Page 163 of Where Roads Lead

I was always embarrassing myself in front of him. He made me breathless and giddy, like a schoolgirl. It was dangerous and exhilarating all at once, and I’d spent the last few years trying to tip precariously around the edge of basking in that feeling and realizing the power it had over me.

Matthew was safe. He did not make my head cloud over with girlish emotions. He didn’t make my breath hitch when he looked at me a second too long.

And most of all, he never made me think of throwing caution to the wind and running wherever my heart led me.

That’s why he was the right choice for me. That’s the reason it would work between us.

And that’s the reason my heart was breaking when I saw Will sitting there, like a sign from the universe to stop, for once in my damn life, doing what my deranged, rigid brain viewed as the right thing.

I sucked in a breath, inhaling the scent of freshly cut grass and promises waiting to be made.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Will was on his feet in an instant, crossing the veranda until he stood beside me against the railing. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” I said breezily, stretching my fingers out at my side. “Just nerves. Big day, you know.”

“I can only imagine.” He snorted, a cynical expression playing across his features. “Sometimes I don’t know why people do this at all.”

“Marriage?” I asked, distracting myself from my own panic. “Or weddings?”

“Both, I guess. I don’t know,” Will said. “It just seems like a lot of risk, and for what?”

“What, are you saying that you’d never get married?” I stared at him, dissecting the faraway look in his eyes.

He was always like that. Detached, faraway. Seemingly impossible to reach.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, taking a sip of beer. “I’m just saying I can’t imagine it. Marriage is for people like you and Matthew. Not people like me.”

“People like you?” I felt angry. “What does that even mean, Will? You’re allowed to be happy.”

“Who says marriage would make me happy?” he countered, staring me dead in the eyes.

“Do you think it wouldn’t?”

“Doesn’t for most people.”

“That’s not fair. Your parents are happy.”

“I guess. But why risk it?”

“Risk what?”

“Why would you ever risk spending the rest of my life with the wrong person?”

His words froze me in place.

Oh God. Does he see right through me?

Does he know how fraudulent I feel standing here in this dress, with all this love for him in my heart when I’m about to go marry his brother?

“Oh God.” My knees trembled. “Okay, Will, I can’t do this. I can’t be here. I need to leave.”

He paled, face construing into a grimace.

“Oh, fuck, Aves, no. I’m sorry. Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

He was standing right beside me, and I wanted him to reach out for me, to steady me on my feet, but that wasn’t Will. It wasn’t in him to do something like that.

“I was being a cynical shithead,” he hurried to explain. “Weddings bring it out in people. I was just talking to you the way we always talk. I really didn’t mean to freak you out. You and Matthew are—”