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“I’m not, Hale. I want to marry you. It’s all I’ve wanted through this entire process. Please, believe me. I’ll do anything. There’s no one else. I swear. What can I do to prove how much I love you?”
He studied me. Still not touching me. Time became an excruciating torture.
My breath caught and I choked on a sob. “Tell me what to do.”
He pulled me from the floor so I was once again sitting eye level with him. “I need time.”
That wasn’t the answer I wanted. My insides locked as I forced back my objections. If I gave him time, would we eventually return to normal again?
“I do trust you, Rayne, but the last twelve hours have been a nightmare. I haven’t slept and, by the looks of things, neither have you. I’m calling off the parties tonight. You’re going to go upstairs to bed and I’m going to find a doctor. Your feet have cuts all over them and I don’t want them to get infected.”
“But what about us? What about the wedding?”
He shook his head and stood. “There will be no more surprises, Rayne. The wedding’s on. Do you understand? You’re going to sleep this off and stay put until I come back.”
This cold, unfeeling dictator was not my Hale.
I worried he was only going through with the wedding at this point to save face. Why wouldn’t he touch me? Why couldn’t we talk this through? I didn’t want to sleep. I needed to fix us.
“But—”
“You will do this without arguing with me, Rayne. You owe me that much.”
He was right. I was the one who needed his forgiveness and I would do whatever it took to fix us. “Do you hate me?”
He stared at me as if my question were completely ungrounded. “How you could even ask that? I’m doing this because I love you. We’re going to get married, as expected, and put this entire event behind us.”
He moved toward the front door and picked up his leather briefcase. I spotted the familiar envelope of the prenup peeking from the back pocket.
“Hale—”
“Go to bed, Rayne.”
But there were still things I needed to explain. We were so far from fixed. I couldn’t go on like this. I didn’t want to say our vows with all of this ugliness still between us.
I flinched when his phone rang and he glanced at the screen with a sigh. “This is the police. I have to take it. Do as I said. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Why were the police calling him? Was it about my dad? Or did he have them scouring all of Manhattan for his missing maniac of a fiancée?
“Hale, wait…”
Ignoring me, he turned and answered the call. “Davenport.”
He left without even a goodbye.
Put a Freaking Bell on His Neck
“Rayne.” The distant echo of my name barely penetrated my deep sleep. But then something whacked me on the head. “Rayne, wake up.”
I gasped, my brain coming awake with a start as I stared up at Tyler. Rubbing my head, I frowned. “Ty?” I hadn’t heard him come in.
“You’ve got a problem.” He dropped several tabloids onto the bed. Each one featuring a shot of Hale.
I sat up and squinted, unsure what I was looking at. “Huh?”
“You need to look at this.”
Tucking my socked feet under my knees, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “How did you get in here?”
