Chapter 33
The hardest thing about the whole miserable situation is that I can’t stay in bed all day and cry.
It’s a Sunday in the middle of summer, and we have two weddings on the property today—a midsized in the evening and a small one in the early afternoon.
So I give myself ten minutes to cry, but then I have to shower, dress, and generally make myself presentable and wedding appropriate. Natalie has probably been working all day, and I need to help her with the inevitable venue issues that come up during events like this.
I might feel like death, but life doesn’t stop. And I’m not going to dump all the burdens of running this place on everyone else.
I’m not.
I might not get a life with Wes, but Blossom Park has been saved, and I’m going to keep doing my duty by it.
I thought Wes would return to his cottage and collapse after the two days, but he’s heading out of his cottage at the same time as me, dressed in a light gray suit with a gray-and-blue sweater-vest and a blue tie.
“Wh-what are you doing?” I ask him as our paths meet at the gate into the public areas.
He looks at me coldly, with a stoicism I haven’t seen on his face for a long time. “Dad needs help with something. If you don’t want to be around me, I can wait—”
“No, no. Of course not.” Tears burn in my eyes again, but I fight to keep them back. I’m not going to fall apart again. I’m just not. “I’m sorry about before.”
“You already said that. Multiple times. I’m fine.”
The issue is more whether I’m fine or not since I’m the one who got her heart broken. He’s the one who did it to me. But there’s no sense in rehashing everything. I just nod and fall into step with him as we walk through the paths lined by flowering fruit trees.
I glance down at my hand at one point—at the engagement ring and wedding ring there—and for some reason it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
Sometime soon I need to take them off.
We part ways as we reach the wedding gazebo since he’s heading to help Jake with some issue with the reception tent. I walk over to Natalie, who is running through a checklist on her tablet, and I try to put Wes out of my mind for a while.
I’m used to weddings being a flurry of activity and nerves, and this one is no exception. It actually helps. I can get through one hour and then another with the grief hiding in the back of my mind rather than swarming and feeding on everything.
It’s not until the reception, which is being held in a wedding tent near the duck pond, that I see Wes again.
The couple got a deal on the tent, but there’s an obvious reason they got it leased on discount.
It’s not good quality, and the supports aren’t stable in the strong wind we have today.
Jake and Wes have to go around, continually resecuring it at different points so that the whole thing doesn’t collapse on the wedding party.
Once they’ve reassured themselves that they have it under control, Wes surprises me by coming over to stand beside me.
I look at him in confusion.
“We’re supposed to be married,” he murmurs dryly.
“Oh. Yeah.” Of course we are. I’d actually forgotten that the world doesn’t yet know things are over between us.
Glancing around, I see some of the guests snapping a quick photo of us, but no one is obnoxious or intrusive. The focus isn’t on us right now, which is the way it should be. And a huge relief.
“Thanks for helping,” I murmur.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I didn’t mean that. I know the tent is their responsibility, not ours, but it feels like a disaster would reflect badly on us, which is why Natalie asked Jake for help.”
“I know that. He doesn’t mind, and neither do I. I agree it’s better to do what we need to do to make sure everything goes smoothly.”
I hate the way his voice sounds. So distant. So unlike who he really is.
The sound of it makes my eyes ache and swell again.
With a ragged sniff, I jerk my head away from Wes and try to hide my face with my hair so he doesn’t see.
So no one sees.
He makes a weird sound in his throat and uses his fingers to tilt my face back up toward his. “Have you been crying?” he asks with an inexplicable edge in his tone.
I gape at him. Literally gape. “Of course I’ve been crying!”
“But why?” His forehead is wrinkled, and the corners of his mouth turn down.
“Why?” My voice is far too loud, so I suck back my indignation enough to control it. “Why? What the hell is wrong with you? Are you seriously going to tell me again to not catastrophize? That I shouldn’t approach it with all this emotion?”
“No, I’m not!” He’s starting to look as tense and outraged as I feel. “But it’s not you who— You’re the one who decided—”
“I’m the one who what? Made a mess of this whole thing? Do you think I don’t already know that?”
“I’m not blaming you! You feel what you feel, just like me, and we can’t necessarily control it. But it looks like you’re falling apart, and I don’t understand why.”
“Of course you don’t understand. Of course you don’t.”
“Damn it, Ella. Why are you being this way when I’m the one who— When you didn’t even allow me to tell you the truth?”
We’re both speaking louder than we should, but we’re not shouting. People nearby can probably hear the tone of our conversation but not the actual words.
“What does that mean? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means—” He makes a rough sound and turns on his heel so his back is to me. “Why are you acting this way?”
“Wes?”
This is strange. It doesn’t make sense.
The conversation in the car all fell into place with terrible inevitability, but this conversation isn’t. It’s like we’re playing a chess game without half the pieces.
It looks like he’s about to turn around and say something, but he changes his mind. He starts walking away.
And I can’t take it.
I can’t take another half-finished conversation and stifled admission of the truth.
This is too hard and too upsetting. It’s continually turning my entire world upside down.
Over and over again.
In a moment of clarity, I see my life from above. At a distance. And I’m hit with a weird realization. I’m not to blame for everything. I can’t hold the world together just by trying. I’m not responsible for fixing it all.
But I am—I am, I am, I am—responsible for this. Every bit as much as Wes is.
I didn’t let him tell me the truth when he was trying, so I need to tell the truth now.
Being me, instead of expressing it in a mature and appropriate way, I end up blurting it out. “I love you!”
Wes freezes mid-step.
“I love you!” I’m way too loud. People at the wedding can hear me. Someone is probably filming us right now.
But I don’t care because the thing I’ve been trying to contain for so long is finally freed. “I love you, Wes. For real. I don’t want it to be over. That’s why I’m acting this way.”
He turns around very slowly. His face is stiff and tense.
Not the expression I hoped to see.
He stares at me. Then looks at the wedding behind me. It’s grown quieter. Everyone there is witnessing this.
His expression twists with what looks like confusion.
Self-consciousness.
Reluctance?
Oh my God, I’ve done it again.
It’s the hayride all over. Me blurting out the truth in front of the world when it’s the worst possible thing to do.
With a sob in my throat, I turn away. Take a couple of walking steps until the despair catches up with me.
I can’t stay here. I can’t look at Wes again.
Whatever the confusion meant, he didn’t want to hear the truth from me, and he didn’t want everyone else to hear it either.
I start to run, stumbling slightly before I get my stride. I’m wearing a casual cotton dress and chunky sandals. Not ideal clothes for running but not the worst.
It doesn’t matter anyway.
All that matters right now is that I run away from yet another mess I made.