Page 59 of The Games We Play
At this point, there was no avoiding it, no beating around the bush, because I had four pairs of eyes staring at me from four people who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
With a mutter of expletives and a roll of my eyes, I spoke.
“I was married. Years ago. She showed up at my apartment, and Penny answered the door while I wasn’t home.”
Those four sets of eyes bore into me even harder, widening slightly.
Blink.
Blink.
The silence was creeping up my spine, coiling in my gut as the nerves set in. I needed someone to say something.
“You weremarried, Mac. Married. And you didn’t think to mention it? Not even to us?” Rhodes finally broke the silence.
I hadn’t. I’d told no one—not a single soul—about Vegas. There wasn’t a reason to because it was nothing. A blur of neon lights, too much whiskey, and a choice I regretted as soon as the liquor dried and the truth came out. If I’d known it would come back years later to bite me in the ass and become a hot topic for my entire friend group, I might’ve handled things differently.
Like I told Penny, if I could go back and rewrite that chapter, I would in a heartbeat.
“It was nothing,” I muttered, my voice low and tight. “She was nobody, a coworker. A stupid, drunken mistake I clearlyreallyregret now.”
Right about now, embarrassment felt like a second skin. The one thing I wanted to keep buried, locked away and forgotten, had become front-page news among my closest people… and apparently, even my sister, judging by what she’d implied the other night.
How the hell did it get this far?
If Mimi had just called me instead of showing up out of nowhere…
The papers were signed, and I delivered them back to her. Everything was settled, on its way to being okay.
“I just can’t believe you were dumb enough to actually go through with it,” Theo said with a laugh, the kind that was half disbelief, half amusement.
I shot her a look. “Whiskey will do that to you,” I said flatly. “Most of my dumbass decisions involve alcohol.”
I’d always loved the party scene—the noise, the music, the laughter echoing through crowded spaces. It was my comfort zone. People cutting loose, losing their filters, letting the night take over… yeah, that was a part of me I never really tried to change.
Then came Penny.
She fit right into that world without ever needing to prove anything. She could sit at a bar with a cocktail in hand and talk circles around anyone. Or she could hit the dance floor like she owned it. I’d spent too many nights pretending I was focused on working, when really, I was watching her. Admiring how effortlessly she moved through the very culture that shaped me.
“So,” Boone said, arms crossed. “What’s your game plan?”
That question punched the air right out of my lungs.
Game plan? I didn’t have one. I was so early into this whole thing that formulating a plan still felt so far off.
The silence that followed was deafening. My friends stared at me like they were waiting for some brilliant, heartfelt strategy, but I had nothing. Just two romance novels down, a cluttered head, and a heart that couldn’t stop chasing a girl who, right now, was really testing it.
Boone gave a slow nod, like he already knew. He pulled out the stool with Aspen’s tote bag, set it aside, and took a seat.
“Well,” he said, settling in, “we’re gonna be here a while.”
My friends and I huddled together in that dimly lit bar like we were planning the heist of the century—except what I wanted to steal back was a heart I’d already broken.
We’d scribbled on napkins, scratched out bad ideas, circled the good ones, and laughed harder than we had in weeks.
The apprehension I felt when I first saw them all come in here had vanished and been replaced with comfort. As badly as I hadn’t wanted more people to know, maybe it turned out to be a good thing.
My hand ached from gripping the pen too tight, and my knuckles were smudged with ink. But damn, my heart… my heart felt full for the first time in a long time.
