No Weddings (No Weddings #1)(53)

“Hannah, please talk to me.”

“Fucking *!”

The shouted cathartic words made me smile. “I was going with Dumbf*ck.”

She sniffed. Her voice quieted. “That too.”

I heard her stuttered inhalation. Silence followed.

A painted metal barrier stood between us, and I suddenly felt ridiculous. Not that I wouldn’t do anything for the girl suffering beside me, but the way we were partitioned off like this felt like one of those Catholic confessionals I’d seen in movies. Only I was no priest. And Hannah had done nothing wrong.

No, in separate stalls in the ladies’ bathroom of an Irish pub was not the way this was going down. I stepped out and walked to her closed door. My palm wrapped around the top edge and I rattled it.

“Let me in, Hannah.” My words were layered with meaning.

Another loud sniff, then the latch on the lock slid, releasing the door. In the large handicap stall, there was room for the two of us. Barely.

She stood there looking sad and beaten, and I wrapped her in my arms, just holding her.

After an extended silence, she tightened her hold around my waist, speaking without lifting her face away from my chest. “Why now? Why after all this time did he have to show his sorry-ass face? I got over him. I was over him.”

“I don’t know, Hannah. Guys are *s, some more than others. But he takes the prize.”

I felt a nod against my chest. Her body shuddered.

Her words rolled over in my mind. This vulnerable girl who had opened her heart, only to have it stomped on by the same jerk who’d kicked it aside once before, was drunk. And large quantities of alcohol brought out the honesty in people like a lie detector.

“Hannah, are you not over him?”

It was hard to say when anyone let go of feelings for someone they loved deeply, no matter how badly they’d been hurt. Like Hannah, my ex had crushed my heart, then disappeared, never to be seen again. Only Hannah’s ex had rematerialized. And the cascading emotions in the aftermath needed to be sorted out.

“I hate him, Cade. After that day, I never wanted to see him again. Never. Look at me, Cade. I’m a mess. Does this look like someone who’s over him?”

At that, I pulled away and looked down at her, seeing through all the hurt and pain. “Hannah, you went through a horrendous loss when he stood you up at your wedding, but you never got closure. He robbed you of that.”

She snorted. “Was that supposed to be closure?”

I shook my head, resting my chin on top of hers as I squeezed her. “No. Closure is us dealing with our feelings on our terms. That egotistical f*ck pulled a stunt, knowing full well he held the power to upset you. That was on his terms.”

She nodded. Minutes went by in silence as we stood there in the bathroom stall.

After a while, she stirred in my arms, pushing away. I didn’t like the feeling, nor did I feel good about the resigned look in her eyes, but I let her go.

“I have to get out of here. I need to go home.” She looked at me as if from afar, distancing herself with a cold expression on her face. Only it was different than “Ice Queen” cold. She appeared to fall away from herself, absent.

“I’m going with you.” I stepped forward.

She backed away from me shaking her head.

My heart thudded hard, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. I needed to be with her—no longer for her, but for me. An unseen tie that had formed between us began unraveling. I felt it happening. She was falling into an abyss and refused to grab my hand, preferring to fall and be lost.

“I need to be alone.” Her words had deadened. “I’ll grab a cab.”

Terrified to let her go, but sensing that pushing her now was the wrong thing to do, I nodded, following her out.

Minutes later, I stood on the sidewalk with a fierce wind biting through my shirt as I shut the cab door, Hannah tucked safely inside. She didn’t look up at me once, not even a glance. Hadn’t said another word to me after we left the bathroom, either.

Helpless, I stood out in the cold on the sidewalk as Hannah disappeared into the night.

My throat locked up.

I couldn’t find my next breath of air.





Hannah hadn’t returned any of my calls. When I’d shown up at her shop around noon, Chloe said she’d called in sick. Well, at least I knew she was alive.

But “alive” only meant you pulled oxygen into your lungs and your heart chugged along. It didn’t mean “okay.” I needed to make sure she was okay.

Sunday night came and went, but Hannah didn’t call or show up at my place for dinner. My heart burned a hole in my chest while I isolated myself in my bedroom, staring at the ceiling. Her trauma had become my trauma, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Morning came and I still stared at my ceiling, as if the secrets of the universe lay written in the wrinkles of plaster, waiting to be unlocked.

I kept imagining what I would feel like if the roles had been reversed, if it had been my ex who had shown up out of the blue, smug look on her face. Those looks were the stuff of our nightmares, the fears that we had a weakness when it came to this one horrible person in the world, and they had power over us, over our emotions. But it was only because we gave it to them.

So as I waited for Hannah to deal, I handled my pain as best I could. If she had to trudge a path through hell and back, then I would too, because we’d both been there. Because I also had demons so entrenched into my psyche, I’d let them govern my life.