Page 95 of Until I Have You

But the fact I know my mind can go there terrifies me.

I glance back at the tent lit up on the beach.A glowing beacon of love and promise.Inside is an absolute pearl.A woman for whom I would swim to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve her from the oyster shell.It would be a death-defying feat.

Not much different than my reality.

I need to be alone.Truly alone.

I trudge off down the shoreline, the ebbing and flowing tide lapping at my feet.

Alone.The only way I see myself moving through my life if Abigail isn’t at my side.

I am a fool for fucking my best friend’s daughter.And an even bigger fool for falling in love with her.

18

ABIGAIL

I watchTheo disappear out of the tent and into the darkness of the beach.

My heart surges in my throat as I watch his head tip forward.He’s hurting.

And it’s my fault.

I have managed a moment alone to sip my umpteenth glass of champagne, hiding by the bar, making myself as small as possible.

I’m not getting drunk the way I wish.I’m just giving myself a headache.

I haven’t been able to shake that look on his face when I said, “I don’t know.”

I don’t think I’ve ever made a man so sad.And Theo is too good a man to take his emotions out on me.

He stepped away, gave me room to breathe, like I needed.

But hours later, I need anything but space.

I need him.

I glance around the party.Thank god Bridget and Seth opted for a big blowout rather than an intimate affair.There are hundreds of people here, swaths and clusters of people to disappear in.And given how late it is in the night, things are starting to get sloppy.Screams and cheers, drunken mishaps, so much laughter.

Bonnie is still up and at ‘em with Camilla and Laney on the dance floor, screaming along to some pop song.

My heart doubles in size every time I look at her.It’s something inexplicable and strange.She is not mine and yet, I wish she was.

I never wanted to be a mother this young.My own mother always warned against it, even though I think I turned out okay for the most part.And yet, the idea of being the figure Bonnie turns to always and forever doesn’t terrify me at all.

It only compounds the way I feel for Theo.

Which makes this all the more heartbreaking that it has to end.

Before he left the tent, I kept stealing glances at him sitting with my father and a younger man.He was stoic and silent, not at all the breathless smiling Theo I’ve come to know.

I think I’ve broken his heart.

Broken mine too.

When I look at my dad now as he puffs his cigar and laughs with his friend, something creeps up the back of my neck.All that blame I placed on Theo for taking my father away, all that blame should have been on my father.

I never had the heart to hold him accountable for all that time I missed him because he’s tried to become a better man.But he was not a good man when I needed him most to be.

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