Diary of a Wedding Planner in Love (Tales Behind the Veils Book 2)

by Howe, Violet

  Tonight I wanted to do all I could to make him okay. Knowing the entire time I had another bombshell to drop on the poor guy. Galen and Maggie weren't the only ones who had betrayed him. I hadn't meant to, but I wasn't sure he would see it that way.

  Tuesday, March 11th

  And just like that, it's over.

  We’d talked a bit longer last night, and then I took a shower. When I got out, my bedroom was bathed in candlelight. Cabe took me by the hand and led me to the bed. With a touch so gentle it seemed he thought I may break, he began to kiss me. His lips barely grazed my skin as he moved across my forehead and down my jaw, pausing to nibble on my ear lobe before continuing his feather kisses down the side of my neck. He paused for a moment in the hollow at the base of my throat before crossing to the other side to trace the outer rim of my ear with his tongue, his voice barely a whisper.

  “You’re so beautiful, Ty.”

  I shivered as he kissed along each shoulder and down each arm, pausing to take each of my fingers in his mouth before coming back up to my neck again. A quiver shot through me as he opened my towel and let it drop to the floor. He lowered his head to linger on each breast, nibbling and kissing, tasting and tugging. I whimpered softly in protest when the warmth of his mouth disappeared, but he only left long enough to ease me onto my back across the bed before returning his lips to my skin, kissing his way across my ribs and over my stomach.

  I was disappointed for a moment when he bypassed the part of me that most wanted to be kissed, but then he took my breath away trailing kisses down the soft flesh inside my thigh and flicking his tongue along the inside of my knee. I reached for him, but my hands came up empty as he continued his journey down my calf, caressing my ankle with his tongue before his lips tickled across the top of my foot and each toe.

  By the time he made his way back up my other leg and reached my inner thighs again, I thought I would truly go mad if he didn't give my body the release it was screaming for. It was worth the wait. His tongue was every bit as wonderful as I remembered, perhaps even more so.

  He cradled me in his arms afterward, stroking my hair and whispering as he kissed me.

  “I’m so sorry about Paris. About your birthday. Valentine’s. Hell, everything. I’m gonna make it up to you. I swear I will.”

  I started to lift my head, to tell him he didn’t have to make anything up, but he stopped me.

  “Sshh. Just sleep, baby. Just let me hold you in my arms and be thankful for you. Go to sleep.”

  He kissed the top of head, and I snuggled into him. We stayed that way the whole night. He never let go of me, even as he murmured and fretted in his sleep.

  I couldn't stop thinking about him all day. His childhood issues had to factor into his reluctance to commit. If he felt like he could be abandoned or betrayed again, naturally that would affect his ability to be all in. Was he scared he would be like his father and leave? Or worried I would leave him? Betray him? Like Monica? I felt like I'd been given a hugely important piece of information, but it only led to more questions. Key pieces of the puzzle were missing.

  I drove home from work determined to talk through whatever else he was feeling and get to the bottom of the disconnect. In order for us to make it, I'd have to understand what was going on in his head. Scary or not. I mean, hell, we were both scared. Better to face it together, right?

  I pushed all thoughts of confessing about Jack to the background. We had more imminent issues to deal with, and it wouldn't help Cabe for me to tell him now on top of everything else he was dealing with.

  He was still at my place when I got home, in the kitchen making dinner for the two of us. He seemed to be in better spirits than last night, and though I hated to bring up more serious stuff, I knew I needed answers. I needed to understand how his past and his fear of commitment might be holding us back. I had promised myself in Paris I would start standing up and speaking up. No time like the present.

  Cabe cleared the table while I gathered dishes to set it. My satchel wasn't latched all the way, and when he picked it up, the flap came open and spilled the contents. He grabbed the paperwork and slid it back inside but lingered on the photo developing envelope.

  "These your Paris pictures?" He hesitated a bit when he asked, like he wasn't sure he wanted to know. I hesitated, too. Froze is more like it. When I picked them up at lunch today, I figured I would weed out the pictures of Jack before showing the others to Cabe. Which I hadn't had time to do yet.

  "Yeah." I reached to take them from him, but he pulled his arm back.

  "Wait a minute. I wanna see."

  I shook my head and reached for them again. "Nah. Let's just eat before it gets cold. We can look at those later." After I went through and removed any incriminating shots of Jack.

  "Let's look over dinner," Cabe said, holding the envelope firmly in his hand. For a split second, I wondered if he somehow knew about Jack and meant to trap me. I don't know how he would, but my guilty conscience kicked into overtime.

  "So let's see 'em," he said as soon as we were seated. "Show me what you saw, and I'll let you know if it's someplace I've been."

  My appetite disappeared completely, and my heart nearly turned inside out. Here he was, being all gallant and giving. I knew it must be bittersweet for him that I'd gone without him, especially since it was his own fault. I appreciated his interest in the photos, but I knew he wouldn't be too happy about what had transpired there.

  The first few pictures were fine. They were taken Friday when I was still alone. Cabe looked carefully at each one, sharing his own experiences and questions as we went, complimenting my artistic eye and the quality of the shots. The first photo of Jack was taken at the top of Notre Dame. We'd asked a stranger to snap one of us together.

  "Who's this?" Cabe asked.

  I so didn't want to be one more nail in the betrayal coffin. Monica. His sister. His mother. His father. How much should one man have to take? But I couldn't lie to him. I wouldn't.

  "That's Jack," I said. "A friend I met in Paris."

  "You met a friend? You didn't mention that."

  I tore off a piece of bread and put it in my mouth, then had to chew it and swallow before I could speak. "We haven't really talked much about the trip. We've been caught up in other conversations."

  He continued to flip through the photos, skipping past tons of scenery and landscape shots to pause and linger on any photo of Jack. I cringed. Jack in St. Michel. Jack at the Rodin mimicking The Thinker. Another during our picnic lunch with Jack smiling as he sat on his coat, surrounded by food and wine with the tower in the background. One together at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and another on the river cruise, taken with the captain. Jack standing in the window of my room. Jack smiling at me as he ate a crepe at the cafe Sunday afternoon.

  Cabe flipped through them rapid-fire, no longer even focusing on the photos. When he had finished, he slammed the stack down on the table and looked at me, accusation strong in his eyes.

  "A friend? You met a friend in Paris? A friend you spent the whole weekend with?"

  I felt busted. No words sprang forth in explanation or defense. I had nothing.

  He picked up the photos and flipped back to the hotel shot. "Please tell me this isn't your hotel room. Our hotel room."

  "It's not what it looks like, Cabe." But wasn't it?

  "Then tell me what it is, Tyler. Because I booked the reservation online, and I could have sworn this is the brick wall and orange curtains from our hotel room."

  I hated him calling it our hotel room when he hadn't made the trip, but it was a technicality and I knew it. He had booked it. It was ours. And I had brought another man into it.

  "Look, Cabe. I met this guy at the airport and then ran into him again at the Eiffel Tower. We just sort of clicked and hung out. He was alone, and I was alone, so we just kind of banded together." I refrained from adding in my defense that I was alone because Cabe had stormed off at the airport and gotten himself detained by securit
y and arrested.

  He took a long drink of his iced tea and wiped his mouth with his napkin before he spoke again. His voice cracked with a slight tremor, and his eyes blazed as they met mine.

  "Did you sleep with him?"

  "Why is that always a guy's first question? Do you think a girl can't meet someone and hang out without sleeping with him? You think I'm the type of person who would just meet some total stranger in Paris and go to bed with him?" My cheeks flushed hot with shame as I said it, knowing full well even though Jack and I had gotten nowhere near having sex, we'd certainly shared quite a few passionate kisses.

  "You didn't answer the question, Tyler." Cabe's words were like barbed steel cutting through me as his eyes glistened cold and hard.

  "No, Cabe. I didn't sleep with him." But I'd definitely been attracted to Jack. Wasn't that enough?

  He looked away from me and stood to clear his untouched meal. I felt defensive. I felt ashamed. I wanted to lash out at him for putting me in that crazy situation and then judging me for how I dealt with it.

  "Might I remind you," I asked, "that I wouldn't have been alone in Paris if you had simply communicated with me about all the crap going on with your family? If you had just told me why you were wigging out, none of this would have happened. You chose to walk away from me that day. You chose to let me get on the plane alone."

  He slammed his plate into my sink. "Bullshit! I did everything I could to get back to you. I went to jail trying to get back to you!"

  I stood and matched his volume. "But if you hadn't walked away, if you'd just talked to me, then there wouldn't have been a need for you to go to jail. I went to Paris alone because you couldn't let me in, Cabe."

  "So you just run into the arms of the first man you meet? You're actually saying it's my fault you hooked up with someone else while I sat my ass in a jail cell trying to figure out how to get back to you?"

  "What do you care? As you so easily conveyed to the guy in the dance club, we're not dating! We're just friends!" I screamed so loud I'm surprised my neighbors didn't call the cops. I didn't care, though. Every emotion of the Cabe-Tyler roller coaster had come roaring down around me, and the adrenaline of it coursed through me like wildfire.

  "You're right," he said with a calmness that gave me chills. "We're not dating. You can be with whomever you choose."

  I went to him and put my hands on either side of his face. "I choose you, Cabe. I want to be with you."

  He pushed my hands away and crossed past me to the living room.

  I spun around and forced my voice to be quiet and calm. "So if we're not dating, then what is this? What are we doing?" I paused to give him time to answer, but he didn't. "I love you, Cabe. You know I do. I believe you love me, too."

  Still no response. He stood facing the sliding door again in a silence so deafening I wished he would yell and scream. The air in the room felt heavy. Too heavy to breathe. Like my lungs were working twice as hard with minimum results.

  "Cabe? Do you love me?"

  He turned slowly, his face strained. His shoulders slumped. He looked utterly defeated. His eyes lifted to meet mine and held there.

  "I don't know."

  We both stood in the heavy silence for a moment as I unpacked what he had said.

  He didn't know.

  He did not know if he loved me.

  The words hit me like a hammer with a sharply-honed edge that pierced my heart and took my breath away.

  I think I always thought if I ever got the courage to ask, he'd have no choice but to tell me the truth. Except I'd believed the truth was he loved me. What if that was my truth, but not his? That would explain everything, wouldn't it?

  My breath caught in my throat as I opened my mouth to speak. I swallowed hard and tried again, forcing the air past the constrictions that choked me.

  "Then go, and don't come back until you know. I can't do this anymore, Cabe. I can't be your everything one day and your nothing special the next. I can't stand for my body to burn like a fire when you kiss me and touch me, and then starve from the lack of it when you won't. To suffer the consequences of what's going on in your life without being allowed to be privy to it. You either love me or you don't. We either go all in or we don't. You need to figure it out. This hurts."

  I walked to the door and pulled it open with shaking hands.

  "I want all of you, Cabe. If you can't give me that, then I'm better off alone."

  His eyes never looked away from me as he grabbed his coat and his keys. He paused at the door, his face just inches from mine. My mind screamed and pleaded with me to tell him to stay. To reach out and grab him, hold him, and never let him leave. To kiss him and make him realize what I meant to him.

  But if he couldn't give it freely, it would never work. He left without a word, and I collapsed on my floor in what has been an all too frequent occurrence. My heart disintegrating as it shattered yet again.

  Saturday, March 15th

  I don't know if I should be doing weddings in my current state of mind. Everything about them pisses me off. Everyone's gushing about how much in love they are. The bride and groom just can't wait to walk down the aisle into marital bliss. It's disgusting. It turns my stomach until I want to scream at them all. Their guests are all just stupid people who irritate the hell out of me.

  Today, we had bubbles for the staged exit. Little, tiny plastic bottles with just enough soapy solution to create a beautiful bubble-filled backdrop for the bride and groom's photos as they exit through their guests.

  As I stood there with my basket repeating my spiel to each guest telling them to line up on either side of the sidewalk to blow bubbles as the bride and groom leave, some freakin' idiot asked me if they were supposed to throw the bubbles.

  Like, I offered him the basket and said, "Please take a bottle of bubbles to blow as the bride and groom exit."

  And he looked back at me and earnestly asked, "Do we throw these?"

  It took everything I had in me not to answer, "Why, yes, sir. You just toss these here hard plastic bottles right at the bride and groom. In fact, we'll give you a free drink at the bar if you can peg the bride right between the eyes. And later, we're gonna pass out potato chips in baskets for no damned reason at all."

  WTF.

  Where do these people come from, and how do they navigate everyday life without killing themselves or others in their ignorance? I mean, really. You got yourself dressed, boarded a plane, made it from the airport to your hotel, then managed to get yourself here for the ceremony, but you have to ask me if I want you to throw something hard and plastic at the bride and groom? Are you kidding me?

  Laura put her arm around my shoulders as we walked to the car after the event and asked, "Wanna talk about it?"

  "Talk about what?"

  She shook her head and chuckled under her breath. "Let's go get a coffee."

  "I don't want a coffee," I said, stubbornly refusing to give up my armor of bitchiness. I knew if I let my guard down I would fall all to pieces, and I couldn't do that.

  "Then we'll get ice cream, but I'm not taking no for an answer."

  I explained the situation to her over a salted caramel sundae, and I marveled again at how easily I pour my heart out to my bosses. I really think I need to pony up for a good therapist. I tell my life story much too often to way too many people. Isn't that what this stupid diary is supposed to be for?

  "I just thought I'd finally found The One, and I'd be happy, you know? Happily ever after, they say."

  Laura nodded and licked her spoon. "Ah, the inherent fallacy of the fairy tale. Happily Ever After doesn't mean happy every day. They don't tell you that, do they?"

  "I know that. But it can't be the right thing if there's this much conflict. If it's this hard to make it work, then he must not be the one for me. Am I right?"

  She took another bite of ice cream and rolled the spoon on her tongue. "So, you think there's just one?"

  I thought about it for a moment befor
e I answered. "I don't guess. I don't know. I mean, I don't think there's one guy who'll ride in and fix it all. That's unrealistic, but I do believe if he's the right one, it will just click. Like you'll just know it. If I didn't know it for five years, then maybe I don't love him after all. And if he's been through all this with me and he doesn't know whether or not he loves me, then I must not be the one for him. Right?"

  "Hard to say. Sometimes it just doesn't work, even if you do love each other, and you have to cut your losses and walk away. I believe in soul mates, but I also believe you can love different people at different times of your life. Or even love the same person in different ways depending on where you're at in life. Take Henry and I. We started dating at seventeen and got married at eighteen. Young. Had our two boys, and then we split. We just couldn't make it work. Fighting all the time. Not agreeing on anything. We had gotten to the point where we had more contempt than anything else. I wasn't in love with him anymore, and I decided I couldn't stay a day longer. We divorced and spent two years apart."

  Ice cream dripped from my spoon and onto my hand as I stared at her, open-mouthed. "Wow! I never knew. I thought you guys were rock-solid."

  "We are, now. We both dated other people when we went our separate ways. We kept in touch, of course. Saw each other. We had two kids together so we had to. But I thought we were done. I guess our hearts weren't. Eventually we rekindled those flames smoldering somewhere down in there. Hotter and brighter than ever. When we remarried, we had a completely different relationship. I had changed so much. Him, too. We weren't the same people anymore. But our love grew stronger and more mature. We've been married fourteen years this time, and I can't imagine my life without him."

  "I'm stunned. I always looked at you guys like the perfect couple. I never would have guessed."

  "We're not perfect." She shook her head as she scraped the bottom of her ice cream bowl. "We have our rough spots here and there. Everybody does."