Page 132 of From Best Friend to Bride
Anger flitted through me. Why was this on me? Why did I have to be the one to break her heart? The frustration didn’t last long, and it quickly dissipated into sadness.
Aunt Bonnie had called me for one reason and one reason only.
She couldn’t do it.
She had nobody to lean on. Nobody to pick up the slack when she struggled. She’d been a single mum almost our entire lives, and I knew she wasn’t palming a job off on me. She wasn’t asking me to pass this on to make her life easier.
She was saying, “I need your help. I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”
I was angry because I knew I was the one who’d have to see the heartbreak on Deli’s face. I’d see the one thing she’d hide from everyone else. That had always been the way, but now, that pain hurt even more.
I paused just outside Deli’s room. The door was cracked open a couple of inches, and she was sitting at her dressing table, drying her hair, humming a song I couldn’t identify if they told me the name of it on the radio.
For the first time in days, she was happy.
At least, she looked happy. Her song went from humming to singing, and for this moment, she existed in her own world as she sang about guy making a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter.
There was such peace about her.
Such wonderful, beautiful peace that I was struck by her for a second.
Her dark hair. Her copper eyes. Her warmth. Her comfort in herself.
My best friend.
Fuck.
Mywife.
This incredible whirlwind of a woman I was falling deeper in love with every second.
And I, her husband, her best friend, was about to destroy her world.
I rapped my knuckles against the door loudly, and she jerked, turning towards me. The white noise of the hairdryer whooshed out of existence as she smiled gently at me.
“Sorry, should I close the door?” she asked softly.
“No, of course not. Can I come in?”
“Huh? Since when do you ask that?” Deli raised her eyebrows. “What’s wrong?”
I stepped inside and pushed the door closed until it clicked. “Your mum just called me.”
She stared at me.
“We need to go to the hospital.”
Deli drew in a sharp breath. “Is Nana—”
“Not yet,” I said softly. “But soon.”
She didn’t move.
She just stared at me.
And I saw the very moment her heart broke.
The spark that was always there in her gaze died, and where there was once a stunning copper hue, there was just a dull pain blurred by the tears that welled in her eyes.
