Chapter 21 #4
The toast ended, applause rippling around us, but the air felt molten, suffocating. My wine glass sat full in front of me, barely touched, and I was suddenly desperate for it—anything to cool the fire crawling under my skin.
He leaned over, his lips brushing my temple, his voice a low, sinful murmur. “Finish your dessert, Trouble.”
“Why?” I whispered, my voice shaky, still reeling from the loss of his touch.
“Because after this,” he said, his hand grazing the top of my thigh one last time before retreating back down to my knee, “I’m dragging you somewhere quiet.”
“And then?” My voice was barely a breath, laced with needy anticipation.
His eyes locked on to mine, burning with raw hunger as he leaned closer, his whisper a dark, filthy promise. “Then I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’ll feel me for days.”
“Natalie, budge up.”
Paige plopped down beside me like a human ice-bucket challenge. Her cream sweater dress brushed my arm. Easton’s hand froze. And then…slowly, torturously, he pulled back. Like he knew exactly what he was taking with him .
I blinked at my sister, struggling to remember how to breathe, speak, function. Nothing to see here. Just a maid of honor fighting for her life.
Paige leaned in, her voice low, the sharp scent of her perfume slicing through the lust still thick in my blood. “I never heard from him.”
The words hit like a sledgehammer, and I turned to her, the shift in topic jarring enough to snap me straight out of the haze Easton had been weaving around me all night. “What?”
She gave a small shrug, but it was too practiced, too casual. Her eyes flicked to Levi across the room, her expression softening, so much love there, I felt it like a punch. “I thought maybe…I don’t know. That he’d call. Or text. Something.”
She shook her head once, the motion tight. “But nope. Nothing. Zilch.”
There was a beat of silence, heavy with the words she didn’t say.
“I guess he’s not coming.”
She tried to sound breezy, like it didn’t matter.
But the dip in her voice at the end—that pause, like she was still waiting for the story to change—told me everything.
She was disappointed. And she didn’t know why it still stung.
Not after all these years. Not after we’d already trained ourselves not to expect anything from him.
A breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding eased from my chest. Cool. Quiet. Relief.
That unknown number—the one that kept calling all week, never leaving a message, then texting today with just Call me back …I’d told myself it was spam.
But part of me had worried—worried it wasn’t just a random number. Worried it was him.
I reached under the table and found Paige’s hand, giving it a soft squeeze. “It’s better this way,” I whispered.
And it was…because I’d been picturing it all week.
Looking up in the middle of the speeches or the first dance…an d seeing him there. Standing in the doorway, smiling like he belonged. Like he hadn’t left a crater in our lives. Like he hadn’t broken our mother. Like I wasn’t still haunted by the girl he’d left behind.
I’d imagined sitting through it all with a polite smile, pretending I didn’t see him. Pretending I wasn’t still waiting for an apology that would never come.
But now? Hearing Paige say she hadn’t heard from him…
That tight, awful dread I’d been carrying finally let go.
I didn’t have to keep looking over my shoulder. Didn’t have to brace for a voice I hadn’t heard in years, or a face I didn’t want to see. That door—the one he’d left swinging open behind him—was finally shut. And for once, I didn’t feel like I had to hold it closed.
She nodded, her smile small and tired. It didn’t quite reach her eyes, but it was enough. Then she turned, laughing a beat later at something Levi said across the table, like the ache inside her hadn’t just opened a little wider.
Easton nudged my knee again.
The touch jolted me. I turned—a dangerous mistake—and found him already watching me.
His gaze was molten, locked on mine, the candlelight catching in those wild green eyes like he was made of trouble and temptation and everything I’d spent all this time convincing myself I couldn’t have.
But now?
With that door finally closed…I didn’t just feel brave enough to want him.
I felt excited for what came next.
He leaned in, low and quiet, just for me. “Let’s get out of here,” he murmured.
His fingers slid up my thigh, one last slow, deliberate stroke, and then they were gone, leaving nothing but heat and a wicked ache behind .
I turned toward him, catching the glint in his eyes, the tension in his jaw like he was hanging on by a thread.
That wild, reckless thing inside me didn’t just stir—it surged .
I didn’t hesitate.
“Yes,” I whispered, already breathless. “Please.”
I stood up too fast. My chair scraped against the wooden floor with a sharp screech that turned a few heads. Easton rose beside me, steady and tall, his hand brushing the small of my back as I reached for balance, like he was already ready to catch me.
I barely looked at him. I couldn’t. Not with my pulse already pounding in anticipation, not with the way my body still hummed from his touch beneath the table. I was so ready. He grabbed my hand, and I stepped toward the door, and we were?—
The crash stopped everything.
Sharp. Sudden. Shattering.
Glass splintered across the wood floor, cutting clean through the soft string music and low chatter like a warning shot. Paige stood frozen, the broken stem of her wine glass still pinched between two fingers, red spilling in slow motion down her wrist like blood in a fairy tale.
And then I followed her gaze.
Straight across the room, past the flickering candles and festive garlands. To the figure standing near the open door, snow clinging to his boots, his shoulders stiff beneath a weathered coat.
My stomach dropped.
My lungs forgot how to work.
He looked older. Of course he did. Gray threaded through his dark hair, his skin pulled tighter at the jaw, but the eyes—they were the same. Pale. Detached. Like he was already halfway out the door even as he stood in the middle of the room.
Terry.
My father.