paintball afternoon in a place with flower and heart stickers all over the window.”

“It’s purse painting,” Noah grunts.

Cooper clears his throat. “What?”

“That’s what you do here. You paint purses.”

We turn to look at him now. The rock star’s got his chipped phone screen turned toward us, displaying a part of Splatter Studio’s website that I didn’t look at.

The photos of painted purses draw a laugh from deep in my chest. Oliver joins me a beat later, and then the bus is full of rough male laughter.

I guess Blakely will be getting her first gift from me sooner than expected.