Four Brothers and a Bride novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Cian's Hour

I looked at the two photos for a long time.

Then I handed Whit his phone back.

"The one who signs your paychecks," I said. "Have a good party."

He opened his mouth.

"Mr. Stokes."

Cian was in the terrace doorway, tie loosened, hands in his pockets.

Not Wyatt now.

Just Cian, looking at Whit.

"Your fiancee is looking for you," Cian said. "I'd hurry. She's crying, and her father is watching her do it."

Whit went.

Cian came across the terrace and leaned on the rail beside me.

"Ewan texted me," he said. "'Take her.' He never texts more than that. It's like being managed by a fortune cookie."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

"Who was in the basement?" I said.

"Bram." Cian sighed. "Ewan makes one of us stand by in the suit at every event. In case Wyatt has to be two places."

He rubbed his face. "Tonight he had to be two places."

"Whit knows."

"Whit knows there are two of us. That's bad. It's not four."

He pushed off the rail. "Come on. I'm taking you home before you push somebody in the pool."

He drove with one hand and talked the whole way.

He told me about the week they were sixteen and swapped classrooms, and nobody noticed except the lunch lady.

He told me Fenn had cried at the end of every Pixar movie ever made.

He told me Bram once arrested a man in a casino for cheating at slots, and it turned out to be a bishop.

By the time we pulled up outside the laundromat, I was laughing too hard to unbuckle my seat belt.

He reached over and did it for me.

Then he didn't sit back.

"You did that on purpose," I said.

"Made you laugh? Yeah. It's my one trick."

He was close enough that I could see a tiny nick on his jaw where he'd shaved too fast. "I'm the funny one."

"Ewan's the smart one. Fenn's the sweet one. Bram's the one who can lift a car."

"And you mind."

He went quiet.

"Being the funny one?"

"Being nobody."

He looked out the windshield at the laundromat's buzzing sign.

"Every picture of me in thirty years has somebody else's name under it," he said. "My graduation photo says Wyatt."

He laughed, not much. "The girl I dated at twenty-five called me Wyatt in bed for a year, and I let her."

"Cian."

He turned.

"Cian," I said again, slower.

His throat moved.

"Come upstairs," I said.

My apartment was one room and a kitchen the size of a closet.

The window unit rattled.

Cian stood in the middle of it in a five-thousand-dollar suit.

He looked at my stacks of books and my thrift-store lamp and my unmade bed, and grinned.

"This is the best room I've ever been in," he said.

"Liar."

"I'm the honest one, actually. Bram just says it louder."

I kicked off my shoes.

He watched me do it.

The grin faded into something else.

"Rosalind." He didn't move. "I need to say something, and I need you to hear it."

"Okay."

"I'm not your husband."

"I know."

"So if this happens," he said, "it's an affair."

"Then it's an affair."

He laughed, once, like I'd knocked the wind out of him. "You're supposed to argue."

I walked across the room to him.

I took the black signet ring off his finger, the Wyatt ring, and set it on top of my grandmother's Rebecca on the nightstand.

Then I put both hands on his chest.

← Chapter 7 · All chapters · Chapter 9 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend