Page 56 of Should've Been Us
Chapter Thirteen
Lulu sighedas she slapped another sticker with Derek and Aubrey’s initials and the wedding date onto a plain, old water bottle. It was number sixty-seven and she’d long since lost her focus. It wasn’t like the task needed even a fraction of her attention and the only thought she was giving to it at this point was just how many of these bottles Aubrey expected her tolabel.
All around the room the other bridesmaids were doing similar tasks. Sierra was handling phase one of the project. She was putting similar labels on small gift bags. Next to her, Amber and Nikki were adding in the equally emblazoned chocolates, bath bombs, chapsticks and beer coozies. Lulu was labeling the aforementioned water bottles and adding them to the sacks and then handing them off to Aubrey herself. The bride was busily writing out thank you cards, dropping them in the sacks and then finally passing them on to Anna to tie pretty bows on thehandles.
They’d been at the task for over an hour and after a long day of other wedding related activities, Lulu was over it. She wanted to go back to her room so she could be alone. Only, that wasn’t true and she knew it. She wanted to go back to her room and see if Connor was there, find out if he was done helping the other men clean up the beach from where they’d had the rehearsal earlier in the afternoon and then a big picnic dinner afterwards. She wanted alone time but she wanted it withhim.
Damn her heart to hell, but she missedhim.
She could practically hear the clock in the back of her head counting down the time they had left together in this magical, Mexican paradise. The past few days had flown by with activities and long nights of lovemaking. They’d had the rehearsal today and the wedding was tomorrow. The day after that they’d be back on a plane headed home to Fate, Texas and no matter how many times Connor told her that he didn’t want anything between them to change she knew that it would when they got back toreality.
It would haveto.
They wouldn’t be able to spend all day together anymore. They’d have their jobs and responsibilities. They’d have their friends and their families. Once they were back in Fate, she’d have to admit to herself and to him that they were more than a week-long fling and that was scary as hell for a girl that just six short days ago had thought herself in love with someoneelse.
She hadn’t been. She knew that now. Maybe she’d known it allalong.
Once upon a time, she had loved Derek. She’d loved him with her whole heart and he’d shattered it. He’d broken it time and time again and somewhere along the way that had simply become the pattern for them. She’d clung to what she thought they should have been but in reality, she hadn’t been in love with Derek in a long time so much as she’d been in love with the idea of the life she could have withhim.
Her parents were still happily married after forty plus years. They’d been high school sweethearts. Best friends turned lovers turned partners who still looked at each other with stars in their eyes. And she’d wanted that. She’d wanted it so badly that she’d focused all of her attention on her own best friend, hell-bent on making them into the couple she wanted to be, but the truth was, she’d known for a long time now that she was wrong to try to make them into something theyweren’t.
Facing that truth had been hard. It had been rough. It had been a bitter pill to swallow, but she had finally come to terms with it and she supposed she shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was to find it was the man that had always given her the truth, even when she didn’t want it, that had helped her pastit.
It wasConnor.
They fought like cats and dogs. They argued like an old married couple. But at the heart of all of their interactions, the truth was that Connor had been there for her every time she’d neededhim.
He’d been the one to help her pick up the pieces of her bruised and broken heart time and again when Derek dropped it carelessly. She supposed at some point, without her even noticing, he’d started to hold onto some of those pieces himself instead of giving them back to her. Without conscious thought, she’d started giving him pieces of her heart and after the night they’d spent in his bed, talking about their pasts, about his mother, she knew there was no more lying toherself.
He had her whole heart and if he broke it, there would be no taping it back together the way she’d done with Derek for years. Because this wasn’t some silly girlhood crush. It wasn’t a one-night-stand or a fling or anything that could be so easilydismissed.
She was falling in love withhim.
She loved the way he knew how she took her coffee without even asking. She loved the way he kissed her so sweetly and so gently sometimes. Just as she loved the way that other times he seemed too desperate for her to go slow. She loved it when he took control of her and she loved it when he was so needy for what only she could give him that he lost his carefully tetheredcontrol.
She loved the demanding lover he’d become. The sexy, dominant man that pinned her down and fucked her hard while he growled about making her feel empty without him inside her. She loved the sweet, gentle man that woke her with light, teasing kisses and took her slowly, whispering nothings in her ear about how he was the one that didn’t feel whole unless he was insideher.
She loved fighting with him. She loved making up with him. She loved laughing with him and talking to him and just… being withhim.
She hadn’t seen it coming. She’d laughed at the very idea of them together. But they worked. In bed and out. During the day and throughout the nights. They spent every moment they could together and it still didn’t feel like enough. She wasn’t sure it would ever be enough after all of the years she’d wasted not seeing what was right in front ofher.
She felt scared and relieved and hopeful and terrified and so many other emotions that she couldn’t begin to get a handle on when it came to Connor. She felt like she needed to talk to someone but who was there for her to talk to about this crazy, intense need for him that had taken root inside ofher?
As much as Sierra had prodded her to dish up the dirty details of what she’d known was going on between them, the perky blonde hadn’t known them separately. She wouldn’t understand. Not really. And the other girls? Amber was an obvious no-go and Anna was too innocent to be much help. Aubrey was just… Aubrey. They didn’t have that kind of relationship. And she certainly couldn’t talk to Derek about it. That would just be tooweird.
So she’d spent the past few days getting lost in her head, worrying and thinking and worrying some more, and then letting Connor pull her out of her head with his soft touch and reverent demands only to retreat back inside her head as soon as he was out of armsreach.
She wanted to go back to their bungalow and see him. Now. He was the only one that understood what she needed when she got like this. He always had. And she thought that maybe if she saw him, her thoughts would quiet and simply let her heart take the lead and push away all of the doubts and fears about what came next for them for just a littlewhile.
“Lulu!”
She jerked, knocking over the water bottle she’d been holding, at the sound of her name, “Huh?What?”
“You put the label on upside down.” Aubrey cried out in anguish, “Good grief girl, you’re as distracted as a deer in rut Iswear.”
“I… uh, sorry.” She frowned at the label that was indeed upside down, just like the bride had said and focused on trying to peel it off and stick it on properly. “I’m… just tired I guess. I haven’t been getting muchsleep.”
“Hell yeah you haven’t.” Sierra wagged her eyebrows playfully and Lulu realized what she’d admitted as a warm flush rose up hercheeks.
