***
JACKSON CHECKED HIS cell phone for the millionth time and cursed under his breath. He had a text from Logan and one from Heath, neither of which he’d read, and none from Laney. He didn’t need to open the texts from Logan or Heath to know that they were telling him how stupid he was to let Laney go. Logan had cornered him at their mother’s house to tell him he was being a fool, as if he didn’t know that already.
There were a hundred reasons why Laney might not return his texts, but only one of them fit the situation.
He’d been a dick.
A big, fat, hairy dick.
The kind of dick he would tell her to walk away from.
He tried to concentrate on the models he was supposed to be photographing, but the studio lights were too bright, and the girls looked plastic, as if their skin were stretched too tightly over their bones. He’d slept with both of the brunette models, and still he couldn’t muster any attraction when he looked through the camera. They were gorgeous, tall and thin with perfect fake breasts and legs a mile long. But his mind was so entrenched in Laney—was she going to marry Bryce? Had he ruined the best thing in his life?—that he couldn’t think straight, much less see straight.
Cooper was moving around the room like the avid photographer he was. Taking pictures that Jackson knew would be incredible. He was saving Jackson’s ass, too, because at five hundred dollars an hour, these models didn’t come cheap.
Jackson climbed up on the ladder and aimed his camera down toward the women, bringing the lens in tight. The shot was perfect, playing off the girls’ angular frames and the shadows cast by the bright lights, but all Jackson could see were the things that were going wrong in his life. The emptiness he’d feel if Laney married Bryce, the ache of knowing she’d never again barge through his front door demanding sex or a drink, or…fuck…anything.
He lowered his camera, and the women, still as mannequins, didn’t so much as blink. They’d been equally as unenergetic in bed. Willing to let him do whatever he wanted, hungry for release, but nothing more. No strings. Just the way he liked things.
No cuddling afterward.
Nothing more than, Thanks for a fun night.
He thought of his brothers and how they’d held their fiancée’s hands all through dinner, passing secret smiles and God only knew how many silent messages. He’d only ever had that with one woman—Laney. He only wanted it with Laney. The image of Laney lying on the boulder by the water came to him. He saw her smile as her eyes had opened and felt her body wrapped around his as they tumbled into the water.
He lifted the camera again, but it felt heavy in his hands. It felt wrong for the first time ever. He halfheartedly focused the lens, telling himself to suck it up and do his job.
It was no use. He couldn’t fucking concentrate. He climbed down from the ladder and saw Cooper scowling at him from across the room. Their assistants were holding the lights, standing with accessories at the ready for the next pose, and all Jackson wanted to do was get the hell out of there.
“Take ten,” Cooper shouted as he crossed the room toward Jackson. He waved away their assistants and gave Jackson a shove toward the door to his office.
Once inside, Cooper closed the door behind them and crossed his arms over his broad chest.
“You need to pull your shit together.”
Jackson was aching for a fight. A knockdown, drag-’em-out, fists-flying fight—but not with his brother. He wanted to find his fucked-up self in a dark alley and beat the shit out of him.
“Workin’ on it,” Jackson grumbled.
“No, you’re not. You’ve never lifted your camera so many times without taking a damn shot. What’s the problem?” Cooper held his stare through his silence. “Goddamn it, Jackson. You can’t fuck up our careers over Erica. Either go apologize to her or get over it.” He turned and blew out a frustrated breath. “Just for the record, my vote is for you to apologize.”
Jackson scoffed. “What the fuck do you know about apologizing?”
“I don’t know shit about apologizing, but I know about you. And you without Erica?” He closed the distance between them and his eyes went serious. “Bro, I can’t even picture you without her.”
Neither can I.
“Can you picture me married? A ring on my damn finger? Home by six, dinner on the table, a couple of kids?” Surprisingly, the idea didn’t sound as awful as it always had. Not when the woman he’d be coming home to was Laney.
Cooper smiled. “Hell no. But why is it marriage or nothing? She has a proposal. So what? That doesn’t mean that you have to propose. Just tell her how you feel. We all know you love her. That should be enough to hold off this Bryce guy and keep her in your bed.”
The problem was, he didn’t want to hold off Bryce and keep Laney in his bed.
He wanted to hold off every other man on the planet, and he wanted Laney by his side. Always.
Chapter Twelve