Chapter 2: Whatever Starts Now

Ryan still had the torn paper crown on. It made him look like a joke that had gotten teeth.

Tessa went to him because Cole had pointed, and because the clock on the dresser was still running, and because walking to the van would have been a different girl than the one who had dropped the mask on purpose. Ryan’s chair was the low one. She put a knee on either side of his thighs and felt him hard through his jeans, the polite groom version already gone. His hands went to her ass like they had been waiting through the dance.

“You sure?” Ryan said, not to her. To Cole.

“We paid,” Cole said. He had not sat back down. He stood behind the chair with his arms folded, best-man posture, boyfriend posture, neither. “She works. Don’t ask her like she’s at dinner.”

Nate laughed. Dev’s phone twitched. Cole did not slap it down this time. He looked at Tessa instead.

“Lingerie off. We didn’t pay to guess.”

She took it off. The room got louder and quieter at the same time. Twenty-three, new girlfriend of three weeks, standing in a lake-house living room in a mask-tan line and nothing else while five of her boyfriend’s friends looked at her like a purchase. Cole looked at her last. He did not look away.

Ryan had his jeans open before she was fully in his lap again. She wrapped a hand around him because Vesper knew what to do with a man in a chair, and Tessa knew what Cole’s face did when she touched someone else. Cole’s face did not do mercy. It did inventory.

“Mouth,” Cole said. “Groom gets the mouth first. That’s the toast.”