Page 93 of Wedding Season
It had taken eighteen years, but she’d been given an opportunity to act like the mom she’d always wanted to be—sacrificing for her daughter wasn’t a difficult choice other than having to hurt Alex as part of it.
She hated the pain she’d seen in his dark gaze and knowing she’d put it there. It was the right decision, but she’d damaged him. Shouldn’t that prove she had no choice but to walk away?
Mariella hurt the people she loved. She was like a scorpion who had no choice but to sting. The plan when she’d come to Magnolia had been to hold onto her heart, to protect it and keep it safe.
Instead, she’d opened and let people in—her friends in town, Heather and Alex. She was protecting them by walking away.
That didn’t seem to stop the turbulent emotions causing her heart to burn with sorrow.
How could her whole body feel icy cold other than the one part she wanted not to feel?
Shadows played across the wet sand as evening crept along the horizon. The waves pounded into the shore, churned up by the storm. The whitecaps and crashing roar mesmerized her, but she didn’t approach.
There was low and then there was the emotional state she’d been in that night she’d walked into the water in Mexico. She wasn’t there.
As bad as things were now, she’d find a way to get through it. The journey would be made a lot easier if she could ever manage to cut out her heart and abandon her love for Alex.
Something caught her eye, and she turned to find Alex stalking toward her like she’d conjured him with her need.
She tried to scramble to her feet, but her limbs were numb and not working the way they should and she pitched forward so that when he got to her, Mariella was on her knees.
This man had brought her to her knees.
She deserved it and did her best to swallow back her tears. What did it matter? The rain washed them away as soon as they fell.
But somehow Alex knew.
He dropped to his knees and gathered her into his arms. She didn’t have the strength to fight him and allowed herself to be scooped into his lap. He kissed her forehead and her cheeks, trailed his mouth along her jaw.
“I love you,” he said into her ear, his warm breath making goose bumps prick her skin. “And you should have told me it was Heather.”
“I couldn’t,” she said on a ragged breath. “I needed to do it that way for my daughter. You have your priorities and I have mine. Your company—”
“You are my priority, Mariella. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I’m sorry if you doubted it for one single second.”
“It wasn’t you that I doubted,” she told him, figuring if there was a time for honesty, that time was now. “I have all the faith in the world in you, Alex. Not so much in myself.”
“Can my faith in you be enough?” he asked.
She thought about that, wondered if it could be true. “I wanted to come to you whole.”
“Oh, sweetheart, none of us is completely whole at this point. Don’t you see?” He placed a hand on either side of her face, the warmth of him heating some of the icy places inside her. “My broken pieces fit with yours. We’re only whole together, Mariella. We’re better together.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” she said, biting down on the inside of her cheek to keep from breaking down into embarrassing sobs.
“You could never lose me. You will never lose me. Even if you go on a self-destructive rampage for the ages, Mariella, I’ll be the one to follow in your wreckage. It would be my great honor. I promise I won’t let you go. You are my home.”
“That’s a big promise.” She smiled through her tears, her heart thumping in a new and brilliant rhythm. “But I don’t want the rampage. I want to have courage, Alex. You’ve helped me begin to find it. I’m a work in progress.”
“We both are,” he assured her.
“And I want to do the work with you.” She brushed her lips across his, hers tingling at the contact. “I love you,” she said as her chest swelled with emotion.
Alex deepened the kiss and it was like finding the other half that she’d been missing, the certainty of knowing that together they truly were whole.
When he pulled away, his wet hair stuck to his head and raindrops glistened on the tips of his eyelashes. “Mariella?”
“Mmmm,” she murmured, ready to nuzzle into him again.
