Page 49 of Promise Me Forever

Shit. Of course he’s a playboy. That shouldn’t be a surprise. A man with his money, his looks, his charisma. If he wasn’t a playboy, he’d be married, wouldn’t he? And it’s not like he ever pretended to be anything else. He sat there at Emily’s wedding and told me to my face that he didn’t believe in happy endings. That he could never promise someone forever. In my case, he couldn’t promise me more than one night. Maybe his “mystery date” will fare better, but I doubt it.

Because Drake James isn’t merely a playboy. He’s a playboy workaholic who will put the professional before the personal every single time. If I factor in his family as well, I would never be at the top of his list of priorities. Even if he did want to be with me, it could never work. I’m no prima donna, and I’ve never been high maintenance, but even my under-developed ego couldn’t stand being third best.

There is no future for me and Drake, not even a hint of one, and I need to accept that. I need to stop dreaming and start living in the real world. The world where Jacob—a perfectly nice, funny, attractive man—spent ten minutes last night once again begging me to go to dinner with him.

Chapter

Twenty-Four

DRAKE

“Have you tasted these? Phenomenal!” Dad passes us the latest in a long line of trays full of food, urging us to sample them. “They’re called tequeños. Go on, try one.”

I do as I’m told, and like everything else he’s shared this evening, they are delicious.

“They’re great, Dad, but is deep-fried pastry and cheese really the best diet for you?”

“You mean because I’m ancient and I had a heart attack? You think I’m a frail old man, son?”

I see Mason snigger behind his back and make a throat-slitting gesture, and Elijah backs him up by shooting an imaginary gun at his own forehead. Even the saintly Maddox gets in on the act, giving me a thumbs-down signal like he’s a fucking Roman emperor.

“No, Dad, of course I don’t think you’re frail. But you did have a heart attack. That’s just a fact.”

“Also a fact, Drake, is that because of that heart attack, my health is more closely monitored than Kim Kardashian’s ass.”

I almost choke on my tequeño. Did he really just say that? A glance at my brothers’ faces confirms that he did.

“Anyway,” he adds, “these aren’t as unhealthy as you’d think. Luz knows I’m keeping an eye on my cholesterol and my blood pressure. She used low-fat cheese and that damn air fryer thing Melanie bought me that I never managed to master. Plus I’m eating lots of fish, lean meat, and all the beans. I bet I have a healthier diet than you do.”

I hold up my hands in surrender. “Okay, Pop, okay. I’m glad it’s working out for you. I was just expressing concern like a good son.”

“Yeah, well, go and be concerned about your own life. Mine is just fine.”

He seems rather cranky for a man who’s been eating like a king thanks to his new cook, and I remember Nathan telling me that he decided to quit his cigars. Elijah’s been on his ass about it for ages, but he always refused to even discuss it.

Looks like a few things are changing in Dalton James’s world, and I wonder how much of it can be credited to Luisa’s mom. He only agreed to give her a trial because Elijah laid out some sob story about how she needed the work. Not true at all, at least not financially, but according to my big brother, Luz was bored of being “old enough to be a grandmother but with no grandbabies to look after.”

The woman in question steps into the dining room wearing a brightly patterned apron that she must have brought with her. She smells of sugar and vanilla, and all four of us boys inhale as she approaches the table. She smells like childhood.

Her eyes are huge, brown, and kind, but her slight scowl as she surveys the uneaten food suggests she could very easily switch between kind and killer. She stands with her hands on her hips and glares at us all.

“What is wrong with you skinny boys? Eat, eat!” She brushes a silver-streaked black curl from her face.

None of us are skinny, but all of us respond to the tone of her voice, jumping up and doing as we’re told. I catch her winking at Dad behind our backs, and he snorts in amusement.

A few minutes later, I take a couple plates of food back to Dad’s old office, where Nathan has been making a few calls while Mel settles Luke down for the night. It’s Friday night, and we all had to rearrange a few things to be here, but Dad asked us to come for dinner to discuss the party he’s planning for his birthday later this year. We were all a little surprised that he agreed to have one, never mind put so much effort into it, and again, I suspect Luz’s influence goes deeper than his love of her arepas.

Nathan is just finishing up a call when I walk in, and I hand him the plate. “For fuck’s sake, eat this, will you? I’m stuffed, and she’s still nagging me to try more.”

He laughs and rolls his eyes. “I know. Luz is a force of nature, isn’t she? I feel kind of weird saying this, but she reminds me of Mom. Does that make me disloyal?”

It’s a fair question, and it deserves some thought. We’re all touchy about Mom and our memories of her. Even though we all grew up in the same home and lost the same mother, we all have our own versions of her. It’s not just Luz’s appearance that’s similar though—both she and our mom were petite with dark hair, wide brown eyes, and olive skin—she’s also warm and kindhearted in that take-no-nonsense way our mom was.

“No, it doesn’t,” I reply after a few beats. “Mom was one of a kind, and nobody will ever replace her.” I have no desire to get into this subject with him, so I leave it there.

Nathan is no fool. He knows I went off the deep end after she died. There are things he doesn’t understand—and doesn’t need to understand—that make talking about this stuff especiallydifficult for me. When Mom passed, I was a mess for all kinds of reasons. I turned to my long-term girlfriend for support through that but didn’t find it. Tiff made all the right noises, and for a while was the very picture of a sympathetic partner. But after a few weeks passed, she seemed to expect me to be back to “normal” and didn’t get the fact that I’d never be “normal” again. The old me was gone, he died with my mother, and Tiff didn’t seem to particularly like the new me. I was still completely fucked up, and she was wanting to go to parties and plan trips to Bermuda with friends. When I called her out on it, she told me I needed to “snap out of it.” That comment came precisely sixteen weeks after my mom’s funeral.

Needless to say, the relationship didn’t survive, and the pain of that has never left me. I don’t blame her—she was only twenty-two herself, still a kid really—but I have also never forgotten it. Grief is a sneaky beast. It infiltrates every aspect of your life, sometimes without you even noticing. You can appear fine on the surface, but beneath that, the fault lines are spreading through your psyche, a spiderweb of cracks weakening your foundation until you’re ready to collapse. That’s how it was with me, anyway. We all suffered, and we all dealt with it in our own ways. My coping mechanism was work, which is still my great solace in times of stress. Since the team-building event, for example, I’ve been working twenty-hour days.

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