Page 49 of Runaway Bride and Prejudice

“Come here.”

I tug Amelia into my chest, dropping my chin to the top of her head. She doesn’t hug me back, her arms hanging limply by her sides. Her whole body trembles, and my hands tighten into fists, my knuckles brushing against her spine.

When I hear what sounds like someone approaching the bathroom, I duck further into the stall, spinning us until Amelia’s back is to the door, which I lock.

She sucks in a breath.

Not two seconds later, a woman walks inside and the water starts running. Amelia and I both hold still. I’m glad these stalls have fancy doors that extend all the way to the floor. Because it would be really obvious two people are inside this one.

The woman washes her hands for an excessively long time, and when she starts humming a One Direction song Amelia makes a small sound—stifling a laugh by the sound of it. I bite my lip, trying to hold in a laugh. She shakes in my arms.

I give her the tiniest pinch. She shakes harder.

I pull back so I can see Amelia’s face, which makes it worse. When her eyes meet mine, she almost loses it. I cover her mouth with my hand, still biting my lip, and her eyes dance even as a leftover tear drips down the slope of her nose.

The moment the woman turns off the water and exits the room, still humming “Best Song Ever” under her breath, we both lose it.

Amelia clutches my shirt as she cackles, pressing her forehead to my chest. I love the sound of her laugh and the feel of her happiness.

It’s like holding sunshine cupped in my palms.

When Amelia finally looks up at me, my laughter stills. Her smile fades, replaced with something totally different as the moment between us shifts.

Remembering why I’m here, I ask, “You okay, Mills?”

Her teeth worry her top lip, and I refuse to let my gaze fall there. Instead, I keep my eyes on her crystal blue ones. But as I watch, they fill with tears again.

I shouldn’t have opened my stupid mouth. Should have stuck with laughter, pulled her out of the stall and taken her to dinner, pretending like I never found her crying in the bathroom to begin with.

“Hey,” I say softly. “You know it’s okay if you’renotokay right now? Because you’re going to get through this.”

“Yeah?” she demands. “How do you know? You barely know me.”

It doesn’t feel that way. It didn’t even feel that way on the night we met. More like … we’d known each other forever and just reconnected after a long absence, with lots of catching up to do.

The hours today have only added to that feeling. It’s as though our time together runs on a different plane, slow and languid like taffy, stretching minutes into years.

“I know not many people would be able to make it through a day like this. And you did. Youare,” I tell her. “There will be hard days to come. But I can already tell that you will sail through them, Mills. Youwill. You hear me?”

She nods, the tiniest of smiles curling her lips up at the corners. But two tears slip from her eyes, rolling slowly over her cheeks. Without questioning the impulse, I lift my hands to cup her face, brushing the tears away with my thumbs.

“I hate seeing you sad,” I whisper.

She shakes her head, still cupped within my hands. “I’m not sad,” she says, even as another tear spills over.

I wait, biting the inside of my cheek so I don’t fill the silence with something stupid. A trick I learned after years of doing it wrong with my sisters, making bad jokes or offering ill-fitting advice. “You just need to shut up,” Callie told me once. It was Lex who had her heart broken, and I’d just said something ridiculous I don’t even remember now.

“Okay, I’m a little sad,” Amelia amends. “But not because I wish things turned out differently with Drew. I’m not sad about losinghim.”

It shouldn’t make me so happy to hear how vehemently she says this, and how his name comes out of her mouth like a curse. But it does.

“I’m more sad about the idea,” she goes on. “My parents had this amazing marriage …” She pauses, draws in a deep breath, then continues. “They wanted more kids, but mom couldn’t get pregnant. So, we had this little, happy family of three. Until we lost her. It was important to my dad—you know, seeing me married and happy like he had been. He wants that for me.Iwant that for me.”

Her words crack something open in me. I can almost imagine it. The picture of a perfect little family, and then Amelia in that white dress, beaming as she walks down the aisle on her father’s arm.

Why she’s beaming and walking towardmein this image, I don’t know. Clearly, I’m not marriage material.

I let my hands fall from her face, sliding them down her arms to squeeze her hands. When I should let go, I don’t. So we stand here, chest to chest in the bathroom stall, hands clasped together.

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