Page 93 of Away With You
“Katie?” I inch closer to her, moving slowly in fear of frightening her away. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“I saw you with her,” she says after a long, long silence. “In the chapel.”
“You saw me in the chapel?”
“Yes, with Victoria.”
“You saw me in the chapel with Victoria?”
Katie’s pink lips firm into a straight line. “Are you going to repeat everything I’m saying?”
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to catch up.” My mind scrambles to remember what Katie could have witnessed. There were a few moments where Victoria got too close and batted her eyelashes like she used to, but I shut her down. “I was up in the chapel helping Victoria deal with the florist.”
“That’s not what I saw,” she argues.
I draw in a deep breath. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw, so I can tell you what it meant?”
“Fine.” She sits down, folding her hands under her thighs. I take a seat on the sun lounger next to her. “I went to look for you. You’d been gone for hours,” she starts.
I nod. It’s true. “My mother had one ‘emergency’ after the other for me to fix.” I roll my eyes, using air quotations for the word ‘emergency.’ “First, it was to wait at reception to collect the cigars my dad had ordered. Not what I’d class as an emergency, but whatever. I was fine to do it. Then, when I got back, I had to chase up the DJ, a job apparently only I could do. Then I was sent up to the chapel to liaise with the florist to sort out the floral arrangements.”
“But why did you go along with it? You didn’t even want to be at the wedding. Why agree to help at all?”
I roll my shoulders to ease the tension setting in there. “It didn’t seem like a big deal. I didn’t even notice how much time had passed. And as you’d know by now, my mother is a hard person to say no to. It was just easier to say yes, to do what she wanted and then get on with it. If I’d known how it would turn out”—I wave my hand around her tear-soaked face—“I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed. I wouldn’t have left your side.”
She chews on her thumbnail, debating my words. “It wasn’t you leaving me and being gone so long that was the problem,”she says at last, her voice wobbly. “It was what I saw when I followed you up to the chapel.”
“What did you see?” I ask again.
Her spine straightens. “What I saw,” she says, “was you and your ex-girlfriend in a deep discussion. She was in your arms, and you didn’t push her away.”
Fat tears spill over onto her cheeks, and my heart shatters.Katie saw that?Panicked now, I shift closer, wiping her tears with a gentle finger.
“I’m sorry you saw that,” I whisper, longing to hold her and erase this entire wretched morning.
Her eyes fly open. “You should be sorry you did that.”
I pause and gather my thoughts. Katie had been up at the chapel and had seen that moment with Victoria and was thinking the worst. It’s bad, but given what happened next, I can fix it.
“Of course I’m sorry. None of that should have happened. I should have pushed Victoria away the minute she put her hands on me. But, Katie, at the time, I didn’t know what to do.”
“Why? Because you still have feelings for her?”
My stomach revolts at the notion.How could she question that for even a second?“No. I was surprised and didn’t know how to deal with her. We were together for so long, and I loved her once. I didn’t want to be cruel.”
“So, you were what? Humouring her?” she asks.
I stand up and pace, running my hand through my hair. “Maybe?” I say, stopping to crouch down in front of her so I can stare into her eyes. “In that moment, in the chapel, when she was saying those things, I felt nothing. Well, no, actually, I was sorry for my brother, the person she’s going to marry today.”
“Nathan, she told you she was still in love with you.”
I nod, my mouth curled with disgust. “I know.”
“And she put her hands on you, and you didn’t push her away. She asked if you loved her, and you paused. You didn’t say no.”
Did I pause?I don’t remember. “I may have paused to gather my thoughts. But I did tell her I wasn’t in love with her,” I say, holding her eyes so she can see my sincerity. “You just left before that happened.”
She shakes her head, her lovely hair flying around her face and into her eyes. “But you hesitated. That means something. Especially…”
