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“Yes,” I said, brushing a stray pink strand out of her face. “And … it would be a real wedding, Whitley. You’d be my real wife.”
“But it wouldn’t be …real. It would be wrong. We’re not … we’re not together like that.”
“No,” I agreed easily. “It’s not like I planned to get married, but that doesn’t mean we have to say no to your father’s request.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t want to think about this.”
“I know.” I ran my fingers back through her cotton-candy hair. “I can’t imagine you’d want to discuss this. I can’t believe they dropped this in your lap. It’s not fair, and it’s awful, but, Whit … it doesn’t change the reality.”
“I know,” she croaked. Tears clustered in her long, dark lashes. She blinked them away, curling further into me. “What are we going to do?”
“I think … we should go through with it. If you’ll have me.”
Her eyes opened again, and she shook her head. “You don’twantthis.” She pulled away from me, dropping her glass on the table and running her hands back through her hair. “I could never ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask,” I reminded her.
“No, but …”
“In fact, I offered.”
“Gavin …”
“Hey,” I said, tilting her chin back toward me, “look at me.” Her eyes lifted to mine, and she froze under my gaze. “I don’t think it’s a mystery that I like you, Whitley. I liked you three years ago when we were together and when you left for California. I respected your wishes, which was to leave, but we’re in a different place than we were then. The wedding doesn’t have to be real. None of this has to be real, if you don’t want it to be. But … it’s real to me. What we’re doing here is real to me.”
She swallowed down terror. “It can’t be real.”
“Why not?” I demanded. “Why can’t we at least try?”
She jerked to her feet and put her hands around her stomach. “Because I like you,” she admitted with such force that I thought it might shake the windows.
“So?”
The fact that she’d even admitted that much must have cost her. Whitley always kept her own counsel. She always had her own rules. Rules that protected her from the sort of heartbreak that could really be possible here if she let herself be more than just the bad girlfriend she’d written herself as.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
I was taken aback by that. Never in all of this had I considered that Whitley would fear hurtingme. I had thought all of her fears resided over the fact that she didn’t want to be hurt. That she ran to escape the possibility that she would give her heart to someone. She’d always held it so close, never quite making herself vulnerable enough.
I rose to my feet and took an easy step toward her. “And here I thought, you were worried about me hurtingyou.”
She scoffed. “No. I’m the one who leaves, Gavin.”
“In my relationships, Whitley, I’m the one who leaves.”
We stared at each other in the space of those confessions. We were the same. We’d been the same for so long. It was why we’d been the perfect wingman for one another and effortless friends. It was why soaring over that line had felt as easy as breathing. And why this wedding would be equally as simple, if she gave in to it.
“Why did you really leave?” I asked.
“Because I liked you … and I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Did you ever think thatleavingwould hurt me?”
“No. I … I didn’t want to tear friends apart, and I … didn’t want to like you.”
“Why not?” I asked, dragging a finger down her jaw.
“I told you, I’m going to hurt you.”
