“I don’t want you to!” she cried out, gripping at her chest before burying her face in her hands.
I closed the distance between us and curled my fingers around her wrists, gently pulling her hands away to reveal her tear-streaked face. Each tear that fell and each jagged breath tore at my soul as I struggled not to pull her into my arms when she so clearly wanted to stand on her own.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know, but this needs to stop,” she said, voice twisting with discomfort. She pulled her hands from my grasp only to curl her fingers around my own. “You get angry? I’ll be there to help calm you. Someone pushes you to your limit? Hold that frustration in, and we’ll find other ways to get your aggression out. But trust that you can, or we’re never gonna have a chance.”
“We will,” I vowed. “I’ll keep—”
“Beau, stop,” she begged. Her golden eyes met mine, pain swirling within the plea there for me not to ruin this.
Not to destroy us.
“It took months of heartbreak and so many tears to come to the realization that I needed to do this for me and for us. And I still continued putting it off because I’ve been terrified of the possible outcome. So, for me, really think about this before promising anything.”
There was nothing to think about.
I would do anything for her, even the impossible.
“And until then?” I asked when she released me and started backing up to her car again.
“What do you mean?”
I clutched at my shattered chest before gesturing to her. “Savannah, I just spent an entire night wondering if we were even getting married anymore.”
Shock ripped across her face. “What? Why would you—what?”
“When I got to you last night, you started crying because you’d found your wedding dress, and you kept telling me everything about our wedding is wrong.”
Savannah’s eyelids slowly closed as a mumbled curse slipped free. With a deep, stuttered breath, she looked at me and said, “I miss my best friend. It feels like there’s a hole in my life, and whenever I start trying to mend it, something huge happens that I wish I could share with her. But last night was just . . . all that pain fueled by alcohol, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for that. Marrying you anywhere, at any time, even with no one around, would be my idea of perfection.”
She said the words, and from the emotion weaving through them, I knew she meant them. But that look in her eyes shattered it all.
Like she was afraid we wouldn’t make it there . . . because of me.
“I love you, Beau Dixon,” she said as she rounded her car. “Know that you can do this. You can absolutely do this.”
She got in the car before I could respond, trying to hide the new tears building in her eyes, and drove away, continuing on past her house.
“I got the plantation house for the wedding.” I stared vacantly at where her car had been as the news I’d been waiting to voice drifted away with the winter breeze. I let my eyelids close and clenched my jaw as Savannah’s words replayed in my mind and had that fear I’d been running from for years catching up with me. “Small. Simple. Sunset. Peonies. There.” I swallowed past my shame and regret and uncertainly whispered, “It can finally happen.”
Turning, I slowly started down the long driveway, mind reeling from everything Savannah had said that morning and the night before.
Everything that had happened the night before.
I dragged a hand over my jaw as I climbed the porch steps, slowing when Cayson eased through the front door, dressed for the garage he worked at.
A knowing smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. The kind that said my parents were fully aware of where I’d been. Just as he was passing me, though, it fell. Making him look all kinds of hesitant as he turned to continue across the porch backward. “Hey, uh . . .” Lifting one of his hands in surrender and gesturing to himself with the other, he said, “Messenger, yeah?”
It was disturbing.
The way actions and words had such a profound effect on me.
Two words and a fucking gesture had the world slowing and every part of my body tensing. Had a sickening poison creeping through my veins in unsettling anticipation.
At the slow curl of my fingers, Cayson rolled his eyes but went on. “You know that girl Hunter’s engaged to?”
I gave a slight nod.
I never could remember her name. I hadn’t bothered to try. Until the day Hunter called to say they were getting married, no one in the family had because we’d all known the girl was one thing: Madison’s rebound.
“They finally break up?” I asked tightly.
A laugh scraped up Cayson’s throat. “Mom would be throwing a party if they had. Anyway, uh, she called because apparently she does that now. Wanted to let you know they wouldn’t be coming for y’alls wedding.”
I worked my jaw a couple times before dipping my head in acceptance.
Cayson looked equally sad for me and ready to flee if I made one move in his direction. “Man, I’m sorry.”
“Why?” I asked gruffly. “I don’t give a fuck if he never comes back at all.” The comment was a lie twisted with truths and fell heavily from my tongue.
I wanted my brother back.
I wanted my best friend the same as Savannah wanted hers.
I wanted before.
Because God knew I couldn’t handle the aftermath. Couldn’t handle looking him in the eye, knowing what I’d done to him. How I’d hurt him. Hurt them.
A scoff of disbelief and annoyance burst from Cayson as he turned and left.
I didn’t react to it. I couldn’t when my mind was so weighed down with everything else.
The second I stepped inside, Mom was there. Looking ten shades of pissed and worried as hell.
“Beau, sweetheart. There’s something I need to tell you.”
“I already know about Hunter,” I murmured as I headed for the stairs.
A saddened noise left her as she hurried to keep up with my steps. “Can we sit in the kitchen and talk?”
I turned at the bottom step, head listing. “Mom, I haven’t slept—”
“Kitchen,” she snapped, voice slightly frantic as she headed that way.
I stood there for a moment before following after her. Jaw clenching tight when I rounded into the kitchen in time to see her brush at a tear.
The only two women in my life who mattered were crying because of the things I’d done and the way I was. Hadn’t known I could hate myself more until that moment.
She turned, storming toward the table with mugs and coffee pot in hand and refusing to look at me. But I saw the tears filling her reddened eyes. Saw the way she was pressing her mouth tightly together to keep from crying.
“Sit,” she demanded as she set the mugs and coffee on the table with loud thuds.
I started toward the table, watching as she shakily filled her mug and moved onto the second. “I’m good,” I said softly. “I don’t want—”
“Sit,” she yelled, seconds passing in silence before she continued pouring the coffee.
Once I’d sank to the bench opposite her, she slid a mug toward me and fell into her own chair.
“Thank you,” I muttered, curling the hot mug close to watch the steam rise.