The Trouble With Love(75)

“Okay, f*ck it,” he said, looking enticingly frustrated. “I’m just going to talk.”

Her heart resumed its pounding. Funny how she hadn’t been all that frightened when he’d started to play with fire, but she was terrified now.

“That day when you came into my office and told me that I wasn’t a part of your article…I was hurt.”

Emma’s heart clenched. “But you said—”

“I know what I said. And I meant it. As your boss, I absolutely did not want to pressure you into writing about something you didn’t want to write about. But as a man…as a man, I wanted to matter enough for you to write about me.”

“Cassidy, that’s not why I didn’t—”

“Emma, sweetie, you have to shut up, just for a second? Okay?”

She pressed her lips together.

He continued. “But I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. And I’m damn glad that I’m not mentioned in those pages.”

Cassidy moved around the counter toward her but stopped just out of arm’s reach. “I don’t want to be in those pages, because those pages are about your exes. Those pages are about your past.”

His eyes roamed over her face, his expression tender. “I don’t want to be your ex, Emma. And I don’t want to be a part of your past. At least, not just your past.”

Her heart stuttered. “Cassidy—”

“Not done. And see, the thing is, Emma, I don’t think you wanted me to be labeled as an ex, either. I think that’s why you couldn’t write about me. I don’t think ‘ex’ was the box you wanted to put me in.”

He moved closer, still not touching her. Giving her space to run away, should she want to. And she did want to. Sort of. But her feet stayed put for reasons she couldn’t explain.

Cassidy held out his hands, then dropped them. For as long as she’d known him, Emma didn’t think she’d ever seen Cassidy’s expression be completely open.

But it was open now. Every single emotion was written on his face. He wasn’t trying to hide from her. He was putting himself out there.

And then he put his heart all the way on the line. “I love you, Emma.”

She stared at him, torn between immense joy and heart-wrenching pain.

He kept talking. “And you should know that I’ve completely veered off script from the grand plan the guys devised to win you back, but I’m just going with my gut here. I love you. I love you, and I want that to be enough, because my love is so much stronger than the fire display or the poem that Sam wanted me to write or the song that Jake thought I should sing….”

Poem?

She licked her lips but couldn’t respond, and his expression turned slightly desperate. “Wait, there’s more. The night of our rehearsal dinner when you told me you didn’t want to marry me…you destroyed me, Emma. Not just in the We’re in a fight kind of way, but in the heartbreak kind of way. Real heartbreak. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I…”

He scratched his cheek. “I threw my phone away. Actually, I threw it out the window going about eighty miles per hour on the freeway.”

Cassidy reached for her then, slowly, one hand resting against her cheek, the other coming up to join it when she didn’t reject him.

“Emma,” he whispered. “If I’d known you wanted to marry me…that you’d changed your mind…If I’d gotten even one of your phone calls, I would have moved heaven and earth to be there that day. I wanted to be your husband more than anything, Emma.”

Her fingers lifted to her mouth, stunned with realization. “You didn’t know that I’d called.”

He shook his head. “I went off the grid completely. I fled to San Francisco and didn’t look back. And that’s not an excuse. I’m not letting myself off the hook, because I still should have come home to fight for you, even without knowing you’d called. But I swear to you I never got your messages. I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”

“But surely your parents, your friends—”

“By the time I got in touch with anyone, I forbade them to even mention you. You’d be surprised how respectful people can be about a canceled wedding.”

Emma closed her eyes. “So you didn’t leave me at the altar. You thought I’d left you.”

“We left each other, Emma,” he said carefully. “We hurt each other. If we’re going to move even a little bit forward, we need to come to grips with that.”

“I know,” she said, her eyes watering. “I know. And I’m sorry for my part. I’m so sorry. You said it the other day: we were immature. Horribly so. And I’m not sure we’ve gotten any better, because if we’d just talked to each other like rational adults…”

His thumbs brushed over her lips. “There’s nothing rational about love.”

Love.

He loved her.

One of his hands left her face, and she immediately missed the contact as he dug a hand into his pocket and came back with…a crumpled receipt.

“What’s this?” she asked, taking it when he handed it to her.

“You told me that you wanted me to prove that I intended to marry you before your father issued his stupid proclamation about his company going only to family. I’d held off showing you this because of pride. I wanted you to trust me. To trust in our love. But I realize now that my pride’s gotten us nowhere. And I can’t blame you for being skeptical. The facts…the facts were damning.”