Chapter 149

He stood tall and faintly disapproving, and he reeked of power and consequence. Though what he wore was not in and of itself particularly telling, it was the way he wore it. Dark trousers. A dark shirt. And the coldest gray eyes Tyler had ever seen.

Something clicked in him. This man was familiar. Next to him, half behind him, Tyler heard Lexi pull in a sharp breath.

In distress. And he knew. If he thought about it, he could even see the family resemblance to Lily.

He fucking knew.

And in that rush of recognition, he had to face the unpalatable fact that it was a lot easier to think about what a great friend he was in the abstract. Because it felt a whole lot more like dying now that it was happening. Now that he had the opportunity to prove it.

The man before him kept his gaze trained on Tyler for a long, frigid moment. Then he shifted it over Tyler’s shoulder, and Tyler could feel Lexi’s whole body jolt.

And he wanted to come out swinging. He wanted to teach the rich fuck standing before him exactly why he shouldn’t tangle with a man who’d been a brawler before he’d ponced off to university with the rest of them.

But that was the sort of thing a man who was in love with Lexi would do. Tyler’s job was to be Lexi’s friend. Her best friend. That was the promise he’d made. When that glacial gray gaze tracked back to him, Tyler didn’t react the way he wanted to. He made himself stand still. He forced himself to do nothing at all.

“You must be the famous Tyler Connelly,” the other man said, his voice precise. And frigid. “I believe you were at the University with my sister.”

“Guilty as charged, mate,” Tyler managed to say. And while he didn’t strike the easy, friendly note he was going for, he also didn’t sound entirely like he was chewing on broken glass, so he chalked it up as a win.

“I’m Victor Mckay,” the other man said, as if Tyler might not have figured that out already. “And it appears you’ve already met my fiancée.”

“Victor…” Lexi began, pushing out from behind Tyler’s shoulder.

And everything in him demanded that he pull her back. That he handle this. That he do whatever he needed to do—beat his chest, roar. Come over like the raging Neanderthal creature he’d always been, just there beneath his skin. He ached with the need to beat Conrad back, using whatever means necessary to get him away from Lexi.

But no matter what happened here, he knew where this would end. Where it was always going to end.

“If you don’t mind,” Victor said, with such scrupulous politeness that it made Lexi flinch and Tyler want to break things—more things—“I’d like to have a word with my future wife.”

Lexi took a deep breath, and Tyler could see what she was about to do written all over her face. And he was the best friend she would ever have. He loved her more than he would ever love anything in this life or the next. Tyler knew that, because, instead of standing there between Lexi and her future, he stepped aside. Literally.

“Of course,” he said.

He nodded at Victor as if they were exchanging business cards. He forced himself to look at Lexi, and it was worse than he’d expected. She was staring at him, shock and betrayal on her face, because she already knew what he was doing. That was the trouble with all this friendship shit. There was no goddamn mystery, and that was one more thing he was going to make certain to beat out of himself as he got home.

He nodded at her, too. “Take care, Lexi.”

Tyler thought he heard her say his name, but he made himself walk away. He imagined them retreating back into texts as the weeks went by. There would be fewer and fewer of those as time went on, he imagined. It would be easier to forget. To pretend. To head back to Nemford and plan her wedding, the way she should have been doing all along. She would invite him, no doubt, and he would go and smile and toast her happiness, because that was what friends did. And in a handful of years it would be like none of this had ever happened. He would be nothing more to her than an old school friend she saw rarely, if at all.

He figured he was already more or less a memory by the time he pushed through the doors, back out into a bright, cold Olkfield morning. And there was nothing he could do about his heart. He’d lost that too long ago now to imagine he’d ever get it back.

But he was a proud man, a saint and a scholar through and through, and well did he know the cure for a spot of heartache. If not for what ailed him, then for what he was going to have to live through now that it was done. It was finally done.

And Tyler might not find what he was looking for in the bottom of a bottle, but he planned to do a whole lot of asking anyway.

Until what hurt was his head—not that gaping, empty hole where his heart hadn’t been since Lexi had claimed it with a happy laugh when they were both eighteen.

__________

Victor ordered tea.

On the list of things that were epically wrong with this moment, this engagement of hers and her entire life, Lexi had to place that at the very top. The world was ending and Victor ordered tea. As if he was a proper Nemfordman when she was the one with the title and the bloodline to match. And the word proper kicked around inside of her, spiked and mean, until she felt more or less bloodied, inside and out.

The tea service arrived, and Lexi had been entirely too well taught to sit back listlessly. Or to slump over and wail, the way she had half a mind to do. So she busied herself pouring out steaming cups, asking muted questions about sugar and cream and then sitting there in the little study Victor had led her to, staring across a fine antique table at this man there was no possible way she could marry.