Page 107 of Wedding Crasher

She swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, as she fought to get her breathing back under control, and pushed against his chest to put some space between them. He waited for her to speak, his whole body braced for impact, like a passenger on a jet free-falling out of the sky.

‘You’re right. I don’t have to hate you anymore. But I don’t love you, Gabe, and I never will.’

She stared him down across the chapel kitchen as his eyes scraped her face, looking for any chink in her armour. He found none. She was marble white and just as impenetrable.

‘You’re the most stubborn, fucking infuriating woman I’ve ever met in my life,’ he said, frustration and ferocious hurt warring inside him. He wanted to shake the truth out of her, because there was no way he had this wrong.

‘Go home, Gabe,’ she said softly.

He raked his hand through his smoky hair. ‘I don’t even know where that is anymore.’

Marla paused, and Gabe found himself holding his breath. ‘Maybe it’s not here,’ she said eventually, so quietly he had to strain to hear her.

He felt his strength ebb away. She was telling him to leave, to give up, to go home. He’d told her that he loved her, and she’d told him to take his love and disappear. He was a long way beyond weary. His tired bones ached, and his empty, broken heart ached.

‘Winner takes all,’ he said quietly. ‘Congratulations, Marla.’

He stalked down the aisle and out into the cold, crisp night, knowing without a doubt that the woman he loved would never let herself love him back. He was done.

CHAPTER FORTY

Cecilia poured two glasses of wine and put them down on the kitchen table, along with the open bottle ready for the refills. She had a feeling they were going to need them.

She stood behind Marla’s chair and stroked her hair for a few seconds. She’d listened to her daughter cry herself to sleep every night for at least two weeks, and she wasn’t prepared to do it again.

Marla didn’t want her hair stroked, and she didn’t want to talk. She wanted to go to bed.

‘What’s wrong, honey?’ her mother asked.

Marla fiddled with the belt of her dressing gown as Cecilia pulled up a chair beside her.

‘Nothing,’ she sniffed.

‘Nothing doesn’t make you cry as much as you have been these past few weeks.’

Marla’s shoulders slumped, defeated. She didn’t have enough fight left in her to deny the truth any longer. Gabe had laid his soul bare that day in the chapel, and she’d sent him away because she’d been too scared to be honest with him, or with herself.

‘It’s Gabe.’

Cecilia nodded and lifted her daughter’s chin.

‘You love him.’

Even though the answer to her mother’s question was quite obviously yes, still she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. Instead, she nodded.

‘I’m in a mess, Mom. Over the last few months I’ve poured all my energy into hating him. I wouldn’t knowhowto love him.’

Cecilia frowned. ‘Why not?’

Marla looked at her mother. The woman called herself a sex therapist. Did shereallynot know? She sighed heavily.

‘Because all I know of love and marriage is what I’ve learned from you.’

Cecilia laid a hand over Marla’s on the table, and sat in silence for a minute or two. ‘You think I like being this way, Marla?’

Marla chewed her lip. ‘I don’t know, Mom.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess you’re just not the settling kind.’

Cecilia threw her hands up in the air, with an exasperated laugh.

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