Page 16 of First Comes Marriage

She got a far off look in her eye and, for a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer him. He sipped his Scotch and waited.

Finally, she turned back to him. “My parents never wanted a second daughter. Did I ever tell you that? Probably not. Even when we were friends, we weren’tthose kindof friends.” He arched an eyebrow in question. “You know, the tell-each-other-about-our-childhood-trauma kind of friends. That wasn’t us. Anyway. My mom was convinced I was going to be a boy, but really, I think she just wanted me to be. Gregory. That’s what they were going to name me. What did she need another girl for? She already had Holly.” She blinked, looking away from him and taking another sip of her margarita.

Something tightened in his chest at the sadness in her face and he found himself throwing back the rest of his Scotch to keep himself from trying to comfort her. Baz didn’t comfort women in bars—that was more of Gavin’s domain. And she still hadn’t answered his initial question.

“Holly was right, you know,” Sabrina said with a sad kind of half smile. “The day you were supposed to marry her, she said I was jealous. I was. I was so jealous. But that’s not why I askedher not to marry you.”

He clenched his jaw, his shoulders stiffening. “Sabrina, stop.”

“I didn’t want to be your sister-in-law, but I would have been. No one believes me. Everyone still thinks I ruined your wedding to be spiteful. Even you think that. How could you think that, Sebastian? We might not have been trauma-sharing friends, but wewerefriends.”

Baz accepted a new Scotch from the bartender as guilt twisted in his stomach. They had been friends and she’d betrayed him—at least, that’s what he thought had happened, what Holly led him to believe had happened. But here, now, Sabrina seemed so sad, like he’d been the one to betray her.

“I wouldn’t have believed me either,” she said with a sigh. “Sometimes, when Holly tells it her way, I wonder if I made it all up. She’s very convincing. That’s why she’s the lawyer and I’m the fuck up.”

“You’re not a fuck up.”

“I am. Everyone thinks it. My mom and Holly and you—”

“I do not think you’re a fuck up,” he growled. He turned on his stool to face her more completely, his knees brushing against hers.

“But you still hate me.”

“I don’t—”

She closed her eyes. “Don’t say you don’t feel anything. That’s so much worse.”

He sipped his Scotch, the pain in her voice rendering him temporarily speechless.

“I wanted to tell you the truth,” she continued, oblivious to the guilt gnawing at his bones. “But you didn’t want to hear it. Not from me. No one wanted to hear it from me.”

“Tell me now.” Her eyes flew open, meeting his with a confused wrinkle of her brow. “I want to hear it now.”

She opened and closed her mouth as though she didn’t know how to begin, then blinked and turned back to the bar,downing her margarita.

“That morning, I went to Holly’s hotel suite early. I wanted to surprise her with a wedding day mimosa, just us two, before everyone else got there.” She glanced at him, as if to confirm that he was listening. He inclined his head in encouragement, and she wet her lips before continuing. “I had a key. Took it the night before because I wanted to surprise her. She didn’t answer when I knocked so I let myself in. Mimosas in bed to start her wedding day.” Sabrina’s face fell, lost in her memory. “She was with another man.”

All the air rushed from Baz’s lungs like he’d been punched in the gut.

She glanced at him, barely seeing him, and he drained the rest of his Scotch, setting it down on the bar and tapping next to the empty glass to get the bartender’s attention. They both watched as the amber liquid rushed into the glass, waiting until the bartender had moved along again before Baz chanced a glance at her.

“Who was he?”

“Harry something-or-other. He was a partner in her law firm.”

Baz had expected the name to set off a storm inside his chest, to reignite the smoldering remains of his hatred for his ex-fiancée, but instead of a glowing ball of anger burning through his skin, he felt empty.

“He was married to his first wife back then. I don’t remember her name,” Sabrina continued. “I waited in the hallway outside her room until he left. He still had her lipstick…” She trailed her fingers over the column of her throat. “She denied it. But I know what I saw. What I heard. I told her if she didn’t tell you the truth, I would.”

“And instead she left.”

“I didn’t know she was going to do that. I didn’t think she’d… I didn’t think.”

Baz closed his eyes, remembering the vehemence with which Sabrina had vowed she wouldn’t let her sister marry him, the immediate hurt that had flooded through him that someone he had considered his friend would want to snatch his happiness from him. He’d been blinded by the vision in his head of the white picket fence and two-point-five kids with Holly’s smile and his eyes. By his desperation to believe that she had loved him, that he could marry the perfect girl from the perfect family and somehow that would make his life perfect.

“I’m so sorry,” Sabrina said, her voice tight.

He threw back the rest of his Scotch. Whether his head spun from the alcohol or from the realization that everything he thought he knew about what happened that day was wrong, he wasn’t sure. Not that it really mattered.

---