Page 37 of Single All The Way

I even asked Noelle, who was acting far too heartbroken over a man like Peter, if she knew where Kelsey would go.

Every direction I took was a dead end.

I’ve never had a case backfire so severely before.

I startle when I realize the inaccuracy of my last thought. Kelsey isn’t a client of mine. She isn’t a case number. She’s just clueless because Santa fucked everything up when he stalled proceedings by faking a heart attack.

“Fucking Santa.”

“Don’t blame him,” Casey snaps out, over my shit. I’ve been a grouch all day. “I’d make you wait a whole lot longer than a year if I had discovered you were profiting off women’s heartache.” My family were clueless about what I did for a living until Casey followed Peter and Noelle’s storm out of my suite. “You used vulnerabilities exposed by their exes to weasel your way into their lives for profit. Then you made them our mother.”

Ipffther. “I did no such thing. I built them up before making them realize they deserve better.”

She holds her hands out as if to say, “Exactly,” before she thrusts them at the aisle our mother is due to walk down in under an hour. “You built her up so much, Zane, she never comes back down. She goes through husbands like underwear because you’ve made her believe she can do no wrong. How has that helped her?” Before I can speak, she mutters, “And if you’re helping them be ‘better women,’ why do their exes pick up the tab?”

Since I can’t find an appropriate response, I murmur, “I help them move on.”

“No, you help them turn a blind eye to the scheming pieces of shit they’d already moved on from before you became a part of their lives.” I’ve never seen her so worked up when she gets up in my face and says, “If she wants a billionaire’s house after she’s given him an heir and a spare, she deserves the billionaire’s house. If she wants to keep the Rolls Royce he gifted her on her birthday, she deserves to keep it.”

She hits me where she knows it will hurt. “If she wants to make him fret for a week about a family heirloom he offered when he asked her to be his wife, she gets to make him fret! It is the least he should suffer for making her sit across from them necking like teens for an entire week three weeks out from their wedding!”

Her snarl is vicious. “It isn’t up to you to inflate her ego to such an unmanageable level that she walks overeveryoneshe’s meant to love.” Her voice cracks when she murmurs, “She’sourmother, Zane, so I will always love her, but has she ever put us first? Has she ever wondered how it feels for us to have these men introduced into our lives over and over again?” She angrily wipes at a tear streaming down her face. “Has she ever wondered how this affects us? How it affected you?”

“No, she hasn’t,” I admit, the fight no longer in me. The wind was released from my sails when she compared the women I thought I was helping to our mother.

Casey doesn’t hesitate to continue cutting me down. “Then don’t blame Santa for your fucked up notions of what women want. Make the real culprit pay.”

When she darts past our mother coming to check we’ve set the aisle up exactly how she wants, my father signals that he will take care of Casey while I deal with the actual perpetrator of her upset.

Her angst started with my stupid belief that women require my friendship to know they can let go of their heartache and survive, but it ended with our mother’s inability to do precisely that.

“Sweetheart, what happened?” My mother fixes the collar of my suit, ensuring it sits right before locking her eyes with mine. “You know you need to be cautious with Casey. She’s not as confident as us. She’s not as strong.”

“Ma, stop. Casey isn’t your competition. She’s your daughter.” With one truth comes many. “And I’m your son.Your son.I’m not the person you’re supposed to rely on to fix your broken heart all the time. That’s your partner’s job, the man you’re meant to lean on in return for your affection. When something breaks, you’re supposed to givehima chance to fix it.” When she looks like she can’t believe the words I’m speaking, I hit her with gospel honesty. “I thought I was helping you and making you a better person.” I shake my head. “I made everything worse.”

“What are you talking about, sweetheart? You’re perfect.”

“No.” I pull her hands down and hold them at her sides. “Because if I were, I would have done this years ago.”

I smile at her to ensure she knows I will always love her before I join my father and sister at the back of the church and then lead our walk outside.

CHAPTER17

Zane

Seven Days Later…

“You know I’m not twelve, right?” Casey asks between licks of her ice cream. “I would have gotten over my heartache of being ditched on Christmas Eve without ice cream.”

“Ice cream is the perfect opener for a conversation you don’t realize you need to have until…” I stop talking when it dawns on me that I’m using the lessons I learned from our mother on another unsuspecting victim. “It’s a nice night for a stroll, so I thought, what the hell, I deserve a treat.” I smile when I recall Kelsey saying something similar the night we met. It’s the first genuine smile I’ve given this week.

“It is.” Casey tilts in like the air is chilly. “I love this time of year. The twinkling lights and endless Santas on every corner. The excuse to gorge on calories isn’t bad either.” She peers up at me with her glistening eyes on full display. “Do you think she’ll keep her promise this time around?”

When she nudges her head half a block up, a heaviness I haven’t been able to shift for the past week no matter how hard I try to fix my wrongs intensifies.

“Probably not,” I answer, knowing a leopard can’t change its spots in a week even when striving like fuck to do exactly that. “But I hope he’s smart enough not to get hurt this time.”

Casey, our father, and I had just climbed into a taxi at the front of the church my mother was due to wed in when she raced out its double doors and begged to come with us.

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