“You’ve been trying to end this wedding from the start,” he says, folding his arms. “Looks like you finally got what you wanted.”
“Enough!” Mom’s voice cuts through the room, shaky but forceful. She stands abruptly, tossing her napkin down beside her plate. “I won’t have you ruin this beautiful weekend, Nikki.” She shakes her head, tears in her eyes.
“Me?That’s not—” I glance around for support, but Linney just raises a skeptical brow. Dad and Pete both seem completely lost, and Mom looks… like she’s desperately trying to hide the weight of her disappointment.
Cooper starts to head to the door. “I need to make sure Cara’s okay.”
I sigh. “You know what? Don’t.” Cooper stops and turns around to look at me. “I’ll go.”
30
IKNOCK SOFTLY ONthe door to my bedroom, and hear a muffled “Come in.”
Cara is lying on the twin bed near the window, a pillow hugged to her chest. The little white slip dress she’d put on for the rehearsal dinner is wrinkled, and I note the faint smudges of cried-off mascara under her eyes. She sits up as I enter the room, smoothing out the skirt of her dress.
“Hey,” she says, giving a little cough to clear her scratchy voice.
For a long moment, neither of us says anything. I can hear my digital alarm clock ticking—a feature I programmed in high school because I liked how it kept me on track.Early is on time, Mom used to say.On time is late.Or, another one of her favorites:A stitch in time saves nine—which I thought was literally about sewing until an embarrassingly late age. And then of course there’s always:If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
But she tried so hard—to plan a perfect wedding.
I look over at Cara again. She’s sitting now with her back againstthe headboard, looking out the window into the backyard. She looks… lost. She looks the way I often felt as a teenager, in this very room, on that very bed. Like she’s been trying to balance everything for so long, but the plates she’s been spinning are about to drop at any second and shatter around her.
I wonder what’s going through her mind. Is she thinking about tomorrow, and everything that comes after? Is she thinking about Aaron—still wondering what might have happened if things had gone differently?
Back when everything went down with Aaron, I spent hours spiraling, trying to figure out what the hell he and Cara were thinking. Why did she agree to him going on the show? Did she really have no idea he was the last man standing? And what was she trying to gain by going public with her story right before the wedding?
Of course, I never got the answers to those questions because I didn’t know Cara then. And I obviously couldn’t trust whatever explanations Aaron might try to give me if I asked. So I just stewed and spiraled and theorized, building Cara up as some monster in my mind.
But now, she’shere.
And I haven’t even bothered to ask her side of the story.
I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry I took your letter. It was—such a dick move. Honestly, I’m not even sure why I did it.”
Cara looks over at me, her face painted in surprise, as if she forgot I was still in the room. “Why did you? You could’ve just come to me and asked me what it was all about.”
As she says this, I feel a swell a shame. “I know. You’re right. I guess there was some part of me that was scared, that still didn’t trust you. It probably sounds silly, but I’ve been worried that you were maybe marrying my brother for the ‘wrong reasons.’”
To my surprise, Cara bursts out a laugh. “And what would those wrong reasons be, exactly?”
I shrug and give a soft laugh. “I hadn’t gotten that far. But I thought maybe the letter held that answer.”
She lets out a long sigh. “I shouldn’t have even written the letter. It’s just… With the wedding… I had a lot of feelings bubbling up…” She sniffles.
“I get it,” I say, feeling even more awful than before. “Do you still have feelings for Aaron?”
“No,” she says quickly. “I just felt like I needed to get some things off my chest. Being with Cooper… well, he’s your brother. And being with him has brought up a lot of feelings from that time with Aaron. It’s all connected, you know? Even if I never sent it, writing it all out helped.”
I nod. “I’ve got a notes app full of unsent messages,” I tell her.
“You do?” she asks, looking genuinely surprised.
“Big time,” I admit. “Rage posts I want to write back to internet trolls, snarky emails I want to send my brand partners when they’re being difficult, speeches I imagine giving to guys who’ve broken my heart…”
Cara hums, taking this in. “I do the same,” she says. “I just kind of thought you were someone who always came out and said exactly what you thought. On the show, you—”
“So youdidwatch it?”
