Ninety-Eight (Contemporary Romance)

by Shannon Mayer

  I made my way to her side, determined to right this. “Celia, please tell me you ran this menu by Mr. and Mrs. Babcock before you just arranged this dinner? Robert has a heart condition, you can’t spring things like this on him.”

  Frank leaned close, his cologne overpowering my nose. “This is their one contribution, surely they aren’t complaining?”

  I ignored him, my spine stiffening. “Celia, you didn’t answer me.”

  By her face and the way she wouldn’t look me in the eye, I had my answer.

  “That is a dirty trick; you can’t just book a restaurant, fill it with your friends and then expect them to pay. That is low,” I said, standing up straight. Or at least I tried to.

  Frank grabbed my arm behind Celia’s back and pulled me back down, his eyes glittering with suppressed anger. “Don’t you talk to your mother like that.”

  “Let go of me, Frank.” I glared at him and then there was another hand on Frank’s.

  “Let her go.”

  Darwin had come to my rescue, all but ripping Frank’s hand from my wrist. Frank glared at us both, his eyes darting between us, but I knew he wouldn’t do anything, not with all these people here. Not with Celia starting to turn around. I stepped back and looked over to Victor’s parents. Mostly so Frank wouldn’t try to read me, something he was so good at and I knew, I just knew, that he would see something between me and Darwin. And then he’d exploit it.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Brielle?” Frank’s voice slid to his smooth and deadly tones, ones I knew too well. I took a deep breath. Screw it.

  “No, I’m not. I have to go and make right the very large wrong my mother has created.” I strode away from them, knowing Darwin could take care of himself.

  I made my way to my almost in-laws and crouched beside them. “Hey, I just wanted to come over here and let you know that you aren’t going to be paying for the whole dinner.”

  Victor’s mother, Grace, put a hand to her chest. “Oh, my dear. Thank you, I was feeling just sick seeing all these people and thinking we were paying—”

  Robert, his father, put a hand on his wife’s shoulder and smiled down at me, some color returning to his cheeks. “Thank you, Brielle, for letting us know. That would have been embarrassing if we’d had to try and pay for the full meal.”

  I smiled back, grateful at least that my in-laws were sweethearts. “No problem, thank you for everything you’re doing to help with the wedding, I appreciate it so much.”

  Grace reached out and cupped my cheek. “Victor is a very lucky boy, we couldn’t be happier to welcome you into our family.”

  My guts lurched and I don’t know what I said, only knew that I had to go somewhere else, anywhere else. Anywhere that wasn’t where people thought I was a happy, blushing bride.

  The hearty dinner and fluffy mousse were about to make a re-appearance, much to my horror. Doing the best I could not to scramble, I all but ran for the bathrooms. Gasps went up around the room, following me into the bathroom. I made it just in time, spewing my dinner into the first open stall toilet.

  Two sets of footsteps echoed into the bathroom after me and I pushed the stall door shut, locking it behind me.

  “Darling, did you eat something off? I won’t have you sick the night before your wedding.” Celia’s bright blue heels peeked at me from under the stall door.

  “I just need a minute.”

  “Do you want me to get you something to drink? If it’s the food, I need to tell the chef right away, so he can at least come and apologize to you. Can you imagine food poisoning the night before your wedding? What a horror!”

  “One can only hope,” I muttered, a hand braced on either side of the stall.

  “What did you say?” Celia gasped, and I could just see her placing a hand over her throat, clutching at herself.

  “She said, she could only hope to get food poisoning.” Penny’s voice rang out through the bathroom and if I thought Celia had gasped before, it was nothing to the sharp intake of air the second time around.

  “How dare you! Get out of here—you have always been a terrible influence on Brielle. Get out, get out right now!”

  I opened the stall door, startling my mom. “Stop it, just fucking stop it. Go back to the guests. I just need a few minutes.” A boom of thunder overhead punctuated my words, and the lights in the bathroom flickered.

  Celia stared at me, her eyes so like mine, but they were as wide as saucers. “You would use that kind of language with me?”

  “Get out. I need a minute. Don’t make me ask you again.” I was shaking, the fear and panic, the confusion and the heartache whirling through me, raging like the weather outside.

  Celia gave me a nod, her eyes going cold. “Fine. But if you don’t come out in ten minutes, I will send Victor in for you.” Was she really going to use Victor as a threat?

  She spun, her heels clacking on the floor, but before the door swung shut behind her, I said, “And you and Frank are paying for half of the meal tonight. Since you invited all your friends. Or you can ask your friends to pay for themselves—I really don’t care which. But Victor’s parents are not paying for this whole night.”

  Her back stiffened, but she didn’t answer me, just stalked out, the door finally shutting softly behind her. Penny walked to the sink and yanked out what looked to be a yard of paper towel, and ran it under the water. Without a word, she handed it to me and I pressed the sodden towel to my face, and then wiped the back of my neck. “Thanks.”

  “You’re a fool if you marry him. You know that, right?”

  God, I was so tired of everyone telling me what to do. But I wasn’t exactly a stellar example of making a choice on my own. For years, I’d lived by my Nana’s creed, to be safe, to be good, to never stray.

  Then I’d done my best to live up to my parents’ expectations, to never rebel, to never embarrass them. I’d even tried to make Frank proud for a while, till I realized that he was intent on ruining mine and my mother’s relationship.

  Then for Victor … I’d let him make decisions for me, without ever really questioning them. Because I didn’t want to disappoint anyone, because I didn’t want to let them—my parents, my nana, Victor—down.

  “We aren’t even having a honeymoon now. Vic got called into the new office. He has to be there the day after the wedding,” I said into the towel.

  “Are you shitting me?” Penny groaned. “I know you, Brielle. You are not this person, this girl who just sits back and lets things happen. I saw a glimpse of her just now, telling her mother off, and for good reason, but she’s gone again. I remember the girl who fought to get to the top of the trees before the boys. The girl who went skinny dipping with me when she turned fifteen. Where is that girl, what happened to her?”

  I pressed the towel to my eyes, blacked out the world for split second. I’d made a spectacle of myself, running out of the room like that. The thing was, it had been so long since I’d done anything but what everyone else wanted, I wasn’t sure I had it in me. To break the rules, to step out and take control of my life.

  “Can you see if the party is breaking up?” My voice was muffled in the towel, but she heard me.

  “Yeah, sure.” Her footsteps faded and the creak of the door whispered her passing.

  Dropping the towel into the garbage, I stared into the mirror, the lights flickering again.

  “Yeah, they’re being ushered out, and it looks like your mom is making her friends pay for themselves at least. Though Frank isn’t happy about it.” She laughed, as she turned around and took a step toward me. The room lit up with a bolt of lightning that illuminated the startled look on Penny’s face before the lights went out and we were in pretty much complete and total darkness.

  “Crap,” I muttered, my eyes watering from the bright flash. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see that we weren’t totally in the dark—there were a few windows that let in light from the night outside.

  “Here, take my hand.
” Penny’s hand smacked into my stomach and I grabbed it.

  “Blind leading the blind?”

  She snickered. “Just like always.”

  With only a few small, frosted windows, there wasn’t much light at all, and we took our time to work our way along the edge of the room, toward where we thought the door was, no more words spoken between us. The only sound besides our breathing was the occasional boom of thunder and the constant drumming of rain on the restaurant roof.

  Once back out in the main room, the going was easier. Candles had been lit and the restaurant was empty of not only the wedding reception, but all the other patrons too.

  Except for Darwin. He stood at the front door, a flashlight in his hand. Even in the dim light, I knew it was him. My heart knew it was him.

  I pulled myself together. “Where is Victor?”

  “He left, said you were going to stay with Penny tonight, last night of being a bachelorette.” Just the sound of his voice eased the tension in my muscles, the fear in my heart.

  Penny twisted out of my hands. “Oh, no, she can’t come with me. I’m going to Beau’s house tonight.” She winked at me. We both knew there was no ‘Beau,’ but she just kept on talking. “But you have a key to my place since I’m staying with him.” She pushed me hard, forcing Darwin to catch me.

  His arm slipped around my waist, his hand curling against my hip.

  Penny flaunted past him. “Think you can give her a ride home, Darwin?”

  He didn’t let me go, didn’t let the space between us rise up like so many times before. “Sure. I can give her a ride.”

  You’ll miss out on the ride of your life. He didn’t say those words, but he’d said them once before, and the memory set my heart to galloping out of control.

  In a flash of lightning, Penny was gone and we were left standing there, in the restaurant. “Where’s Fiona?”

  “She wanted to talk to your mom about renewing our wedding vows with a full-on ceremony. So she got a ride with your parents.”

  “And you stayed.”

  He looked down at me, a soft smile playing on his lips. I reached up and touched his dimple, knowing the ground we tread was beyond dangerous. It had the power to tear apart multiple lives, to break up marriages … to give me the one person I wanted with all my heart.

  The manager came up behind us, clapping his hands, and I dropped my hand from Darwin’s face, heat flushing up my neck.

  “Everyone must leave; I’m sorry, I know the weather is terrible, but you must go.” He made a shooing motion with his hands.

  Darwin’s hand slid over my hip, and took my hand in his. “You ready to run?”

  I nodded, biting my bottom lip. His words invoked something in me, a desire to run away.

  With him—as far as we could go and then farther. To throw caution to the wind and let the storm drive us where it would.

  Running out of the restaurant, the rain soaked us in seconds, our clothes clinging to us as we leapt into the Chevy.

  “Here,” He slammed his door and reached behind the seat, handing me a towel. “I always have one, for emergencies.”

  I took it, drying my face and arms, and handing it back to him. “Thanks.”

  “Are we going to talk about this?”

  His words caught me off guard. “About what?”

  With a twist, he cranked the key and the engine rolled over smoothly. “About us.”

  If I thought my heart had been pounding before, it was nothing to what happened inside my chest now.

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  He snorted. “You’re telling me that you don’t feel anything but friendship, that there is no spark between us? That you didn’t want me to kiss you under the sycamore tree? That all the time we’ve spent together means nothing to you?”

  Oh shit. My body responded to his words, traitor that it was. I could do this; I could face this head on.

  “You’re a married man, Darwin, and I’m getting married tomorrow. There is no ‘us.’ There can’t be. You know that.”

  As he pulled onto the highway, he reached across and took my hand. “All right, if this is the last time I’m going to see you, then sit next to me. Please.”

  My heart squeezed and expanded in my chest at the same time, as if trying to stop the blood flow in my body. Because if I could stop that, then the pain of what could never be arching through my soul, piercing me straight through wouldn’t be felt so keenly. I slid across the seat, buckling into the middle seatbelt. He draped his arm across my shoulder and I put a hand on his leg, his muscles tensing under my hand. This was it; I was moving away, we couldn’t even pretend to be friends after this. Not that we were ever really friends, there had been something more right from the beginning, something I still didn’t understand. How was it possible? Nana had been wrong; you could find someone who was more than 60%, or even Victor’s staggering 65%.

  I lay my head on his shoulder, breathing in his smell, the feel of his body even through our clothes, a memory I wanted to hang onto for the rest of my life.

  His mouth moved against my hair. “The school I got accepted to. It’s in Indianapolis.”

  I closed my eyes, a mixture of excitement, relief, shame and yet more pain streaking through me. I lifted my head, to look him in the eyes.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t let you go, Brielle. I’ve tried. Hell, that month, after the dinner—” His hand slipped up to my neck, fingers caressing my skin sending waves of pleasure straight through me, my body reacting as if he were the first to ever touch me. As if my skin had never known another’s touch.

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about you marrying Vic. You’re right, he is a good guy, there’s nothing really wrong with him. But he isn’t good enough for you. He doesn’t treat you the way he should.”

  I bit back the words that were spilling up in me. So many things that I just couldn’t say. Like how safe I was with him, how he’d been the only one besides Penny to believe me about Frank, how every little imperfection in him only made me love him more.

  We pulled up to Penny’s apartment and Darwin turned the truck off, but left the radio playing.

  Unchained Melody floated through the truck, just loud enough that I could pick out the words between the pounding of the rain on the roof of the cab and the rolls of thunder that rippled through the air. None of it could compete with the hammering of my heart as Darwin slid closer to me, one arm going around my waist, the other around my shoulders, as he pressed his forehead against mine.

  “I don’t know what to do, Brielle. I’ve never felt like this … about anyone.”

  I lifted my hands to his cheeks, holding him with a soft touch that barely skimmed along his skin. “You aren’t that man, Darwin, you aren’t the man that runs around on his wife. And I’m not the girl who carries on an affair with a married man. This isn’t right, not for either of us. Not like this. We’ve been playing with fire, and we both knew it. We should have stopped this long ago.”

  His hands stilled on my waist. “What are you saying?”

  “We just aren’t meant to be. You and Fiona, she could be pregnant right now, you’ll be a family; I can’t take that away from you. And Victor, he loves me. How many lives—” I couldn’t stop the hitch in my voice, the sob curling its way up my throat. “How many lives would we destroy, for something we can’t even say, for something that should be beautiful, but could become so ugly for the damage it would do? How could we be together with that weighing over us?”

  He shook his head, his hands tightening on me. “I love you, Brielle. There isn’t much else to understand but that. And love is never ugly. We could get through this. I know we could.”

  “We have to let go of each other.” That was the truth, and I hated that it was the right thing. Hated that in the end, I would always do the right thing. That’s just who I was; Penny was wrong, the girl I had been was never coming back. I finally, painfully, lifted my eyes to his. “We have to say goodbye, the
re are too many other people, too many other hearts to be broken for this to be okay. I can’t see you in Indianapolis. It would be too hard.”

  He pressed his forehead to mine again, so close, and yet so far away. How could I never see him again? How could I live knowing he slept somewhere not at my side? Yet my head kept telling me the truth.

  Look at the hurt and heartache you’re feeling now, and this is without him being in your arms. Without him in your bed. Stick with the safe bet; do the right thing. Victor will never hurt you like this. Nothing Victor could ever do would be as painful as this.

  “Just give me one thing,” Darwin said, his eyes never leaving mine, searing into me, stealing what was left of my heart, though I would have given it gladly to him. “Kiss me goodbye.”

  The tears were free falling from both of us, as he cupped my face, his thumbs rubbing across my cheekbones, sweeping the tears away. “I just want to be able to look back, to say that I had this moment, with the most amazing person I’ve ever known. To be able to remember this … to remember you in my arms, just one time.”

  I tried to smile, I did, but my lips trembled too hard. He bent his head, brushed his lips against mine, our breath mingling as the storm raged outside.

  A bolt of lightning cracked over our heads, but Darwin didn’t rush, didn’t try to hurry the moment.

  The gentle pressure of his hands, the feel of his skin as I slid my fingers up under his shirt, and then the taste of him as he took my mouth fully.

  An intense longing I’d never experienced rocked through me, and I found myself crawling onto his lap, whispering his name over and over between the kisses I scattered over his face. The need to be close to him overcoming any good sense left in me.

  Tongues caressed, tears fell, an overwhelming heat rolled between us, a raging fire I grasped at as the world tried to put the flames out. Muscles trembled, voices cracked on whispered promises we both knew would be broken as the world seemed to pause, and hover over us for those few moments; giving us the chance to say goodbye.

  His hands were under my shirt, stroking along the length of my spine and the heat shifted; I lifted my hand, sliding a finger between our mouths, pressing it against the moisture of his lips. “Stop, Darwin, we have to stop.”