Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
He was being given a second chance, and he’d regret it forever if he didn’t take it.
“Sienna.”
She stilled, tensed, and he heard her breath catch. “Gavin—”
“When you mentioned that house earlier tonight. Do you know what flashed in my head? I pictured what it would have been like carrying you over the threshold. I wondered what your dress looked like.”
“Stop,” she said again, but it was breathy. Uncertain.
“No.”
She turned to him then, the look on her face so incredibly hurt, and though it stabbed at him, it gave him hope as well, just like her anger had, and for all the same reasons. “It still hurts you, too, Sienna. You’re still angry. And if you didn’t still care, you wouldn’t be able to muster those emotions,” he said, voicing his thoughts aloud. “We need to talk about it. It’s long overdue—”
“I was eighteen, Gavin,” she said, her voice rising. “Eighteen with no one in the world except you and Mirabelle and Argus. In one fell swoop you deprived me of all three people I considered my family! I had no one. Not one person in the world. And you didn’t even have the decency to tell me to my face. You left me there. Alone. I took the bus home in my wedding dress! You want to know what my wedding dress looked like after all was said and done? It was dirty and sweaty and smelled like diesel fuel, you fucking asshole!”
Gavin winced. He’d wanted her anger, all of it, and he’d expected it to hurt, but not like this. The vision flattened him. He lowered his head and rubbed his forehead. “You had money. Why didn’t you take a cab?”
“I didn’t have money. I hadn’t brought any money with me. Do you know how many places there are to store things in a wedding dress? I’d expected you to be there. I’d expected to go home in your truck.”
He rubbed at his head again. “I’m sorry about that. I wrestled with myself up until the very final moment. If I’d thought the specifics through—”
“You wonder why I’m still angry? It’s not because of the bus or the ruined dress. It’s because I can still feel that day. If I close my eyes, I can still feel it, I can still smell it, and God dammit, I don’t know how to make it stop.” She stood and turned away from him, and he went after her, stopping her with a hand to her upper arm. She turned back, her expression shocked and defiant.
“I still feel it too,” he said. “I still feel you. All these years. I haven’t gotten over you. You want to know why I never married? Because no one measured up. They couldn’t because they weren’t you.”
She laughed, but it contained no humor. “What am I supposed to do with that? There’s too much water under the bridge. I’m with someone else.”
He tensed, not able to control the bolt of pure jealousy that speared through him. “Sienna, this Brandon Guthrie that you’re dating isn’t worthy of you.”
“You don’t know anything about Brandon.”
“I know plenty.”
She whipped her head toward him, her stare both incredulous and affronted. “Oh my God, you did a security check on him? This is outrageous!”
“I googled him. And you should too.”
“I don’t need to google him. I know him!”
“Maybe not as well as you think you do. Look him up. See how loyal he is. See how closely your ideals align.”
She laughed, and there was a hysterical edge to the sound. “You’re one to talk about loyalty! About ideals?” She went to turn away again, but he put his fingers around her arm, and she stopped, turning back to him. He was encouraged by the fact that she hadn’t persisted in leaving but let him stop her with the barest touch. It made him hope she wanted to stay, whether she’d be willing to admit it or not. She wanted to see this through, whatever “this” might end up being.
It had been a long, long time coming.
“I don’t know what you’re doing. I only know you made your choice years ago. You let me go, you threw me away, and you don’t just get to take me back whenever you feel like it.”
He tried to take her hands, but she stepped back, crossing her arms over her chest. “Say whatever you need to say. I can take it. But also, let me explain—”
“Explain? What is there to explain?” But again, she didn’t turn away.
He took in a big pull of air. “I saw your college-acceptance letter, Si, saw the scholarship offer for the criminal-justice program.”
She faltered, obviously not expecting that. “But . . . what? How? I threw that letter away.”
“Not before your mother saw it.”
“My mother?” Now she looked even more confused.
“Your mother came to me with the letter and showed me what you were about to give up. She was a miserable shrew ninety-nine percent of the time, Sienna, but she was right to do that. I think . . . I don’t know for sure, but I think maybe your mother took a wrong turn at some point and ended up where she was. Who she was. Maybe the one decent thing she ever did was see where her daughter might make the same mistake and do what she could to stop it from happening. You’d have given that up to marry me and live in some clapboard house with a leaky roof and questionable electric work. A scholarship that you’d earned because you’d worked your ass off despite everything you had going against you.”