My eyes flutter closed when he dips his head and gently presses his lips to mine, causing my breath to catch at the back of my throat. After a few seconds he pulls away and rests his head against mine, looking down at me with an intensity that sends shock waves through my nervous system.
“I love you.”
I give out a heavenly sigh, my body tingling from the feel of his breath against my lips. “I love you, too.” I step away from his embrace, ignoring the chill I feel at the loss of contact, even in the eighty-degree heat. “But I can’t be around you right now, I just … I need to be alone. Please … I need time to let tonight sink in.”
“You promise to still be here in the morning?”
I give a gentle nod. “I’m not going anywhere; I just need some time alone.” He takes a step forward and presses a kiss to my temple before slowly distancing himself.
“Okay. I’ll stay with Tyler in the pool house for the rest of the night.”
He seems to hesitate for a moment, but eventually he begins to walk backwards, his eyes never straying from mine. “I’ll see you in the morning.” He turns around and I can only nod as I watch his retreating back walk in the direction of the house, but not before taking one final glance.
Once alone, I drop my exhausted body on the porch steps and I let the past twenty-five minutes soak in, trying to let my body catch up with the overwhelming emotions that flow through my veins.
It’s only when I feel Alana’s motherly arms wrap around me that I finally set my emotions free by letting my tears fall without any interruptions.
I HAVEN’T SLEPT A wink.
How can I when I know my fiancée is hurting? Hurting because I’m a fucking idiot. I’m supposed to be the person in her life who protects her … who looks after her, but it seems even I’m not immune to breaking her beautiful, fragile heart.
When I walked away from her last night to give her the space she needed, the space she needed away from me—which was by far one of the hardest things I have ever had to do—I headed straight to the pool house. I stripped down to my boxer shorts, lay on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling, replaying everything in my head.
I kept going over the look of despair I saw piercing into the very soul of me last night, when Ava thought I had deceived her. How can she even think I would be interested in another woman when all my thoughts are consumed by only her? Well, her and Lily. I’m so deeply and madly in love with her that I’m pretty certain it borders on clinically psychotic. I’m obsessed with her, one hundred percent spellbound and in love—and as my brother even called me last night: pussy-whipped.
I think I’ve always felt that way about Ava, even from the very first moment I laid eyes on her, the new mother of a twenty-seven week old preemie while she sat in her wheelchair in complete and utter silence, watching her baby with an awed gaze that mesmerized me. She drew me in like a moth to a flame, and the instant my fingers came into close contact with the fire, I knew I was too late … She drew me in until I was too far gone. I was hers … even if she wasn’t mine.
Yesterday we were blissfully happy; laughing, and having hot, incredible sex, but today … well I’m a miserable son of a bitch because I feel lost without her.
It doesn’t help that when I tried to see her this morning, just to see if she was okay and try to somehow make up for my colossal fuck up to her, my mom wouldn’t let me within a mile of her. She was beyond pissed at me, and it seemed Ava had a new protector in the form of my mom. In a firm do-not-argue-with-your-mother kind of way, she told me, “She doesn’t want to see you. Thanks to you, that girl was a wreck all night. You need to stay away until she’s ready to see you. Let her breathe, Ashton.” Reluctantly I turned away but, in that moment, I came face to face with Riley, and I swear if the look of wrath my mom threw her way could kill, Riley wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Crunching down on my jaw, I purposely ignored Riley and focused on my mom. “Can you at least tell her that I love her, please?” I implored.
My mom nodded before turning away, heading in the direction of the guest room that had somehow turned into some kind of bridal sanctuary, but not before shooting another dagger at Riley.
I turned and began to walk downstairs when Riley called out my name. Angry at the fact I couldn’t see my fiancée thanks to Riley, and her need to fuck up my relationship with the only woman that matters to me, I turned to her and said, with a menacing grit to my voice, “Stay away from me. You’re the reason why my fiancée won’t fucking talk to me.”
That led me to now, standing with my brother at the top of the makeshift altar, sweating my balls off as the sun pounds down on us in the afternoon heat as the chairs begin to fill up with guests.
“Jesus, man … whose idea was it to wear goddamn tuxes in the middle of freaking August?” I complain pulling at my collar, hating the way the oppressive heat makes it feel as though it’s constricting my airways.
“Stop bitching, asshat, and man the fuck up.”
I bark out a laugh. “Are you kidding me? I’m not the one who couldn’t stop throwing up this morning because I was getting married today. That, bud, was all you.”
“Come on, man … I’m nervous as hell. You’re my best man, you’re supposed to be making me feel better or some shit.” Despite my mood, I can’t keep the chuckle that escapes my lips. He’s right though; it’s my job to keep his shit together. I step in front of him, placing my hands on either side of his shoulders, gripping him tightly.
“Why are you nervous? You’re marrying the woman of your dreams today, the woman you love. It’s a pretty awesome day to be you, brother.” He takes a deep breath through his nose, and exhales out of his mouth. After a few moments, his frigid demeanor slowly relaxes until he finally cracks a smile.
“God, I’m one lucky guy.”
A ghost of a smile splays across my lips as the sudden image of Ava’s beautiful smile, beautiful laugh … beautiful everything hits me like a freight train and the clarity, the smooth definition of her perfection takes my breath away, just as it does when her beauty is only an inch away.
“Me too … I just hope Ava is able to forgive me.” Once Tyler woke up this morning and noticed my brooding self on the sofa in the pool house with an unbelievably angry scowl on my face, I was forced to tell him what happened during the night.
“Of course she will, she loves you … and technically you didn’t do anything wrong. It was all Riley.”
I nod knowing he’s right, but hating that I’m the reason Ava won’t even talk to me. She can’t even bear to look at me. I hate myself. If I had been one hundred percent sober last night, then my inhibitions wouldn’t have been lowered and I wouldn’t have allowed Riley’s lips to touch mine for longer than a millisecond. Five seconds—even they felt quick—were five seconds too long.
“I know that, but it’s going to be hard for her to trust me again.”
“Well, you need to do something to gain her trust,” Tyler says pointedly, with a huge smile bursting from his lips, almost like he knows something that I don’t.
“And how do you reckon I should do that?” The question sounds a little skeptic, but right now I’ve never been more serious in my life. I will do anything to gain her trust again. Today is the first day that I haven’t woken with her beauty lying beside me or heard her sexy voice on my cell phone—for when I’ve had to do night shifts at the hospital—and it’s been hell. I need her beside me in order for me to function, because without her I simply cannot exist.