How can she be getting married?

“You said she wasn’t dating anyone seriously.”

“I said I wasn’t sure but that things with this guy didn’t seem serious,” my younger brother, Trey, corrects.

“I told you to keep an eye on her. Don’t you think that this is something that I would have wanted to know? Before she had a Goddamn ring on her finger?” I’m pacing the length of my small office, trying my best to keep my voice down with the thin walls separating all of the doctors on the floor.

“You asked me to keep her safe,” he retorts. “You didn’t say anything about cock blocking her or interfering in her dating life or whatever the fuck. I do have a life of my own, you know. And what difference does it even make? You broke it off with her. So, you’re subscribing to the belief now that if you can’t have her, nobody can?”

That’s exactly how it is. Whitney Monroe belonged to me regardless of our current relationship status. I don’t know who this guy is, but there’s no way in hell she’s walking down that aisle with him.

“That’s exactly what the fuck I’m saying.” I decide to tell him the truth because I told Trey everything. Even about the intense two-year long relationship I found myself in with my best friend’s daughter. The relationship that left her broken-hearted when I ended things and me with regret, raging self-loathing and anger at myself for letting things get so far. I hadn’t ended things to be cruel or because I didn’t love her, I ended it because I felt we didn’t have a future. I was not only her parents’ best friend but her godfather which meant according to every rule in life, she should have been off limits to me. I’d been there the day she was born and through all of her milestones, all of her birthdays and even helped teach her to drive. I’d been there with her father threatening the boys with what would happen if any of them ever hurt her.

The irony that I also taught her to fuck and ended up hurting her way worse than any of those boys is not lost on me.

It all happened so fast. The summer she turned eighteen somehow coincided with the summer I lost my mind when the girl I’d known for eighteen years became a woman right before my eyes. A woman that suddenly had all my attention and we found ourselves unable to keep our hands off of each other and sneaking around behind everyone’s back. At my office, my car, my house on weekends, there was no chance her parents would drop by unannounced and if they did, we always had contingency plans and practically every Four Seasons Hotel in the State of California.

I don’t know how no one caught on to be honest.

Our affair was intense, bordering on a burning obsession with each other. I hadn’t felt that way about anyone maybe ever. I woke up consumed with her. I went to sleep with her on my mind if she wasn’t curled up in bed next to me. If I was away from her for more than a few hours, my hands itched with the need to touch her. My mouth desperate to kiss her, taste her skin or the wet flesh between her legs. I was enamored with her. I was in love in a way that I’d never felt before and it hit me hard and fast.