The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic #2)(65)

“I couldn’t send you an invitation,” he said. “You never told me where you lived.”

He was in an expensive suit, his hair cut short. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him in a suit before. But it was still him, her dearest friend, no matter what he wore, no matter whom he had promised to marry.

There were spots of color on Franny’s cheeks and her hair had begun to unwind. She wanted to say, Run away with me. Now I know nothing else matters. I don’t care if we come to ruin.

In her black coat with her shining red hair, she was impossible to miss. From across the room, Haylin’s father spied her. He glared and gestured for his son to get rid of her.

“Let’s step outside.” Haylin led her to the elevator. He pushed the button for Lobby, but halfway down he stopped the elevator’s descent and drew Franny to him. In an unexpected show of intimacy he put his mouth against hers. It was so fast and intense nothing could stop what happened next. It didn’t matter where they were; it didn’t even take courage to do this. It was fate and they didn’t try to fight against it. Franny threw herself at him and Haylin didn’t stop her or himself, although by now Emily Flood was wondering where he’d gone, worrying because she’d seen a tall pale woman with red hair. She still had nightmares about Franny, for after Franny’s visit to the hospital, it had taken Emily months to win back Haylin’s affections. Don’t you see? she had told him. She’s never coming back to you. She doesn’t care or she would have come to Cambridge with you.

What Emily Flood had feared had come to pass. It all happened too fast and then they realized where they were and what they had done. Haylin backed away, pulling up his pants like a fool, pained by his own actions. He was not a disloyal man, yet he had just betrayed his fiancée. “I’m getting married,” he said, shaking his head as if puzzled by his own statement.

“I know. I read about it in The New York Times.” Franny tilted her chin up, ready to be hurt by whatever he would next say. She felt this was her last chance, and she was taking it.

“I have to marry her,” Hay told her.

“Do you hear yourself? Have to?”

Haylin groaned and said, “You always do this to me. You make me think I have a chance.”

The elevator alarm went off. Haylin did his best to stop it, but in the end he had to punch the up button for the sirens to subside. The elevator resumed, climbing back to the seventeenth floor. When the doors opened, Ethan Walker was there. Both Haylin and Franny blinked and looked guilty.

“I thought I made myself clear,” Haylin’s father said. “Get rid of her.”

Mr. Walker was utterly impossible to see into, closed as a locked vault. Franny, however, was completely transparent at this moment, a woman in love who had just been fucked in the elevator and clearly didn’t give a damn about anyone else’s feelings, certainly not those of the bride-to-be, who had gone off to lock herself in the bathroom to weep, terrified she had already lost Hay before he was hers.

“Don’t make an ass out of yourself,” Walker said to his son. “She dumped you and she’ll do it again. Do the right thing for once in your life.”

Franny saw the expression set on Hay’s face. When his father left them, she tugged on Hay’s sleeve. “Don’t listen to him. You never have before.”

Haylin looked at Franny. “It’s not about him, Franny. You know I don’t care about my father’s opinion. But all those years! You should have contacted me.”

“I didn’t want to ruin your life,” Franny explained.

Hay laughed bitterly. “But now you do?”

Franny recoiled, stung. “Is that what I’m doing?”

Hay appraised her coolly and she could see how she’d hurt him. “I don’t know, Franny. You tell me. Because I’m not sure I want my life ruined.” He shook his head, his confusion evident. “I keep thinking about when I was drowning and you didn’t come in after me. And when we were going to school together, and you didn’t come with me.”

“But you didn’t drown! And you did fine without me at school! But you resent me for everything. I see I shouldn’t have come.”

Franny hastened into the elevator, but Hay threw his arm across the door, making certain it wouldn’t close. “I couldn’t go through losing you again,” he said. “It killed me. It took me years to get over you.”

“But you did get over me. You found someone else. I didn’t.”

“Tell me you won’t walk away again and I’ll call the whole thing off.”

Franny took a step back, startled by his raw emotion.

“Tell me,” he demanded. “And I’ll do anything. I’ll hurt her if I have to.”

That was when Franny saw Emily. She had come to search for Hay and was watching them from the parlor. Franny lost her voice then, and felt the courage drain from her body. Who did she think she was to cause another woman such grief? Perhaps Emily was Haylin’s fate and Franny would only be interfering in what was meant to be.

“You still can’t make a promise to me,” Haylin said, and in that moment he let the elevator go.

On the street Franny hailed a cab. She rode along past the gates into the park she and Haylin used to walk through. Love had to happen without any certainty, the ultimate leap of faith. But Haylin now stood beside Emily Flood while Franny was headed downtown, weeping as she looked out at the world she had once known.