AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“May I sit?” he asked.
“O-of course.” She stared at him, fairly certain he’d lost his mind. A few other patrons at P&P watched him with curious smiles.
“This was better in my head,” he said, removing the mask and setting it aside. His tentative smile made her heart leap. She ignored that leap. Her heart had caused enough trouble already.
“This past spring, I learned the hard way you can’t make a future happen that isn’t meant to be,” he said. “I was angling and strategizing for CEO. Plotting. Planning. Scheming. I made a lot of mistakes. A lot of very wrong assumptions. I never want to do that again.”
She wished he’d stop talking. She wanted to reach over the table and stuff her napkin into his mouth. She’d already come to this conclusion. She’d made a lot of wrong assumptions about him, and about her future, too. If he was trying to explain why he turned down her proposal, she could do without the fanfare.
“You didn’t agree to come to the vineyard over Fourth of July weekend, and to be honest, I’m glad you weren’t there.”
Well. This was just getting better and better.
“Bran—”
“Let me finish.” He held out a hand.
She quieted, but didn’t know how much more she could take.
“I have been moving forward without ceasing since everything blew up in my face a few months ago. I didn’t want my past to catch up with me. I didn’t want the future to come, and then you proposed.”
She winced.
“I wanted to stop you before you said or did something you’d regret, but I wasn’t fast enough. You forced me to turn you down, Ad.”
“I know, okay? I know!” She lowered her voice when a couple at the next table turned to stare. “I screwed up. Just like you. We’re the same. Go us. Can we please stop talking about this?” she whispered.
His crooked smile flooded her chest with the love she still felt for him. Even being shot down again, she couldn’t stop loving him.
“I owe you an apology.”
“You don’t,” she was quick to say. She couldn’t let him do this. Every next thing he said was bringing her closer to tears. She didn’t want to revisit any of this. “You were right about moving on. When you suggested forgetting what happened.”
“I can’t forget. More important, I don’t want to. It took not having you in my arms for me to realize that I fell in love with you, too, Addi. That nauseous sick feeling I had when I was telling you no? That was my gut screaming at me that I was making a mistake. I was losing you in real time and there was no way of stopping it. There is no moving forward without you—not if I ever want to be happy again.”
Dumbfounded, she blinked. He—what?
“I’m sorry for ignoring the love right in front of me,” he continued. “And I’m sorry for my reaction when you proposed. When you offered me everything and I acted as if it was nothing.” He kept those bourbon-colored eyes on hers, regret swimming in their depths. “If you forgive me, I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you so hard you’ll never feel alone again.”
He folded his hands on the table, his tux jacket sleeve sliding up and revealing the Rolex she’d engraved. She stared some more. He waited in silence.
Her brain scrambled to put the puzzle pieces together between what she believed he’d been thinking and what he’d actually been thinking.
Amazing how wrong she could be twice.
“And if I don’t forgive you?” she finally managed, because that was really the question, wasn’t it? If this was an ultimatum, there had to be a flip side.
“Then you can look forward to ideas a lot stupider than me wearing a tux and masquerade ball mask to dinner, because I’ll never stop fighting for you, Ad. Never.”
Warmth filled her chest and flooded her face. It was everything she wanted and the man she loved more than anything was offering it to her.
“Part of living in the now is doing what’s right in the moment.” Bran reached for her spoon and dunked it into the mousse, coming out with a string attached to what looked like...oh, God.
He tugged the string until a chocolate-covered ring appeared from the dessert. A ring with a diamond in the center, and it wasn’t a small diamond.
He dipped the chocolate-covered jewelry into her water glass and swirled, fishing out the shining, and now clean, platinum diamond ring. With that string, he dangled it in front of her like a pocket watch on a chain. And like she’d been hypnotized, she replayed everything he’d said.
I didn’t want the future to come, and then you proposed.
