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Josh blanched. They danced without talking for several moments. When the song was over, Lily turned to leave, but Josh held on to her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You deserve to be treated a lot better than I treated you, and I want to apologize. That’s me being honest with you.”
She weighed his words for a moment, but all she could find in them was sincerity. “Thank you, Josh. Ann-Elizabeth seems like a nice girl. Good luck to the two of you. I hope you’ll treat her right.”
He smiled as he let go of her hand and she turned and walked away.
Cullen was waiting for her on the edge of the dance floor.
“Whose side are you on?” she whispered when she reached him.
“Your side, of course.” He smiled a knowing smile. “It’s important to take care of unfinished business.”
Lily shrugged.
“Closure is important,” he said. “Take it from someone who knows. Because you can’t move on until you settled your past.”
“Spoken like a man who knows what he’s talking about.”
Cullen nodded. “Are you ready to move on?”
There was more to that question than face value suggested. Lily took a moment before answering to search her heart. Was she ready to move on?
There were different reasons that a person might stay stuck in the past. You could harbor hopes of getting back together and miss out on life while holding out for a chance to be reunited.
She could also hold out because she was deluding herself, which was what she’d been doing with Josh.
She didn’t want him.
No. No, she didn’t. Ann-Elizabeth, bless her heart, could have him. Lily just hoped that Josh was honest with her and didn’t put her through the same misery he’d put her through. “You have no idea just how ready I am,” she said.
Cullen leaned in and kissed her. His lips lingered long enough to entice her to lean in for more, as he ran a strong hand up her back.
When they broke apart, she saw Josh standing there watching her with a look on his face that suggested he wasn’t entirely happy witnessing the scene. Poor Ann-Elizabeth, Josh’s perfect debutante, was watching her beloved fiancé watch Lily, with an uncertain look that Lily was all too familiar with.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here,” Lily said, feeling free and cleansed of Josh for the first time since he’d broken her heart.
Cullen put his arm around her and pulled her in close as they walked out of the ballroom.
* * *
They didn’t talk on the way back to Cullen’s house. Yet it was an emotionally charged silence. They both knew what was going to happen when they got home. The girls were staying at Sydney’s, and George was at a sleepover at the home of one of Cullen’s colleagues who had a son George’s age. The boys had become fast friends after Lily had invited the boy over for a playdate. It was like a breath of fresh air to see George so happy after the basketball-camp fiasco.
It was just the two of them tonight. It was the first time they’d been alone for any significant amount of time without having to worry that the kids were going to pop in.
God knew they couldn’t keep their hands off each other when they were pressed for time.
So, yeah, they knew what would happen next. It was as inevitable as the sun rising in the east that she’d wake up in his bed tomorrow morning.
Knowing that—and they both knew it—the twenty-minute drive from Dallas back to Celebration could’ve been a cooling-off period for either of them. A chance to realize this was a mistake. But it wasn’t.
Lily refused to allow words—small talk, or big important declarations of love, or lack thereof—to talk them out of what had been inevitable since the first time they’d laid eyes on each other.
When Cullen put his hand on her knee and sensually slid it up—higher, higher—and when he would lean over and plant kisses on her lips at a stoplight and trail kisses down her neck at stop signs, she knew he, too, refused to let words get in the way.
The silence broken only by the kisses and the feel of his hand, which had found its way under her gown and had taken possession of her thigh, heightened the anticipation of what was to come.
Finally he steered the car into the driveway and they were alone in the house. Just the two of them. In the foyer, it was silent except for the distant strains of the Christmas carols playing on the radio that they always left on these days. The large wooden front door was the only thing between them and the outside world.
