She shrugs. “Of course I did.”

Looking at me with fire in his eyes, Oliver says, “Finn, if you don’t marry this woman again, I just might.”

HARLOW HEADS OUT a few minutes later, kissing each of us on the cheek before she leaves and I pretend I don’t hate that all three of us got the same treatment. Eventually I leave, too, making plans to meet up with Oliver later that night. I take the long way back to the house, deciding a drive along the harbor might do me some good, and then I remember the unread text still sitting in my phone. The missed call from Colton. Apparently Harlow is an excellent distraction even when we’re not having sex.

In the end, I spend the rest of the afternoon driving up and back down the coast, pulling up to the house after sunset and only about thirty minutes before Oliver. I search the fridge and cupboards, pulling out a box of pasta and a handful of vegetables from the crisper. My phone stares at me from where it lies on the counter.

I do everything I can to avoid looking at it. I start dinner and unload the dishwasher. I watch a little TV, and even walk out to grab Oliver’s mail, hoping the fresh air will clear my head. It doesn’t.

Edgy and unable to handle it anymore, I toss the envelopes to the table and reach for my phone, deciding it’s time to man up and face the music. It could be good news, I reason. My brother would have called and kept calling if it had been something really bad. Right?

I check my email first. There’s a notice from the bank, some sort of stupid forwarded video from Ansel, and an email confirming my meeting in L.A. on Monday at 10 a.m. That last one does nothing to ease the sour feeling in my gut.

Finally I move to the messages, opening the single new text from Colton.

We are screwed, it says. We are absolutely royally FUCKED. I’m getting drunk.

THE KITCHEN IS filling with steam from a pot of overboiling pasta on the stove, when the sound of a door closing carries down the hall. “Honey! I’m home!”

I’m pacing between the counter and island, my stomach having bottomed out somewhere near my feet, when I hear Oliver drop his keys and kick his shoes off near the door.

Colton didn’t answer when I tried to call him back, but Levi did. Just like his message said, Colton is off somewhere getting plastered—and most likely fucked senseless by one of his many regular bed-bunnies—which would explain why he didn’t try to call me again.