Promise Me Forever: Manhattan Ruthless
: Chapter 47

What is it with me and hanging around street corners in Brooklyn? I’m going to get a reputation if I keep this up. Drake James, neighborhood creep.

I don’t feel like I have any other choice right now though. As soon as she left the other day, I started to miss her. Everything ached without her near—my heart, my head, my cock. Even at work, I couldn’t function without her. Not only is she a great secretary, but it turns out she’s essential to me keeping my head on straight.

I can’t concentrate in meetings, I’m fucking up paperwork, and I missed a court date for the first time in my life. Work has always been my great solace, the one thing that has never let me down, but it isn’t doing the trick anymore. There’s simply no space in my mind for work. It’s too full of Amelia.

How the fuck did I let things get this bad? I did what I did for her sake. It came from a place of love. Which, I realize as I even think those stupid words, sounds fucking ridiculous. How can you hurt someone as badly as I hurt her and then tell yourself it was because you love them? That it was all for their own good? That’s some patronizing bullshit right there.

The truth? I did it because I was scared. There. I said it. I was scared shitless of how much I love her. How much I need her. How much I had to lose. Chad put the fear of god into me, leaving me half convinced that he was right—that he might be the man for her. Amelia is the marrying kind. She’s the fill-a-house-with-kids kind. And me? Who the fuck knows what I am. I’ve never dreamed of those things before, but with her? Hell yeah. With her, I want everything she’s willing to give.

It’s taken me three days without her to come to this conclusion, which is testimony to what a dumbass I am despite my expensive and extensive education. She’s ignored my messages and hasn’t called back, and I don’t suppose I can blame her. She lost her mom, and while she was still grieving, the man who should have been by her side had a self-indulgent meltdown. My self-doubt is what drove the train, and it’s beyond unfair. That’s my own baggage, and Amelia has never done or said anything to make me feel that way. But I felt less than perfect after Edith died, I felt like I was messing up, dropping the ball. And heaven forbid the mighty Drake James does anything less than perfectly, right? Basically, I behaved like a giant asshole, and I desperately need to talk to her.

The only way to do that seems to be in person. I considered getting Linda to call her in for a meeting or being really sneaky and getting Melanie to contact her on my behalf, but even I’m not that much of a coward. So here I am, lurking outside her apartment building, planning what to say. Searching for the right words to apologize. For a man who makes a living from talking persuasively, I sometimes totally suck at it.

I’m clutching a huge bunch of yellow roses to my chest and I’ve just decided that a pretty solid place to begin would be “I’m sorry. I was a jackass, and I can’t live without you.” I’m about to cross the road and ring her buzzer when a cab pulls up outside the building and my old pal Chad rolls out. He stands there looking at his phone with a shit-eating grin on his punchable face, and within seconds, I know why.

Amelia—my Amelia—emerges from her building looking like a ray of fucking sunshine in human form. Her hair is a glorious shining curtain down her back, and she’s wearing a peach-colored dress that skims her ass and ends not much farther down. Chad does a comedic double take, then pulls her in for a hug. She doesn’t slap him or knee him in the balls, so I assume she doesn’t mind. They chat for a few moments, him obviously complimenting her, and then the two of them set off down the street toward the main drag of bars and restaurants.

Fuck. What’s happening? Is it a date? It certainly fucking looks like one. If I expected her to be in her apartment, wallowing in her misery and missing me so much she hasn’t eaten or slept for the last three days, I was very much mistaken. She looks fantastic and is clearly on her way to a night out. With her ex-husband. The one who wants her back.

Pain tears through me like a bullet, so fierce that I swear I should be bleeding. I have no right to feel this way. No right to be jealous or angry or hurt. I have no right to be anything other than sorry. Because this is on me. I pushed her away, straight back into the waiting arms of Chad. Will she be happy with him? Is he really the right man for her? I truly don’t know. Fighting back tears, I walk away from her apartment building, dumping the roses in a trashcan as I go. I know this much: If he hurts her again, I will fucking kill him.

I stagger along the sidewalk, no clue where I’m going, my vision blurred with tears I’m determined not to shed. This is too hard. Too raw. I need help.

It’s time to call in the big guns.

I sit with all my brothers in a plush private booth in one of Manhattan’s most exclusive bars. They surround me, physically and emotionally, four big men with even bigger hearts. I haven’t cried in front of anyone since my mom died, but I broke that rule tonight, and they were here for me.

The table is overflowing with empty glasses and a bottle of insanely rare Yamazaki single-malt whisky from Japan. That was Maddox’s idea, even though he doesn’t even fucking drink, and I suspect we’re all going to have million-dollar hangovers in the morning. Apart from him, of course, unless there’s more in his OJ than he’s letting on.

“To Julia Roberts!” says Nathan, holding up his glass. “And her incredible smile!” We all cheer and hold up our own glasses to match him. And why not? Julia Roberts does indeed have an incredible smile, and it’s totally worth celebrating.

There have been a lot of toasts tonight, and they started off a lot more personal. We toasted little baby Luke, our dad, the memory of our mom. Then we toasted each other and the city of New York and our childhood dog, a red setter named Rupert. Since then, though, things have gone a little off the rails. We’ve toasted our colleges, our favorite diner, Mason’s new tattoo, and Russell Crowe’s fucking fantastic husband-to-a-murdered-wife speech from Gladiator. We’ve toasted everything in the whole damn world, and now we’ve included Julia Roberts’s incredible smile in that.

I fall back against the seat and realize that I am totally shit-faced. It hasn’t made the pain of seeing Amelia with Chad go away, but it is anesthetizing it for the night. My brothers, emotional surgeons.

“You remember that New Year’s after Mom died?” I ask, pouring myself another whisky and spilling about $50,000 on the table. “When Dad poured us all a Macallan, even Maddox when he was, like, sixteen, and gave us that advice?”

“Yeah,” Elijah answers, eyes hazy. “He told us to never fall in love. Said that if we obeyed that one rule, we’d never know a day’s heartache in our lives.”

We all fall silent, the easy laughter lost for a moment. “That was fucked up, man,” Mason says, shaking his head.

“Nah.” I down my whisky in one gulp and savor the burn in my throat. “He was one hundred percent right. I shoulda listened to the old man.”

Visions of Amelia pour into my mind. The first time I saw her in that bridesmaid’s dress that made her grimace every time she moved. Her shocked face when she walked into my office on the first day of her new job. Her moans and whimpers as I made her come on that fire escape. Her perfect skin, crossed and shaded by my knots and ropes. The way she looked at me when she told me she loved me.

The bright smile she gave Chad earlier tonight.

Nathan clasps my shoulder, dragging me back to reality. “He wasn’t right, bro. That was his grief speaking. Life is nothing without love. Don’t ever give up on it.”

My vision blurs with tears. How do I not give up on it when the only woman I’ve ever loved is currently falling back in love with her douchefuck ex-husband? How do I not give up when I’ve lost the other half of my fucking soul?