Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
HUNTER
The second the last of the wedding party disappeared behind the double doors, we were shuffled toward the back of the room where the open bar had been set up so the space could be converted to the reception.
I couldn’t get to that goddamn bar fast enough. I needed a drink almost as much as I needed my next breath.
I got a whiskey for me, needing more than a beer at the moment, and a glass of champagne for Serenity.
“Thanks,” she said quietly as she wrapped her fingers around the long narrow flute and brought it to her lips, drinking down half in one go.
I wrapped my arm around her waist and held her close, bending my neck in an effort to meet her eyes, but she was going out of her way to look anywhere but at me. “You good?” I asked, feeling a sinking sensation deep in my stomach.
The smile she gave me wasn’t nearly as bright and happy as the one I’d seen a million times. “Yeah. Great,” she chirped, the lie ringing clear in her voice. “I need to use the restroom. Will you excuse me?”
I didn’t want to let her go. I wanted to drag her back to our room and bury myself deep until neither one of us remembered anything outside of the way we made each other feel.
But I knew that wouldn’t help anything.
“I’ll go with you,” Tessa announced, and I let out a sigh of relief that Serenity wouldn’t be alone, even if only for a couple minutes.
I watched the woman who had clawed her way under my skin leave the ballroom, feeling as though she was taking a piece of me with her.
It wasn’t until Bryce slugged me in my arm to get my attention that I was able to pull my focus from the last place I’d seen Serenity.
“Jesus,” I grunted, rubbing my stinging arm. “What the fuck, asshole?”
“I should be asking you what the fuck,” he clipped.
I downed my drink in a couple swallows and set the glass back on the bar before waving at the bartender for a refill. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
He reared back, his brows creeping high on his forehead.
“Really? Then that would make you the only fucking one. Don’t know if you can feel the eyes of every damn body in the room on you right now, but just in case you’re blind, there wasn’t a single person who missed the eye fucking the goddamn bride gave you on her way down the aisle to her husband. ”
Shit.
I dragged my gaze through the room, and sure enough, several people were staring in my direction, most of them whispering behind their hands, no doubt discussing what they’d witnessed.
“Fucking hell,” I groaned, reaching up to drag my fingers through my hair. “Was it really that bad?”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You saw the look on Sere’s face before she bolted to the bathroom, right? What the hell do you think?”
“She came to our room before the wedding,” I confessed as I gulped my second drink, savoring the burn as it traveled down my throat and settled in my gut.
Bryce’s jaw dropped. “Tell me you’re joking.”
I shook my head. “Not even a little.”
“Of fucking course she did,” he bit out coarsely. “What the hell did she want?”
I lifted my shoulder in a shrug. “No idea. I was in the shower. Sere answered it, said the interaction seemed strange.”
“I’d say. The woman was supposed to be getting ready for one of the biggest days of her life, yet she still took the time to hunt you down. Who does that?”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the deejay announced over the speaker system, effectively cutting off anything else Bryce had to say. “Put your hands together for Mr. and Mrs. Oliver James!”
The crowd burst into applause as the doors swung open once more and the happy couple came sauntering through, hand in hand.
While everyone rushed to them, eager to give out well wishes and blessings on a happy union, Bryce and I remained at the bar, separated from the crowd.
The goddamn party Serenity had been looking forward to hadn’t even started, and already, I wanted this goddamn night to be over.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of white separate from the crowd and start in our direction.
“Aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes,” Vera exclaimed. She moved into Bryce and lifted up on her toes to place a kiss against his cheek. “It’s so good to see you. Thank you for coming.”
“Of course,” he returned, the smile he was giving the happy bride nowhere near his eyes. “It’s been a long time.”
“It sure has been,” she said with a sigh, shifting her attention to me as she added, “Way too long.”
Fuck me.
She moved to me, giving me the same greeting she’d just given Bryce, only her kiss lingered on my cheek longer than necessary. “Congratulations,” I said as I took a step back, putting some space between us. “You made a beautiful bride.”
She looked up at me through her lashes, her voice coming out low and throaty as she said, “Thank you. You know, I was hoping to catch up with you earlier. I swung by your room and met your date.”
I ignored the pain that flashed across her face.
“Yeah, Sere told me.”
“Sere,” she said on a breath, like the endearment I used hurt her somehow. “She’s very pretty.”
“She’s sweet as hell too,” Bryce threw in, tossing gasoline onto a fire. “She’s good for our man, Hunter. Nice to see him settling down.”
He was laying it on way too fucking thick. I wanted to knock his teeth down his throat to shut him up.
Vera’s lips parted slightly. “Wow. That’s—I didn’t know you were seeing anyone. Let alone it was so serious.”
My eyes trailed to the door Serenity had gone through minutes ago, and the feeling that rushed over me just then came out of nowhere.
I missed her. She’d been gone a handful of minutes and I missed her. I couldn’t stop looking at that goddamn door, waiting for her to come back to me so I could wrap my arm around her and keep her close the rest of the night.
“It is serious,” I confessed, not only to Vera, but to myself as well.
I was done denying the truth of what she meant to me.
You make me happy.
And damn if she didn’t do the same for me.
“She makes me happy.”
Vera’s face looked stricken, the color leaching from her skin beneath her makeup, and with the epiphany that came with realizing I wanted Serenity in my life for the long haul, came the clarity about the woman I’d held above all others for almost half my life.
Everything Bryce and I had fought about for years was true.
She had used me.
I spent way too many years refusing to love someone else because I was too busy chasing after a fantasy. Then, easy as could be, she hung me out to dry like it was nothing once she finally got her life back together.
I couldn’t put the blame solely on her. After all, I was the one who let her do it. I made her to be something so much bigger than what she was, and then stupidly built my world around her.
Even after packing up my life and moving to Hope Valley, I still clung to the dream of what was never going to happen. I let her manipulate me, dangling me from her hook the whole goddamn time, only to cut me loose when something better came along.
“I hope your new man makes you happy, Vera,” I said, finality in my words.
Her face crumpled, desperation leaching out “Hunter,” she breathed, “do you think we could maybe talk in private later?”
And there it was. She was still doing it.
I knew then and there that the only reason she’d showed up at my hotel room earlier was because she’d gotten word—probably from one of her sons—that I was there with another woman.
She lived her life content to have me on her back-burner, always waiting as a backup plan in case something went wrong, and she was panicking at the realization she didn’t have that anymore.
“That’s not going to happen, Vera.”
“But—”
“I’m in love with her.” Christ, but that felt good to say. “You’ve moved on with your life. It’s time to let me do the same.”
With that, I turned and set my half-full drink down and went in search of the woman who reminded me what it was like to feel happiness.
As soon as I pushed through the door and out of the ballroom, I saw Tessa heading in my direction. Alone.
She stopped and stared at me, her expression conveying just how disappointed in me she was.
Before I could get a word out, she held up her hand.
“Before I tell you where she is, I have one thing to say.” She paused to pull in a breath, like she was gearing up to rip into me.
“I’ve known you a long time, Hunter. You’re my family as much as you are Bryce’s, and I’ve never seen you as settled as you are with Serenity.
She gives you peace, and after everything you’ve been through, you deserve that. Don’t screw this up.”
For the millionth time I thought of how grateful I was that my brother lucked out and landed himself such an incredible woman. “I don’t intend to,” I assured her. “Now, where is she?”
“She went back to your room. Said she had a headache.”
Shit.
I started for the elevators, only to have Tessa’s voice stop me. “You know, if it makes any difference, I love that woman. We all do.”
It made all the difference in the world, because the people in Hope Valley were my family.
I smiled and tilted my chin in acknowledgment of what she’d just said, then I spun on my heel and rushed to the elevator, desperate to get to my woman.
Serenity
It all made perfect sense now; the strange encounter with the bride-to-be earlier that day, the way Hunter’s mood seemed to flip back and forth, how tense he’d been the past few days leading up to the wedding.
The questions that had been bouncing around in my head, driving me crazy, for days, finally had answers, and they were answers that made me sick to my stomach.
I’d escaped to the bathroom for a small reprieve, but with Tessa’s constant look of concern over the stares I got, that other wedding-goers had witnessed the same thing I had—the longing in the bride’s eyes for a man who wasn’t her betrothed; it had all become too much.