Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
“I think … we should go through with it. If you’ll have me.”
Her eyes opened again, and she shook her head. “You don’t want this.” 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 hurting me. 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 hurting you.”
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 that leaving would 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.”
“You don’t have to be scared.”
She laughed, slightly hysterical. “I’m not scared.” But I could see that was a lie. She was terrified. She was petrified to let her guard down and find that she actually enjoyed what we were doing here. “All liking someone has ever gotten me is heartbreak. I’m the bad girlfriend, remember?”
“Why don’t we put the labels aside? We’re good together. You’ve seen that for the last week. It was easy with my family because we’re easy, Whit.”
“We … we are.”
The admission felt like a balm. “I’m not asking you to marry me.” Yet. The word was left unsaid as I stared down into her wide, frightened eyes. “I’m asking you to see how this goes while we do the right thing by your dad.”
“You really mean it?”
“It’s your father’s dying wish, Whitley. It seems cruel to deny him that.”
She nodded once, folding herself against my chest. I wrapped her tight against me, and it was the most incredible feeling. I wanted to hold her like this for eternity. She sniffled against me, and I brushed a kiss on the top of her head.
“We’ll figure this out together, pixie.”
18
WHITLEY
The next morning, I woke in a big, comfy bed. Gavin’s bed. I rolled over and found the other side of the California king empty. The shower was running in the next room. The man showered more than anyone else I knew.
I sank back down into the plush mattress and tugged the comforter up to my chin. I was in one of Gavin’s oversize T-shirts. Nothing had happened. I’d fallen asleep in his bed, and nothing had happened. Well, I’d cried a lot, and he’d held me, stroking my hair, without complaint. I didn’t know what to make of that.
Or the conversation we’d had last night.
Or my dad’s diagnosis.
It was the first time that I’d ever been furious that I had chosen plastic surgery instead of something more helpful … like oncology. I could have been curing cancer this entire time. Not that I’d ever wanted to, but that seemed irrational at this present moment.