Page 15 of Not Quite Perfect

He looked at me skeptically. “You sounded pretty into him this morning. You had stars in your eyes and everything.”

“I did not!”

He laughed. “You did.Andyou said it was the best sex you’d ever had.”

I waved my hand in front of my face. I was pretty sure I looked exactly like our mother in that moment. “I must have been exaggerating. It was merely adequate.”

“Sure it was,” he replied, his lips quirking to the side in a smirk.

“What was merely adequate?” a deep, masculine voice asked from behind me.

I froze. I knew that voice. This morning it’d whispered in my ear how good I felt.

I swallowed, and turned to David with a grin plastered on my face. At least I hoped it was a grin. It might have been more like a grimace.

“Hi.” The greeting came out sounding like I had a frog trapped in my esophagus. I looked around for more champagne to coat my suddenly parched throat, but when I saw none immediately at hand, I swallowed and tried again. “Um, hello David.”

He grinned and slid his hands into the pockets of his tuxedo pants. That was probably for the best. I loved his hands; loved the things they could do to me. For a brief second, I allowed myself to linger over the memory of the way his fingers had molded my flesh in the shower this morning while his front had been pressed to my back, his cock resting snugly into the crease between my cheeks. I felt my body growing hot, and I blinked away the image with a sharp internal reprimand.

Focusing on the here and now, I held David’s gaze as best I could. “It was a lovely wedding.”

He nodded in agreement. “It was.”

“Your father seems nice.”

His gaze traveled across the room to land on our parents. “So does your mom.”

My head bobbed up and down. “She is.”

“While I’d love to stick around for thisverystimulating conversation,” Drew said, squeezing my shoulder before slipping away, “Aunt Marie is beckoning me.”

I shot his retreating back a dirty look. That was a bald-faced lie and we both knew it. Our aunt had left immediately following the ceremony. Our father’s youngest sister dutifully showed up to all of my mom’s weddings, but I wasn’t sure if it was because she loved my mother like a sister, or if it was because she wanted to remind her she’d never find a man as wonderful as my father. Knowing Aunt Marie, it was probably a bit of both.

But I couldn’t be too mad at Drew for abandoning me. At the very least, it had put an end to the inane small talk David and I had been engaged in. Which was a good thing, because if it had gone on much longer I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to hold it together. It was one thing to have to avoid him for the rest of my natural life, but to have to stand there and pretend that everything was wonderful was probably more than I was capable of. Especially with six glasses of champagne clouding my judgement.

“So,” he said, rocking back on his heels, “this isn’t really how I saw this day going.”

I snorted. “Yeah, me neither.”

“I really liked you, Victoria,” he said, a look of profound unhappiness taking over his face.

Ah, there it was.Liked. As in past tense. As in what’s done is done and we can never revisit it.

It wasn’t just me then who thought we needed to move on.

A small part of me was disappointed. Subconsciously, I’d been holding out hope that he’d try to talk me out of my decision to sacrifice my own happiness for my mother’s. Because even though I knew I should give him up, I didn’twantto. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hold on tight and never let go. I knew it was madness, that nothing about us made any sense, but no one ever said love was logical.

“I liked you too, David.” I sighed and slumped forward, my shoulders curving in on themselves as if they carried the weight of the world.

A few beats passed in silence, as if we were each waiting for the other to fill the void. When neither of us did, David glanced away. “I’m going to head out early, I think.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” I scanned the crowd for my mother, conscious that I should probably say goodbye before I snuck out. “I was thinking about leaving on the first ferry in the morning.”

“The six o’clock?” he asked, bringing his gaze back to mine, his eyebrows raised.

“I checked online after the toasts and they had a few seats available.”

He laughed and gripped the back of his neck. “I did the same thing. I could …” he trailed off.

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