Chapter 20
“I’ll be back in two hours tops,” Oliver told me as JJ, Xander, and Stella filed out of the suite.
I raised my hand in parting. “Have fun.”
As much as I wanted to make things right with Alec, I wasn’t going to ruin Vanessa’s big day by upsetting her little brother.
I’d decided it would be best to wait until the ceremony and dinner ended before confronting him.
The nuptials were taking place in the hotel’s grand ballroom, and once the party was in full swing, Oliver would pull Alec away from the reception and bring him upstairs.
Which meant that strictly speaking, I was only crashing the wedding in the broadest sense of the term.
“If you get hungry, order room service,” Oliver told me. “I’ll try to save you a piece of cake, but with JJ at the table, I can’t make any promises.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I replied. “Never been much of a frosting fan anyway.”
JJ gasped. “Told you she has no soul.”
Oliver rolled his eyes as he stepped into the hall. “See you in a bit,” he called, and then I was alone.
Not quite sure what to do with myself, I turned in a circle and surveyed my surroundings.
There was a piano tucked into the far corner, a wall of shelves filled with books, a glass rock fireplace, and a handful of other luxuries I never expected to find in a hotel room.
Any other day I would have been impressed with the grandeur of it all, but it was hard to appreciate when I could feel my heart fluttering around my chest like a caged bird.
Without anyone to keep me company, my mind immediately found Alec.
I had this terrible image in my head of him storming away as soon as he saw me, and I kept playing it over and over like some kind of sick movie.
When my palms started to sweat, I knew I needed a distraction.
Some way to kill time so I didn’t have a heart attack before he arrived.
I grabbed my travel copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, the one Violet had returned to me yesterday, and took a seat on the couch.
I was too worked up to focus on reading, but there was comfort in holding my favorite novel.
As I flipped through the first chapter, I noticed something different about the usually familiar pages. Beneath my margin scribbles someone had left comments in near-perfect penmanship.
I drew in a sharp breath.
It was Alec’s handwriting. I was sure of it.
Not only had he read the book, but he’d responded to each of my thoughts.
There were answers to the questions I’d posed, along with his own ideas and analyses.
He even jotted down part of a song after the passage where Atticus tells Scout about Tom’s shooting.
The lyrics were unfamiliar to me, but they fit the story so perfectly it was as if Harper Lee had written them herself:
With these wings we fly
Toward the clouds, sun, and sky
Until the dark of night arrives
And shatters us forever
From cover to cover, Alec had filled my book with fragments of himself. I was so absorbed in reading them that I didn’t realize Oliver had returned until I heard him speaking.
“This will be real quick, I promise.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow? I should be with my family right now.”
My head shot up at the sound of Alec’s voice.
“I know, I know. But this is important,” Oliver told him. “Just bear with me.”
I tossed the paperback onto the cushion beside me and jolted to my feet.
A second later, the boys stepped into the room, and my chest hitched at the sight of Alec.
The tux he wore sent me back to the night we first met, back to before I’d ruined us.
His brows were knit together in a frown, as if he was trying to figure out why he’d been dragged away from the party.
As I watched, he patted his hair, checking to make sure every blond lock was in its designated place.
Heart throbbing at the back of my throat, I waited for him to spot me. Finally, he glanced up, and when our gazes locked, he came to an abrupt stop.
“Welp, I’ve done my part,” Oliver said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m going to leave you two alone now.” He shot me a thumbs-up before inching backward in the direction of the exit.
The moment we were alone, I wanted to rush into Alec’s arms.
Instead, I planted my feet and lifted a hand in greeting. “Hi.”
For a long time, a painfully long time, he said nothing. I stared at him, my breath bottling inside my chest as I waited for a response. If he didn’t say something soon, I was going to run out of oxygen.
“Felicity.” His tone was guarded, careful. “What are you doing here?”
The question stung, but I ignored the pain and answered. “I wanted to see you.”
“Why?” he asked, his steel eyes narrowing.
I felt myself wince, like his words were a slap across the face. To have him look at me like that—like I was poisonous—was excruciating. Things could be worse, I tried to convince myself. At least he’s talking to you.
“Because,” I said. “A super smart guy once told me that his mother said it’s always important to apologize in person.”
Alec crossed his arms and waited. Okay, so he wasn’t going to make this easy for me. I guess I deserved that.
Taking a quick breath, I started over. “Violet came to see me yesterday.”
That got a reaction out of him. “What? Why would she do that?”
“To set the story straight,” I replied and began inching my way across the room. “She said King went back on his promise to let you produce her record, and that you begged her to reconsider when she contemplated signing with another label.”
I stopped a yard away from him and gave myself a moment to work up enough courage for what was coming next. You’ve got this, Felicity. All you have to do is open your mouth and say you’re sorry for being the biggest ass in the world.
“I know this isn’t the best time, but I need to apologize for what I said in Seattle.
” I glanced at the carpet, tucked a loose curl behind my ear, and then looked back up at him.
“Alec, I’m so sorry. You were nothing but kind to me, and I automatically assumed the worst. I-I didn’t trust you, even though you never gave me a reason not to. ”
“Why?” he asked again. It was quickly becoming his catchphrase of the evening.
“Why am I apologizing?”
“No.” He swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you trust me?” His voice broke at the end of the question. Clearly, he’d been torturing himself over the answer.
I was at a loss for words. The honest truth was that I didn’t have a good response to give him.
“Um, well…I may have overheard your conversation with Stella when we were at Oliver’s uncle’s place. I thought you were talking about me. That combined with your phone calls to Violet, and I just sort of figured…” My explanation was so terrible I couldn’t even finish it.
But then something amazing happened. Alec took an actual step in my direction.
Now we were only two feet apart. Close enough to reach out and touch him, but still too far in all the important ways for me to actually do so.
“Felicity, I would’ve told you anything you wanted to know. Why didn’t you ask me?”
He made it sound so easy, which felt a little unfair, especially coming from someone as reserved as him.
Alec and I had clicked from the start, but that didn’t mean we’d settled into the ease of a long-term relationship, one where we were completely comfortable with each other.
Nobody could let their guard down that quickly.
“I guess I was afraid,” I told him.
“Of what?”
With a shrug, I focused my gaze on the swirling pattern of the carpet. “I don’t know. Lots of stuff, I suppose. I didn’t want you to think I was crazy or ruin things between us by making assumptions.”
“But you did make assumptions.” His voice was gentle, which made me feel worse. Why was he so calm and composed? Couldn’t he just yell at me? The pain in his eyes would be so much easier to deal with if he was angry.
“Everyone was lying to me, Alec,” I said, forcing my gaze to meet his again. “My mother was keeping this monumental, life-changing secret, and my two best friends were purposely hiding their relationship from me. I know it’s no excuse, but I felt like nobody was being honest anymore.”
It happened so fast that I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw Alec’s lips twitch. “I’ve always been honest with you.”
Not when we first met, a petty part of me wanted to say. You said your name was Aaron! But that wasn’t fair. We hadn’t know each other then.
I hung my head. “Yeah, I know.”
There was a long pause during which I chewed on my lip and tried to think of something else to say, some way to make things right, but I came up with zilch. And maybe that was because there was nothing left to be said. Maybe I didn’t deserve his forgiveness.
“Well, I’ve said my part,” I told him, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I-I understand if you can’t forgive me. God knows I don’t deserve it, but I wanted you to know how sorry I am. Give me a minute to grab my things, and then I’ll leave.”
Turning away from Alec, I pressed a hand to my lips. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. I wasn’t going to let him see my tears, so after giving myself a second for the heat behind my eyelids to subside, I moved toward the couch to collect my book and bag.
Then Alec spoke.
“The mockingbird is beautiful.”
I was so caught off guard by the sudden change of topic that at first I didn’t know if he’d actually said something or I’d imagined his voice. On top of that, I wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about—the book or my necklace?—but I turned to face him.
Alec closed the gap that was separating us. My pulse exploded when he reached up and fingered the beads at my throat, his knuckle gently sweeping across my collarbone. “I know I’ve said this before, but you’re really talented.”
“I… Thank you,” I whispered, holding as still as possible.
Is this really happening?