The Trouble With Love(47)

He paused, turning back, and the flare of hope in his eyes was almost her undoing, but she didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. She couldn’t.

“The last question,” she said. “For my article. Why did we break up?”

His eye shuttered, and his laugh was harsh. “Why did we break up? I’ll tell you why….The girl I loved—yes, loved, Emma—told me she didn’t want to marry me. In fact, she threw the engagement ring I spent four weeks picking out at my head.”

Emma sucked in a breath, and Cassidy shook his head sadly. “I’m sure you’ve got your version of what happened, but my version? My version ends with the girl who’d claimed to love me not even listening to me. I made a mistake. Yes. Mistakes. But you left me, Emma. Be sure you get that part right in your story.”

She heard the door open. Heard it shut. And still she didn’t move.

Her brain knew she’d just dodged a whole lot of heartache by ensuring their cold war raged on.

But her goal had been protecting her heart, and she was desperately afraid that it was too late for that.

That it had been too late from the day she’d met him.





Chapter 18


“Scale of one to ten, how painful is this?” Riley asked, appearing at Emma’s side.

Emma glanced at her friend. “It’s not painful.”

Much.

Okay, it was painful. No. Pain didn’t begin to describe it. Emma was in agony.

Riley’s grin flashed, her teeth white against the siren red lipstick that bumped up her already-bombshell status to the stratosphere. The short black dress wasn’t so bad, either.

“Come on, Ems. You know you want to vent to someone.”

Emma pursed her lips as she pulled one of the glasses of wine off the small bar set up in the corner of the private room where Julie and Mitchell were having their rehearsal dinner.

“I figured it would be bad,” Emma admitted. “I’ve been mentally pep-talking myself for days.”

“Yeah?” Riley asked, grabbing a glass of wine for herself and tugging Emma over to the corner of the room where they could talk.

“Yeah,” Emma said. She took a sip of her wine, her eyes scanning the crowded room even as they purposefully avoided Cassidy.

“And?” Riley prodded. “Was it as awful as you thought?”

This time Emma’s eyes did land on Cassidy, looking handsome and completely at ease as he talked with Julie’s aunt and uncle on the far side of the room.

“It’s worse, Ri.”

Her friend made a motherly clucking noise and put an arm around Emma’s waist. “I strapped a flask to my thigh for exactly this sort of situation.”

“It’s an open bar,” Emma pointed out.

Riley squeezed her shoulders. “Honey, you’re at your best friend’s rehearsal dinner with your ex-fiancé. And the best I can tell, your rehearsal dinner was when everything went south?”

Emma lifted her eyebrows. “Went south? That’s a gentle way of putting it.”

“You know what I mean. Imploded. Exploded? Hit the fan in a shitty burst of rage?”

“Closer,” Emma agreed, taking another sip of wine.

Riley glanced at her. “You’re different tonight. Angry.”

Emma sucked in her cheeks and considered. Was she angry?

She was…something.

It had been a week since she and Cassidy nearly kissed in her apartment, and, true to his word, he’d given her the distance she’d asked for. They still worked together. Still saw each other at the mailboxes in their apartment building. But whereas before there’d been intentional disregard between them, now it was like she no longer existed.

She was invisible to him.

It was exactly what she’d wanted.

Emma had every intention of ignoring him tonight just like she did every other day. And everyone knew that rehearsals were more or less a formality. If you’d been in one wedding, you’d been in a million.

As a bridesmaid, your biggest worry was how high your heels were, and assessing the walking surface you had to deal with. If you were a groomsman, your biggest concern was checking out the bridesmaids.

Everything was always the same. Don’t walk too fast. Turn off your cellphone. Stand up straight. Don’t lose the rings.

But tonight, Emma had been thrown a curveball.

Unlike other weddings she’d been in where the groomsmen escorted the bridesmaids down the aisle ahead of the bride, Julie and Mitchell had opted to have the bridesmaids walk in alone, while the groomsmen would stand beside Mitchell at the end of the aisle.

In other words, Emma had to walk toward Cassidy.

Just like she would have done seven years ago, had she not lost her temper the night before their wedding. Had he not been so wrapped up in his pride that he hadn’t been able to forgive her when she’d apologized hours later.

She hadn’t looked at him as she trudged her way up the makeshift aisle at the Plaza. Didn’t have to look at him to know that he wasn’t looking at her, either. She hadn’t glanced at him as Mitchell’s pastor droned on and on about the structure of tomorrow’s ceremony.

It had been surprisingly easy to stay in the moment. To remember that she was there for her best friend. That this day was about Julie, not Emma. And then the rehearsal had been over, and she’d survived. They’d survived.