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Chapter 5
The problem when you shatter is you’re so busy trying to pick up the pieces you don’t deal with the reason you broke in the first place.
That Sunday I tried to be me. The usual me. The happy, bridal me. I tried not to pull away when Bradley moved to kiss me. I tried not to cry. I tried not to snap at my mother when she felt the need to overshare that my father had been cheating on her for years and it was fine with her. I tried not to blame myself for being inadequate.
At home that night my mother must have told my father to talk to me because he knocked on my bedroom door, something he never did. “Bel, it’s your father. Let me in.”
I had thrown Bradley out, telling him I didn’t want to see his face for the rest of the night. “Where am I supposed to sleep?” he had asked, looking bewildered.
“The guest room. I don’t know.” I didn’t care. He could sleep on the goddamn deck for all I cared.
“Dad, can this wait?” I was crying, trying to figure out how to call off my wedding. Did I tell Bradley, then just call the wedding planner and let her bail me out of the mess? That seemed the best course of action, but I didn’t want to dump Bradley with my parents and Sophie in the house. It was a private pain I didn’t want to share.
But there’s nothing private about the pain of learning your whole relationship is a lie six days before your wedding. Everyone was going to know. There was no way around it.
“No, it can’t. I need to talk to you now.”
God. I groaned and peeled myself off the bed. I cracked the door open and peeked through. “What?”
For a second I thought he was going to push his way inside. My dad was a commanding man. Intelligent, cunning, confident. He owned his life and demanded a certain deference. I had spent my whole life trying to please him, but for the most part, he found me uninteresting. He respected Sophie’s brains. He was pleased I was attractive, but otherwise, he readily dismissed me. It wasn’t that he was cruel or didn’t love me. He just loved me in a very removed sort of way.
He had dark eyes, the result of some Italian genes somewhere in our family ancestry. They weren’t concerned as they studied me. They were determined. “You’re marrying Bradley,” he told me with no preamble. “And I don’t want to hear anything else, do you understand me?”
My gut clenched. “Dad…” I heard the pleading in my voice and I hated it. “I can’t.”
He sighed. “Can you open the door? I can only see a sliver of your face.”
I did, reluctantly.
And he did the most extraordinary thing. He reached out and pulled me into a big bear hug. My father wasn’t a hugger. He had not wrapped his arms around me since I had gotten too big to pick up and carry around.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” he murmured in my ear. “Give Bradley a second chance. He’s downstairs crying.”
Now I was crying too. My head was on his firm chest. I wanted comfort, and yet his words felt like anything but. It felt like he was siding with Bradley. I pulled back, disheartened. “How am I supposed to trust him?”
“He’ll earn it back. But don’t throw away your whole beautiful future because he had a moment of weakness. You’ll regret it forever, I know you will. This is what you want.”
I nodded, because I realized he wouldn’t leave my doorway until I agreed with him. That’s how he was. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to turn myself inside out, scrub off all these nasty feelings, and put myself back together clean and whole. As if none of this had ever happened. As if it was a bad dream.
It felt like a nightmare.
“Good girl.” He gave me a smile.
“Don’t send Bradley up here,” I said, panic rising in me. “I don’t want to talk to him. He can sleep in the guest room.”
“Whatever you need to do. A few days to pull yourself together won’t hurt him. He does owe you that.”
But nothing else? There it was again. The implication that I needed to do something to improve myself or fix the situation. The buck-up, get-over-it attitude. An assumption that I was wildly overreacting.
I was so hurt. Devastated, really. I felt destroyed by Bradley and then insulted by my parents. No one seemed to actually care about my feelings. I slammed the door shut without another word, confused as hell.
Needing air, I stepped out onto my balcony, then immediately returned. I didn’t like the sound of the ocean. It felt lonely to me. I sat on my bed and stared at my gorgeous engagement ring from Tiffany. Round cut, with a halo of diamonds, 2.5 karats. Classic and timeless.
Like my wedding was intended to be.
Maybe my mother and father were right. Maybe this was what I had signed up for, without even realizing it. Maybe I was breaking my end of the bargain.
I took the ring off the way I did every night at bedtime and dropped it into a glass bowl on my nightstand without the usual care I took. My finger felt bare without it tonight. Taking it off felt ominous. I wasn’t going to marry Bradley. Or was I?
