The Real Best Man: Part 3 — The Demolition

The last of the whiskey burned a slow, pleasant trail down my throat, but it was nothing compared to the fire Rhys’s gaze was starting in my belly.

The space between us on the worn leather sofa had shrunk with every confession, every shared glance, until I could feel the heat radiating from his body.

The storm outside had softened to a steady, percussive drumming on the roof, a rhythm that seemed to beat in time with my own frantic heart.

His knuckles were white where he gripped his empty glass. “So that’s it, then,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “You build walls to keep the bad guys out, and I just run so they can’t catch up. ”

“Something like that,” I whispered.

The admission, raw and exposed, hung in the air between us. My entire life was a fortress of my own design, and this man, this infuriating, perceptive man, had just walked through the gates without even bothering to knock.

He set his glass down on the hearth with a decisive click. The sound was a period on a sentence I hadn’t known we were writing. He turned back to me, his eyes—that impossible shade of storm-cloud gray—pinning me in place. “What happens when you get tired of living in a fortress, Ava?”

My breath hitched. “I… I don’t know. I’m not. ”

“Liar. ” The word wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement of fact, soft and devastating. He leaned closer, and the world narrowed to the scent of him—whiskey, woodsmoke, and something uniquely, dangerously Rhys. “I can see it. You’re rattling the bars from the inside. ”

His hand came up, not to touch me, but to hover, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw in the air just an inch from my skin. I felt the phantom touch like a brand.

Every rule I’d ever written for myself—Don’t be reckless. Don’t be impulsive. Don’t get involved with men who are complicated and transient and the best man at your most important client’s wedding—screamed at me in a chorus of panicked, logical protest.

I ignored every one of them.

Leaning into that space, I closed the gap.

My lips met the back of his hand, a soft press against his knuckles. A tremor went through him, a current that shot straight back into me. His eyes darkened, the storm inside them finally breaking.

“Ava,” he breathed, a warning and a prayer all at once.

“Don’t,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Don’t say my name like it’s a mistake. ”

Because in that moment, it felt like the only right thing I’d done in years.

That was all it took.

He was on me, not with force, but with a desperate, pent-up need that mirrored my own. His mouth crashed down on mine, and it was nothing like the careful, planned-out kisses I was used to.

This was messy. This was hungry.

It was the taste of whiskey and honesty and a thousand unspoken frustrations. It was a demolition.

His hands were in my hair, tilting my head back as his tongue swept my mouth, claiming and exploring with a confidence that made my knees weak.

I moaned into the kiss, my hands curling in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer until there was no space left between us at all.

The carefully constructed façade of Ava Morgan, the meticulous planner, the woman who had a color-coded schedule for her own life, crumbled into dust.

This was chaos. Beautiful, terrifying chaos.

We stumbled from the sofa, a tangle of limbs and desperate kisses, and landed on the plush wool rug in front of the fireplace. The flames licked at the logs, casting dancing shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw and the raw want in his eyes.

He pulled back, just for a second, his chest heaving.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice thick with gravelly desire.

Instead of answering, I reached for the buttons of his shirt, my fingers fumbling with a clumsy urgency I didn’t recognize. One popped off, skittering away into the shadows. I froze, the old Ava horrified by the imperfection, the mistake.

But Rhys just laughed, a low, husky sound. He covered my hands with his own and brought them to his lips, kissing my knuckles.

“Let me,” he said, and proceeded to undo the rest of the buttons himself, his eyes never leaving mine.

He shrugged off the shirt, and the firelight played over the hard planes of his chest, the dusting of dark hair, the tattoos that snaked over his shoulder and down his arm.

He was a roadmap of a life lived, not curated. My fingers itched to trace the lines, to learn the stories.

This was my rebellion. It wasn’t just about Rhys. It was about Marcus and his suffocating, predictable affection. It was about my parents and their impossible expectations. It was about every single box I had ever forced myself into. With every piece of clothing that came off, another rule was shattered. The sensible silk blouse. The perfectly tailored trousers.

My control. My composure. My sanity.

When we were finally bare, skin to skin on the rug in the firelight, he hovered over me, propped on his elbows. He looked at me, really looked at me, with an intensity that stripped away every last defense. He didn’t see the wedding planner.

He didn’t see the woman who alphabetized her spice rack. He saw the person I’d kept locked away.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, and then he was kissing me again, a slower, deeper exploration that promised to learn every inch of me.

And he did. His hands and mouth were instruments of exquisite torture and dizzying pleasure. He discovered places on my body I didn’t know were sensitive, elicited responses I didn’t know I was capable of. He was both patient and demanding, worshipful and carnal.

He unraveled me, thread by thread, until I was nothing but a raw bundle of need, arching against him, begging for him with words I’d never dared to say aloud.

When he finally pushed inside me, I cried out. It was a feeling of being filled, of being completed in a way that was terrifying and exhilarating. There was no plan here.

There was only this moment. The friction of our bodies, the crackle of the fire, our ragged breaths mingling in the air. He moved with a rhythm that was both primal and intuitive, watching my face, chasing my pleasure as if it were his only purpose on earth.

My perfectly ordered world shattered into a million brilliant, glittering pieces. Control was a lie. Perfection was a cage. This—this messy, glorious, untamed collision—was freedom.

And when my climax ripped through me, a tidal wave of sensation that left me shuddering and breathless, my scream was one of pure, unadulterated liberation. Rhys followed me a moment later, collapsing against me with a guttural groan, his body heavy and warm and real.

We lay there for a long time, tangled together, the fire dying down to glowing embers. His arm was a comforting weight across my waist, his breathing soft against my hair.

I had never felt so exposed, or so safe. He shifted, pressing a soft kiss to my shoulder blade.

“You okay?” he whispered into the quiet.

“Yes,” I breathed, and it was the truest thing I’d said all night.

For the first time in forever, I fell asleep without a plan for tomorrow.

Chapter 27: The Cold Light of Morning

Sunlight.

That was the first thing that registered. Not the gentle, filtered light of my blackout curtains in the city, but a sharp, intrusive blade of morning sun slicing through a gap in the rustic barn’s drapes.

It hit my eyelids, pulling me from the deepest, most dreamless sleep I’d had in a decade.

The second thing was the warmth. A solid, human warmth pressed against my back, a heavy arm draped possessively over my waist.

The third was the scent. Stale whiskey, woodsmoke, and a musky, masculine scent that was achingly familiar.

My eyes snapped open.

The ceiling was wrong. Rough-hewn wooden beams instead of smooth white plaster. The blanket tangled around my legs was a coarse, scratchy wool, not my Egyptian cotton duvet. And the man snoring softly behind me…

Oh, god.

The first thing I registered was the light. It was a pale, apologetic gray, filtering through the thin curtains of the barn’s loft and painting a stripe across a bare chest.

My chest. No, not mine. His.

Rhys.

The second thing I registered was the scent. Whiskey, musk, and sleep, a heady, masculine combination that was soaked into the sheets, into my hair, into the very air I was breathing.

My body hummed with a low-level thrum of satisfaction so deep it was almost painful. Every muscle ached with a delicious, well-used soreness. My skin tingled where the rough scrape of his stubble had raked across it. Last night wasn’t a dream. It was a brand seared into my memory.

I turned my head slowly on the pillow. He was still asleep, lying on his stomach, one arm thrown over his head and the other slung low across my waist, possessive even in unconsciousness. The dense muscle of his back flexed with each steady breath.

A giddy, terrifying warmth bloomed in my chest. For one stupid, delirious second, I let myself sink into it. This felt… right. More right than anything had felt in years. The way he’d looked at me, like he was seeing past the spreadsheets, right down to the messy, chaotic woman I kept locked away.

Then reality, cold and sharp as a shard of glass, sliced through the haze.

Marcus.

The name was a physical blow. Marcus, my ex, the man I was still hopelessly tangled up with. Marcus, the groom.

And Rhys. Rhys was his best man. And my client’s brother.

A wave of nausea churned in my stomach, violent and immediate. What had I done. My rules—the carefully constructed set of principles I lived by to avoid this exact kind of catastrophic mess—lay in smoking ruins around me.

With a surge of adrenaline, I shoved myself free and scrambled out of bed, grabbing the first piece of clothing I could find—his button-down shirt from the floor. It smelled of him, a fresh torture. As I fumbled with the buttons, my hands shaking, his voice, thick with sleep, cut through the silence.

“Leaving so soon. I was hoping for a repeat performance. ”

I froze, my back to him. I could feel his eyes on me. I didn’t have to turn around to know his expression would be laced with that infuriating, lazy smirk.

“I have to go,” I said, my voice tight and unfamiliar.

The bedsprings creaked as he shifted. “Ava. Turn around. ”

It wasn’t a request. Taking a shaky breath, I did as he said. He was sitting up now, the sheet pooled at his waist, his hair a dark mess, his eyes a startling, clear grey in the morning light. The smirk was gone. In its place was a look of quiet intensity that made my stomach clench.

“This… last night…” I started, gesturing vaguely at the bed, at him, at the wreckage of my own making. “It was a mistake. ”

A flicker of something—raw, wounded—crossed his face before being wiped clean, replaced by a mask of cool indifference. He leaned back on his elbows, the picture of casual disregard. “Really. Felt pretty damn intentional to me. Several times, in fact. ”

Heat flooded my cheeks. “You know what I mean. This can’t happen again. It can never, ever happen again. ”

He raised a single, sardonic eyebrow. “Bit dramatic, don’t you think. It was just sex. ”

“No, it wasn’t,” I snapped, the words out before I could stop them. “And that’s the problem. You’re Marcus’s best man. I’m… I’m his planner. This is an impossible, insane situation. ”

“Only a situation if we make it one,” he said, his voice hardening, the sarcastic armor clicking firmly into place. “So what’s the play here. We pretend we didn’t just spend eight hours tearing this room apart. We go back to trading witty insults over canapés?”

The casual cruelty of his words was a relief. It was easier to fight him than to face the terrifying tenderness I’d felt waking up in his arms.

“Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. “That’s exactly the play. Last night was a lapse in judgment. Fueled by whiskey and… stress. It meant nothing. ”

The lie tasted like acid on my tongue. It had meant everything.

Rhys watched me for a long, silent moment.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. He swung his legs out of bed, completely unselfconscious in his nakedness, and started pulling on his jeans. The sight of his lean hips and the sharp line of his V-taper was a fresh assault on my resolve.

“Got it,” he said, his voice clipped and devoid of emotion as he zipped his fly. “One-time-only-shit-show. My lips are sealed. ” He grabbed his t-shirt from a chair and pulled it over his head, the motion sharp and angry. When he looked at me again, his face was a blank slate.

“Your secret’s safe with me, princess. Wouldn’t want to mess up your perfect little life. ”

He walked past me and into the small bathroom, shutting the door with a quiet, definitive click that echoed the sound of my heart slamming against my ribs.

Chapter 28: The Anesthetic of Work

The city was a welcome shock to the system.

The blare of horns and the relentless sea of anonymous faces was an anesthetic, dulling the sharp edges of my guilt.

I threw myself back into work with the desperation of a drowning woman clinging to a raft.

My office, with its clean lines, minimalist art, and panoramic view of the skyline, was my sanctuary.

Here, I was in control.

Here, there were spreadsheets and client briefs and legal documents—things that made sense, things that followed logical rules.

I worked until my eyes burned.

I subsisted on stale coffee and the adrenaline of looming deadlines.

I ignored the concerned looks from my assistant. Most of all, I ignored the three missed calls from Rhys.

Each time my phone had lit up with his name, my heart had tried to beat its way out of my chest.

After the third, I’d silenced it, shoving the phone into my desk drawer like a dirty secret.

Avoidance was a skill I had perfected over a lifetime. If I didn’t look at it, if I didn’t talk about it, eventually it would cease to exist.

That was the theory, anyway.

But he haunted the quiet moments.

The scent of a stranger’s cologne in the elevator would transport me back to the barn.

The sound of a low laugh from the next office would echo the sound he made deep in his chest. I’d be staring at a contract, and the black-and-white text would blur into the image of dark ink on tanned skin.

My body ached for him with a phantom longing that was constant and humiliating.

On Thursday afternoon, a delivery man arrived with a vase of flowers so large it required its own dolly.

My stomach plummeted. White lilies and pale pink roses, an elegant, extravagant display that filled my sterile office with a cloyingly sweet perfume.

It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t. Not after I’d called it “a mistake. ” This was a new kind of torture.

Chapter 29: The Ghost and the Groom

My hand was trembling as I reached for the card. It couldn’t be from Rhys. It couldn’t.

But the card wasn’t from him. It was from Marcus.

Ava, the familiar, neat script read, Heard from Chloe you’re swamped. Don’t forget to come up for air. Thinking of you. M.

I dropped the card on my desk as if it had burned me.

A fresh wave of guilt—hotter and more sickening than the first—crashed over me. Of course, Marcus. Kind, thoughtful, completely clueless Marcus.

He thought my distance was about work, about the stress of the flood.

He was trying to be the good guy, the supportive groom, while I was hiding a secret that would detonate his entire world.

The lilies seemed to mock me with their pristine, white innocence. They were the flowers of weddings, of polite society, of the life I was supposed to want. They were everything Rhys wasn’t.

My phone buzzed on the desk. A text message.

Marcus: Did you get the flowers. I know lilies are your favorite.

I squeezed my eyes shut. He remembered.

After all this time, he still remembered a silly preference I’d mentioned years ago. The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like another turn of the screw.

Marcus: Seriously, Ava. Talk to me. You’ve been a ghost. Let me take you to dinner tonight. Just us. We need to talk.

I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over the keyboard.

Outside my window, the city lights began to glitter against the deepening twilight, a million perfect, orderly pinpricks. My life had been just like that—a carefully arranged pattern.

Now, one night with Rhys had smashed it to pieces, and I was left standing in the dark, trying to decide if I should try to glue the old life back together, or if I had the courage to see what new shape the fragments might make.

Chapter 30: The Summons

The hum of the office was a thin veneer over the screaming in my own head.

For a week, I’d been a ghost in my own life, haunting the periphery of meetings, subsisting on stale coffee and the acidic churn of guilt.

I’d perfected the art of being busy—a flurry of emails, a stack of floor plans, a phone perpetually pressed to my ear. Anything to avoid the quiet moments when the memory of Rhys’s body, warm and solid against hers, would flash behind my eyes.

Anything to avoid seeing the man himself.

I’d managed it, too. A series of near-misses in the hallway, a strategically timed lunch break, a feigned migraine to get out of a team-wide site visit. It was exhausting, cowardly, and utterly necessary.

“Ava. ”

The voice, low and familiar, cut through my concentration. I didn’t have to look up from the swatches I was pretending to organize. I knew that voice. I

t was the sound of my past, of late-night study sessions, of a life I’d neatly packed away.

Marcus.

He was leaning against my doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t wearing his usual power suit; instead, a soft grey jumper clung to his broad shoulders. It was a deliberate choice, I knew.

A casual disarming.

“I’m swamped, Marcus,” I said, my voice brittle. “The caterer for your wedding is having a meltdown over linen colors. ” A lie. The caterer was a consummate professional.

“The linens can wait,” he said, his tone gentle but firm. “We need to talk. ”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Everything’s on schedule. ”

He pushed off the doorframe and took two steps into my office, closing the door behind him. The small click of the latch was like a gunshot in the tense silence. “This isn’t about the wedding, Ava. And you know it. You’ve been avoiding me for a week. Ever since I sent the flowers. ”

“I’ve been busy. ”

“You’ve been a ghost,” he corrected softly. He came to a stop in front of my desk, and I was forced to finally look at him. His blue eyes, usually so confident and sharp, were clouded with a genuine concern that made my stomach twist. The lilies on my credenza felt like accusations.

“You ignored my calls. My texts. I’m worried about you, Ava. ” He gestured to the city outside. “Let me take you to dinner. Just to talk. No work. I promise. ”

My first instinct was to say no. A hard, fast refusal. Dinner with Marcus was a minefield of shared history I wasn’t equipped to navigate. Not now, when my nerves were already frayed to the breaking point by Rhys.

But then I saw the look on his face—not just concern, but a deep, aching familiarity.

And I was so, so tired of running. Maybe this was the answer. Maybe this was how I fixed this, how I got back on track. This was the *safe* choice. The *right* choice.

“Fine,” I heard myself say, the word tasting like surrender. “One dinner. ”

Chapter 31: A Strategic Alliance

An hour later, I was sliding into a worn leather booth at Santini’s, and a wave of vertigo washed over me. It wasn’t just a restaurant; it was a time capsule. Our time capsule.

The red-and-white checkered tablecloths, the Chianti bottles dripping with years of candle wax, the air thick with the smell of garlic and oregano.

It was the place we’d celebrated my first big commission, his acceptance into business school. It was the place he’d first told her he loved me.

The ghosts of our younger selves were laughing in the corner.

“A bit on the nose, don’t you think?” I murmured, trying for a coolness I didn’t feel.

“I wanted somewhere we could be honest,” Marcus said, his gaze unwavering as the waiter placed a basket of warm bread between them. He didn’t even look at the menu. “Two Cokes and the usual, Gianni. Thanks. ”

The usual. Veal parmigiana for him, eggplant for me. My throat tightened. He remembered. Of course he remembered. Marcus never forgot a detail. It was what made him a brilliant businessman. It was what made this so damn hard.

“What is this, Marcus?” I asked, my hands twisting a paper napkin into a shredded mess in my lap. “A trip down memory lane before you walk down the aisle?”

The barb landed. I saw it in the slight flinch of his jaw. “No. It’s an apology. ”

I stared at him, speechless.

“I’ve been a fool, Ava,” he said, his voice dropping, forcing me to lean in. “A complete, ambitious, goddamn fool. For years. But especially lately. ” He ran a hand through his perfectly styled hair, messing it up in a way I hadn’t seen since he was twenty-one. “Watching you work, seeing you every day… it’s just thrown everything into sharp relief. What I have. And what I threw away. ”

“You have Chloe,” I said, the name tasting like ash.

He let out a short, bitter laugh. “I have a strategic alliance. Chloe and I… it’s a merger. Her family’s real estate empire, my father’s development firm. It’s a transaction, Ava. It’s about securing a legacy. It has nothing to do with… this. ” He gestured vaguely at the space between us. “It has nothing to do with coming home at the end of the day and being able to just… breathe. ”

Every word was a hammer blow. This was the conversation I had dreamed of and dreaded for eight years. The validation I thought I no longer needed.

“You’re engaged,” I whispered, the words a flimsy shield. “You’re getting married in three weeks. I’m planning your wedding. ”

“An arrangement that can be un-arranged,” he said, his eyes boring into mine. “Tell me I’m crazy, Ava. Tell me you don’t feel it too. This pull. This… rightness. When we’re in a room together, it’s like all the noise in the world just stops. ”

Tears pricked my eyes, hot and treacherous. I hated him for making me feel this, for cracking me open when I was already so broken from Rhys.

“Don’t do this, Marcus. It’s not fair. Not to me, and definitely not to Chloe. ”

“What’s not fair is living a lie,” he said, reaching across the table, his hand covering hers. His touch was warm, solid. Familiar. It didn’t send a jolt of illicit electricity through me like Rhys’s did. It was a different kind of current—a slow, deep thrum of recognition. Of belonging. “I’m not asking for an answer right now. I’m just asking you to think about it. Is there anything left. Is there a chance we could find our way back?”

Chapter 32: The Harbor and the Storm

His thumb stroked the back of my hand, a simple, tender gesture that unraveled me completely.

He wasn’t just the ruthless groom. He was the boy who’d once traced constellations on my back and whispered his dreams into my hair.

He stood up, pulling me gently by the hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. ”