Page 60 of What Happens This Christmas
After the tears started to slow, the hiccups came fast and hard, and my chest hurt with every heavy thump. I’d virtually ruined Nick’s tux. I’d certainly ruined the evening. “My gown…”I started, wanting to explain, but apparently still unable to string together the words to make a coherent thought.
He backed up and pried it from my hands, pulling it out from between us, his hard chest now firmly pressed up against my breasts. The corded muscles masked by his tux couldn’t be missed. We hadn’t been this close in a long time and the reaction my body was having to his was almost embarrassing as I felt my nipples harden under the constraints of my bustier.
I was an expert liar. I had to be since I’d been lying to myself. I wanted him. Even now.
“This?” Nick finally asked, holding it out and dropping it on the floor like the trash it was. “Who cares? You have other dresses.”
I shook my head, peering up at him. I blinked so I could see without the fog of tears. “You don’t understand,” I said in between soft sobs.
“If it’s not about the fucking dress, then what is it about?” He squeezed me closer, both hands coming around me now. I could feel his heart beating in his chest like a caged animal ready to pounce free.
On an exhale, I wiped my eyes, the heavy black mascara I wore on my fake lashes coming off on my hand. I stared up at Nick, our eyes meeting again, but never once stepped out of his embrace. He was grounding me, tethering me to the here and now. “I can’t keep doing this.” It was the most honest I’d been with him and myself.
“What? Going to these events?”
“All of it. It’s not just the events. It’s everything.”
“I need more, Candy.” His expression was serious, his eyes pinning me in place while also cutting into me and making me feel exposed, like I was standing before him stark naked. It was in that look he stole the breath from my lungs.
“I’m exhausted. I’m so fucking tired,” I said, surprising myself by the profanity I’d chosen to slip in there.
Nick shook his head. “Do you want to stay home?”
Did I want to—“You love this event,” I insisted. The guilt of him not doing something he actually enjoyed would simply eat away at me. We only had so many moments like this left, and he deserved to do things he liked.
Man, now was so not the time for this, but it hit me like a rock to the head. His vicious mother had been right, and it was wrong of me to tell him to stay married to me if he didn’t want to be. “I’ll divorce you,” I said then, softly, almost in a whisper. I think on some level, I wanted him to not hear me. Although I knew it was unlikely that would be the case. And that was okay because it felt good to think about how happy that’d make him. And his mother, the witch that she was. Her, I didn’t care about, though. She could choke on it. Respectfully, of course.
The declaration gave Nick the pause he needed to lean back, extending himself from me.
The hairs on my arms stood with awareness.
He placed his thumb under my chin, jerking it up so I was forced to meet his gaze. “Is that what you want?” he asked, his husky voice taking on a smooth cadence.
My cheeks warmed. “I want to stop feeling like I do,” I admitted.
“And divorcing me will help you with that?” he asked, his brows furrowed.
I shook my head. “No.” I’d never put all my…everything…on Nick. That’d just be plain wrong. But divorcing might stop this raging guilt I felt for holding him back from something he obviously wanted.
“Tell me, Candy cane, how do you feel? You have to tell me what’s going on in that pretty blonde head of yours.” And, onthat note, he fingered some of the soft wisps of hair my stylist had kept out of my updo to frame my face.
I searched his blue eyes. If I could have swam in the depths of them, I would have. That had always been the thing about Nick, he had this way where he could suck me in. It had been a long time since the feeling struck, but I never forgot it. It haunted me like the kiss of a ghost.
“Horrible about myself,” I replied, trying to explain, but also knowing I was failing miserably. I cleared my throat and tried again. “The only time I don’t feel that way is when I’m shopping, and even then, there’s this nagging voice in the back of my mind.”
There was no hesitation. He responded hardly a second later, not giving what I said a moment to linger in the air like the smell of his cologne I loved so much. “Why do you feel horrible?”
I took a deep breath in. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that part of me was annoyed by the question. How was it possible that my husband didn’t understand just a fraction of the things I’d been feeling, thinking?Perhaps because you never shared them with him, and he hasn’t been gifted with the ability to read your mind.
That little voice was right because I never shared with Nick. Not like I should’ve. He had no clue. About any of it. I took a steadying breath and looked down at the heap that my gown had become. It was done for, that was for sure. For good measure, I pointed my toe and gave it a shove. It was a mess, and it was every bit representative of my life and the way I felt. “Some days I look in the mirror and I hate myself. I wonder how I got here, how I became this person,” I admitted, my hoarse voice coming out thick with emotion.
“You mean the person who cares way too fucking much about what other people think? The person who pretends like our life is some movie, and we’re the lead actors? Theperson who covets material shit like it goddamn matters?” Nick questioned, giving me a lot to think about in under ten seconds.
Had he recognized all of those things about me? He certainly spoke with enough disdain about them for me to assume he had. Why hadn’t he ever said anything?
Not that I would’ve listened to him.
Everything I did…
