“Well, we all knew that.”
“What?” I croak.
“You’re just now realizing you love him?” She laughs.
“I don’t understand. You all knew?”
“Of course we knew!Oh Sunny.You’ve loved him for a while now. You just haven’t wanted to admit it.” She wraps her arms around my neck in a hug.
Clearly I spent a lot of time running from my feelings that I just came full circle, and smacked into them instead.
“So what’s going to happen now?” She eyes me. A hope sets flame behind her eyes. Hope Tyler won’t marry Shelby. Hope that this would be a reason for me to stay. But he still went up there with his bride to be, and I still have to leave.
Everything changed. But in the same breath, nothing at all.
“I don’t know.” I push off the wall. “I’m so confused, Mace.”
“Do you think…do you think he will call it off?” she asks, darting her eyes between me and the staircase waiting for us. I don’t want to go back up. I don't want to hear the toasts. I don’t want to see her hang on his arm like the gloating bride to be.
I shrug without any other words.
“Why can’t you just stay, Sunny?”
“Because I can’t let him find me.”
While the links on my chain to Ryan have grown longer, I’m still shackled by him. I will be forever unless he turns up dead or in prison.
Maybe I underestimate Tyler too much, but if detectives can’t even find him, how will he? The longer I stay, the higher the risk Ryan can find me. A false hope of his death was a beacon to a better life. But now, this is what I get. And maybe what I deserve, too.
With a sigh, she loops her arm through mine. “Come on. Let’s go back out there.”
I hate breaking their hearts. But if there’s anything more painful than this, it’d be a life with Ryan. It’d be him finding me, and having to relive the nightmares I finally have a handle on, to come back and haunt me.
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
She jerks us back into the crowds of unfamiliar faces.
“Dude, did you two fuck?” Sam joins me and Macey.
“Say it a little louder Sam.” I murmur.
“Let them hear!” She throws her hands up.
“No, we didn’t,” I whisper.
“But they were about to,” Macey says.
I shoot a look at her.
“Oh, come on, Sunny. You and I both know that’s the truth,” she laughs.
“What does this mean?” Sam eyes me.
It’s the same answer. “I don’t know.”
“I mean, he has got to end it, right? There’s no way he’s going to follow through with this when y’all were literally about to fuck downstairs,” she continues “I mean your plan had to work, right?”
In a haze of desperation, my only way to save him was to make him consumed by me. Lead him on in a way that would lead him away from her, even if it meant he didn’t get me inthe end.
