“Part of me feels the exact same way.” He glanced down at his tux. “This is actually my first time in a monkey suit.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“Well, no one would ever know by the way you’re wearing it.” I smiled ever so slightly. “You look good. You really do.”
His wonderfully reverent gaze held mine. “I could say the same about you.” His eyes then raked down the length of my body. “You look so beautiful tonight.”
I laughed. “I do clean up nicely from time to time.”
Rev shook his head, a determined expression on his face. “You’re always beautiful, but tonight…in that dress with your hair pulled back.” He sighed. “You take my breath away.”
His words sent tingling sparks down my spine and throughout my limbs. “Thank you,” I replied breathlessly.
An awkwardness I’d never faced with him before hung heavy between us. To ease the tension, I asked, “How’s Poe?”
A genuine smile filled Rev’s face. “He’s great. He’s grown like a weed, and he took to the woods like second nature. Of course, Deacon likes to call him a pussy because he comes back every day to get the corn we leave for him.”
I giggled at Deacon’s summation. Reaching in his suit pocket, Rev pulled out his phone. “I have some pictures of him.”
“You do?”
Pink tinged Rev’s cheeks as came even closer to me—so close I could smell his delicious scent. The one that used to bring me such comfort. When he held out his phone, my shaky hands reached for it.
As I gazed at the image, tears blurred my eyes. The dam I had so carefully constructed to hold back my emotions broke with the weight of seeing him. Before I could stop myself, I was sobbing. When Rev’s arms started to come around me, I pushed him away. I couldn’t stand his pitying comfort, nor could I afford to allow myself to be held by him. The safety and protection of his arms had once meant the world to me. “Why? Why did you come here? Damn you! I’d only just begun to put myself halfway back together again.”
Rev wore an anguished expression. “I had to come, Annabel. I had to tell you I was sorry for what happened.”
I shook my head furiously. “I don’t want your fucking apology. Your words mean nothing to me. I will never be able to forgive you for turning me away.”
“Even if I came here to make it right?”
After hiccupping a cry, I stared suspiciously at him. “What do you mean?”
“The last four months have been the worst ones of my life. I’ve spent most of them drunk off my ass, trying everything in the world to forget you.” Tentatively, he reached out to cup my cheek. Although I should have jerked away from him, I couldn’t bring myself to. “But you’re unforgettable, Annabel.”
Unforgettable. He thought of me as unforgettable.
His words caused the tears to come harder and faster. Bringing his hands to my waist, Rev drew me against him. My hands fisted the front of his tux as I clung desperately to him. “Please don’t cry. You break my heart when you cry, especially when I’m the one at fault,” he murmured, his words warm against my cheek.
“I can’t help it. You’re not the only one whose last four months have been miserable. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t forget you either.”
Rev kissed the top of my head. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to do anything to hurt you, but all my fucking good intentions just got in the way. I’ve never been so wrong about trying to do what I thought was the right thing.” Easing back from me, Rev stared into my eyes. “You were right that I freaked out about kissing you that night at the roadhouse. But what you didn’t remember was you also told me you were falling in love with me.”
I heard myself gasp. “I did?”
“Yes, you did. Although part of me was glad to hear you say it, I was afraid that you were just mixed up in the way you feltabout me because of what you had gone through. But more than anything, I didn’t feel I deserved you.”
“How can you think such a thing?”
“How can I not? You’re this beautiful and intelligent woman who is unattainable to someone like me. Your grandfather was the fucking governor while mine worked in a cotton mill.”
“You know that none of that matters to me—pedigree, bloodlines, and all that bullshit. You always knew how I felt about my parents and their world.” I motioned inside at all the grandeur. “This has never been and never will be my world.”
“But you deserve to have the finest things that life has to offer, and I can’t give you that.”
Shaking my head, I countered, “I don’t want any of that. None of that is important to me. I just want what you can give me.”
