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When he cracks the box open and the lid lifts, the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen sparkles before my eyes. A clustered starburst of smaller diamonds halo around a classic oval-shaped diamond in the center.
He takes my hand, and the tears build to a swell.
“Bridget Hayes.” My hands are shaking in his. “Will you marry me?”
I steal this moment for myself. Memorizing every word from his mouth. Every fleck of gold in his eyes. That incredible smile—the one that makes me ache. I imagine a life with him, getting married, going on a honeymoon, and making love from sunrise to sunset. Starting a family. Watching him become a father. Teaching his kids to skate. I think of the fights and the make-up sex. The good and the bad. Seeing him spend the rest of his life loving the woman of his dreams. I want all of that for him with every part of me, but I can’t offer him that.
Selfishly, I don’t regret spending so much time together and falling in love with him—these have been some of the happiest weeks of my life—but he’s doing a service to my family by asking to marry me.I won’t let your family lose you.
I look into the eyes of the man that holds my heart. Within my motionless body, I’m imploding. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say no to, because I do want it. But not for the same reasons he does. I retract my hands, wrapping my arms around my stomach.
“No.”
His eyebrows raise and he blinks.
“No?”
“I’m so sorry.” The tears swell until a warm drop spills down my cheek. I wipe it away before it reaches my chin. “I can’t let you do that.”
His forearms drop to rest on his knee as his head falls between his shoulders.
The silence is suffocating.
It feels like an eternity until he stands. When he does, his unwavering stare is dull, lacking emotion. I would rather he glare than regard me with apathy. Everything tells me to look away, but he doesn’t deserve that from me. And I don’t deserve him.
“I’ve stopped you once, I’ll do whatever it takes to stop you again.”
There it is.I feel sick. This proposal is his “whatever it takes.”
“What do you mean ‘you stopped me once’?”
Silence.
“I leaked the story to the press.”
“Youwhat?”
“I heard you talk to Micky on the phone about going back to Vancouver. You said you were moving back. I figured if the press got involved you would have to lay low for a while.”
“And how convenient that you had a place for me to live, right? So, all of this has been set up by you. Were my parents in on it too?”
“No. They didn’t know. It was something I did,” he rumbles.
I’m so stupid.
Is this what everyone came up with for their grand plan to “keep me”? They thought we could have some kind of Green-Card wedding? Whatever it takes to make the paperwork appear legit, right? Like when Julianne kept me. I was a placeholder for someone else. Existing only to look good on paper.
What if I had said yes? I can’t even imagine how painful his rejection would be after he realized he made a mistake—I’d never recover. This was never his long-term plan, it’s another temporary solution. How temporary is his love? How long did he think he could do this? Eventually he would meet someone he truly wanted to spend his life with and I would have to step aside. I’d rather go back to Canada than go through that pain. Luckily, I don’t have to.
“I got a call this morning,” I begin, swallowing my tears. “My social security paperwork came through.”
“What?” he sneers.
The anger he has toward me says it all,why the hell did you make me go through all this work for nothing?
Pressure builds all around us.
“I was hoping to tell you tonight after you got home. But now...”
