Page 97 of The Love Bandits

He runs a hand across his mouth. “We used to have fun together, but that changed a couple of months after we got engaged. She stopped hanging out with her old friends, and the places we used to go weren’t good enough anymore. It’s all about the money now. What we’re going to do with it. What house we’re going to buy until we can move into Smith House. That kind of thing.” He pauses. Swallows. “She’s…her parents aren’t in her life. She said it was her choice. I hoped planning the wedding would bring her and my mother closer together, but Nina’s handed off everything to my mom, who’s done her best to make it as awful as possible to get a reaction. Nina hates her,obviously, but she hasn’t fought back. She doesn’t really care about the wedding. She doesn’t care about me either…all she wants is her piece, same as everyone else. She’ll never love me, and I’m starting to think…” He pauses again. “I don’t evenlikeher anymore. She’s jealous whenever I talk to another woman, but everything I do is wrong, and sheneverwants to touch me anymore.” He laughs without the slightest bit of humor. “It’s like my father hand-picked her for me, if you want to know the truth. He’d love the irony.”

He looks really torn up, and even though I’dalsolike several million dollars, I feel bad for him. I’ve seen this before, with Dale—how being rich can be as isolating as being poor. I feel another surge of sympathy for him.

“Are you asking me what to do?” I ask.

His lips turn up again. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I guess I just needed to get it off my chest. I’m not sure there’s much I can do, unless I’m willing to let the company fold. That’s what my sister Emma thinks I should do. She’s a divorce attorney, for fuck’s sake, and she thinks I’m worse than an idiot for agreeing to no prenup. But I can’t do it. I can’t be the one who ruins everything. It’s not just about the Smith family legacy—I’ve got hundreds of people working for me. They’re counting on me to get it right.”

“You could still find someone else to marry,” I insist.

“Why bother?” he asks, his tone falling into bitterness. “Why exchange one gold digger for another?”

Some fanciful part of me, awakened by Lainey, wants to tell him it would be a fuck-ton better to marry a woman you could possibly love than to marry a woman you absolutely know you can’t. But I sense logic will work better with him, so I say, “But you don’t have to be in a relationship with the person you marry. You could hire someone to be your wife. Get your sister to pulltogether an ironclad prenup and pay the woman a set fee. There are plenty of women who’d be willing to do it.”

He rubs his head as if this idea hadn’t occurred to him. “What would people think if I got married so soon after ending an engagement?” he asks after a moment.

I shrug. “Probably that you’re an asshole, but I’m going to be honest with you, plenty of people already think that.”

Surprised laughter gusts from him, and he shakes his head slightly as he smiles at me. “This is why I like you, Jake. You’re willing to be honest with me. I can’t say that about a lot of people.”

It’s my own bitter pill, and I swallow it.

“Think it through,” I say. “I may know someone who can help you if that’s the way you want to go. You’ve already got the wedding planned. All you’d need to do is sub out the bride.”

Maybe this is a job for the Love Fixers. It’s possible Lainey is only interested in helping women who’ve been wronged, but if we’re going to screw this guy over by finding and taking the real Heart of the Mountain, the least we can do is soothe the scratch.

He nods slowly. “I will.” Then he takes out his phone and sighs. “I’ve got to go. I’m going to the community theater with my mother and Nina.”

“Thoughts and prayers,” I say with a smile, then, “Hey, are we still on for Sunday?”

He nods miserably, as if he’s agreeing to his execution. “I don’t know what good will come of it, but yes. I’d appreciate your read on the situation. Thanks for connecting me to the woman who makes the tea.”

He trusts me, and again, I feel a stab of unworthiness. I’m the asshole here. I’ve tried not to like him—to see him as a person unworthy of friendship and courtesy—but I’m not capable of doing that anymore.

Dale started my awakening by offering me that watch, but Lainey has continued it. Because she’s shown me how different it feels to form a genuine connection with someone—to let them see glimpses of the ugliness inside of you without flinching away.

I don’t blame Anthony for wanting something real for himself. And, more alarmingly, I want it for him. I definitely don’t want him to be stuck marrying Nina.

Anthony swears to himself, then looks at me. It hits me that while he’s normally clean-shaven, he has a heavy five-o’clock shadow. He’s falling apart at the seams—driven to the point of breaking by a man who left his life almost a quarter of a century ago, a woman who doesn’t love him, and a mother whose love is suffocating.

It’s strange to think of the impact people can have on us even after they’re gone—the crater they leave behind to be filled by other things. It’s even stranger to think of creating such a crater.

I think about Dale often. I think about his busboy hats and broad white mustache, and the way he used to swear under his breath whenever anyone broke a traffic law but never swore otherwise. I think about the way he held out that box to me, his eyes full of warmth and pride—of belief in me, the stranger who was trying to pull one over.

I wonder if I caused him lasting harm, which leads me to wonder about the other people whose lives I’ve touched. Have I taught them to distrust? To hate? Do they know Ryan and I were the ones who stole from them?

Anthony shakes his head, then says, “I haven’t asked you a single thing about yourself. How’s it going with Elaine?”

“You know what, man? It’s actually going great.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

JAKE

Half an hour later, I pull into the parking lot at the trailhead behind Anthony and Nina’s home in North Asheville, my agreed-upon meeting place with Elaine. Warmth floods me when I see her sitting in her car. I’ve become pretty fond of her car, even though it looks a little worse every time I see it—like maybe she’s been using it for target practice whenever she’s pissed off.

I pull in several spaces down from her, then walk over. She gets out to greet me, and I go in for a kiss, but she moves her head at the last second. My lips land on the bridge of her nose, so I make do and kiss her there, across a sprinkling of freckles. I expect her to laugh about it, but she doesn’t, her mouth pressed into a stony line.

Alarm floods my gut, and I find myself remembering those three dots that Professor X didn’t have much of an opinion on. Something happened.

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