Page 35 of One Wild Night
“How do you know it will be worse? How can youknow?”
Her heart ached even more when she watched a tear ran down hischeek.
“Because I love you. And I didn’t know until yesterday just how much. If you break me like you did before, I won’t be able to come back fromthat.”
Shock filled his face at herdeclaration.
“Babydoll…” he reached out to her, but she stepped away fromhim.
She gulped hard, hot tears spilling down her cheeks. It was too much. She couldn’t do this and, with only a few minutes until they had to do wedding pictures, she needed to go and get her headtogether.
Before he could say anything else, she rushed away fromhim.
* * *
What happened?
How could that have happened?Scott thought things would be simple -- that he could show Abi he was willing to make every effort to be with her, and that would fixit.
He was stupid to thinkthat.
Fuck.
Why had he been such a stupid jerk in the past? Why did he treat her like she was nothing? Why couldn’t he have seen that she was everything and that he would never be able to find anyone likeher?
She was right. All the things she said were all true. All of it. He couldn’t even protest because he thought all of thathimself.
What was years of mistreatment in comparison to twodays?
He watched her, feeling jealous of the groomsman that had walked up the aisle with her, holding hisgirl.
He watched her standing there only breaths away from where he sat with hisparents.
She stood next to the other bridesmaid, looking radiantly beautiful. Her beauty would have been more enhanced if she smiled like the others, but he knew why she didn’tsmile.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her; he just couldn’t, and it was worse as Margo and Gale started sharing theirvows.
But something happened then. Abi looked at him. Maybe she felt the weight of his gaze on her, and she looked over athim.
For the few minutes that Margo and Gale declared their love for each other, Scott stared at Abi, looking straight into her eyes so that there was no mistake that he was looking at her. He didn’t know what she was thinking, but he hoped like hell she could see how much he loved her,too.
Their attention was only drawn away as the guests started clapping. Scott didn’t even hear what the priest had said but guessed he’d declared Margo and Galemarried.
In that moment, an idea broke through the despair he felt. It was a wild idea but, oh, so clearly obvious in itsentirety.
Abi may have been right, and she may be scared to be with him, scared of heartbreak and what it would do to her. However, that didn’t mean he should give up. It didn’t mean he shouldn’t try. This wasn’t years ago when he was an asshole that allowed her to leave him, and he wasn’t going to give up and let the one woman who could make him feel like this out of hislife.
No, that was the very last thing he would do. Somehow, someway, he’d get his Babydollback.
* * *
Abi thoughtshe’d done well to last for as long as shedid.
She’d gone through the motions for the last few hours, putting on a brave face for Margo and Gale, all the while pretending that she wasfine.
She was far from fine and, now, she couldn’t get the image out of her head of Scott looking at her while Margo and Gale gave their wedding vows. Her defenses had weakened then and, like always, he had paralyzed her with hisstare.
She thought she’d get a head start and leave before the traffic got bad. She’d checked earlier, and all flights were back to normal. If she left in an hour or so, she could be back in New York by about 10:00 and could drive on back to her little apartment where she could have her own space to get over the last twodays.
