Page 39 of Half-Hearted
Alexis squeezed my hand under the table, immediately aware of the sudden dip in my mood. Celebrating the engagement wasn’t the same without him. I really missed the guy.
I gave her hand a swift kiss, and she grinned up at me, beautiful brown eyes crinkling in their corners with joy.
My fiancée, I thought, my thumb brushing the band of her engagement ring. Alexis was going to be mywife.
Mywife. She’d agreed to marryme.
“I wish someone would look at me like that,” Priya sighed wistfully, sinking her chin into her palm. She was three cosmos in and a massively romantic drunk, according to Alexis. “Must be nice.”
“She deserves it,” Bree chimed in coolly. “God knows he made her wait long enough.”
“Play nice, Bree,” Alexis chided.
She was right, though. And so was Dad. It was my single biggest regret with Alexis. Looking back, I couldn’t fathom why I’d wasted so much time not…beingwith her. How much stupid angst and heartbreak I could have saved us both had I just been honest about my feelings sooner, to her and to myself.
I caressed the back of her hand with my thumb, and when the table was distracted enough with their side conversations, I leaned down and planted a small kiss on my fiancée’stemple. “I’ll make it up to you,” I whispered to her, reveling in the way a tremble ran down her spine when my mouth grazed her ear. “I promise.”
I wasn’t sure if I ever managed to do it, but I spent the rest of my life trying.
The End.
