Page 14 of Tangled Up With You

“I heard what you said,” she continued with her quiet words, but the anger radiating behind them slammed into me like a rogue wave. “Spare me your empty compliments.”

“It wasn’t an empty compliment,” I insisted, my brows dipping into a frown. I was speaking the God’s honest truth. She looked gorgeous tonight. Shealwayslooked gorgeous.

“I don’t want to hear it, Connor.” Christ, the sound of my name on her rosy bee-stung lips, even said in that pissed off tone she was using, was enough to rev my engine. What the hell was wrong with me? “Let’s just get through this weekend, then we can go back to acting like the other person doesn’t exist.”

I moved fast when I felt the fingers that had been hugging the bend of my elbow begin to loosen as she attempted to pull away, grabbing hold of her hand with my free one and keeping it firmly in place. I couldn’t let her break our connection yet. I knew I had no right to force contact on her like that, but I hadn’t realized until she touched me that every breath I’d been taking since those early morning hours when I’d walked out on her had been cut in half. The instant her fingers pressed into the cuffed sleeve of my shirt, my lungs expanded fully for the first time in months. I’d felt like something was missing for so long now, and I’d struggled to put my finger on what it was.

Now I knew.

It was her.

Christ. I’dreallyfucked up.

“I don’t want to pretend like you don’t exist,” I said quietly as the end of the aisle grew closer. “I can’t pretend that.”

She let out a short, sardonic laugh that felt like a knife to my gut. “I find that hard to believe, considering you’ve been doing that very thing for months now.”

“Butterfly—”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. Her delicate features went hard. Those plump pink lips pulled into a flat line and her cheeks flushed angrily while her slim nose wrinkled at the bridge in disgust. But it was what I saw shimmering in her eyes that stole the air right from my lungs. Pain reflected back at me, radiating so strongly I felt every muscle in my body tense. “You don’t get to call me that. Not anymore.”

Our friends were only feet away now. “I’m sorry,” I said, those words barely a breath but dripping with dejection as we reached the end of our short journey together. “I’m so fucking sorry, Ivy.”

She cast a bewildered look in my direction as I finally released her hand and let it drop from my arm before turning around and walking away.

Chapter Eight

Ivy

“You guys ready?” Rae called out from behind the dressing screens in the corner of the bridal suite.

Her big day was finally here, and after we’d all gotten primped and pampered and styled, the time had finally come for her to reveal her wedding gown to all of us. It was the one thing that we, as her bridesmaids, hadn’t been a part of. Using connections from her former life, she and her mom had made quite a few trips back and forth to LA to work with a famous designer on Rae’s dream wedding dress.

“We’re ready,” Lennix said impatiently.

A collective gasp sounded through the room once she stepped out from behind the screens. “Oh my God,” Lennix breathed as tears welled in her eyes. She hooked arms with her mother, Rory, who was standing behind her, and the two of them held each other up as they took in the woman who was about to become an official member of their family. Not that she wasn’t already. “You look so beautiful.”

Rae’s mother, Alma, stood off to the side with her clasped hands held in front of her smiling mouth. Pride shone in her eyes as she took in her daughter.

“You really do,” I said, standing from the dusky pink velvet divan and moving toward her to pull her into a hug. “Zach is going to lose his mind when he sees you in this,” I said as I released her and took a step back to take her in once more.

She swished the skirt of her flowing lace gown back and forth, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “You really think so? I just want him to like it.”

“Honey, you look like a fairy princess,” Alma told her.

Rory nodded and sniffled. “Absolutely breathtaking. He’s going to love it.”

Moving to the champagne bucket beside the vanity, I grabbed an empty glass and filled it up, handing it over to the bride since the rest of us were already set. “Here, drink this. It’ll help with your nerves.”

She turned her head, smiling a euphoric smile I’d never seen her wear before. It was the smile of a woman who had every single one of her dreams come true. “I’ll drink it because I never pass on champagne, but I’m not nervous.” She sipped daintily, mindful of her lipstick. “It’s strange actually. I was so sure I’d be a huge bundle of nerves today, but I just feel ready. Like this is exactly what’s supposed to be happening and Zach is exactly who it’s supposed to be happening with. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my whole life. Is that weird?”

Alma beamed at her daughter as she reached up to gently brush a silky curl over her bare shoulder. “It’s not weird at all. It’s exactly how I felt when I married your father.”

“And it’s what I felt when I married Cord,” Rory confessed. “Like a piece clicking into place you didn’t realize was missing, but as soon as you have it, you know what it means to feel whole.”

“Yeah,” Rae said on a dreamy sigh. “That’s what it feels like.”

I forced my lips to stretch into a smile as my stomach dropped to my feet. It wasn’t that I was jealous, exactly. I was over the moon that my friends had been lucky enough to meet the loves of their lives, and I wished them decades of happiness to come. But I would have been lying if I didn’t feel a small pang of envy at what she was describing. All my life I had wanted a love like that for myself. It was the same kind of love I saw every time I looked at my mom and stepdad. I loved my father. He’d never been anything but good to me, but I wasn’t naïve. My mom kept the truth from me until I was old enough to start asking questions, but I knew he’d been a shitty husband. He hadn’t been good enough for her, so it made the fact that she found Micah once we moved to Hope Valley even more special.

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