Life wasn’t about learning how to deflect the bad, but learning how to hunker down and weather it until it passed. I supposed . . . no, I knew, it was the same way with love.
“Just so I don’t hold my breath for too long”—Boone’s voice was quiet, almost unsure—“are you going to say anything? Eventually?”
“Maybe she doesn’t have anything to say to you besides good-bye and get lost.” Ford’s voice rang out behind us.
Neither of us bothered to acknowledge him.
“Thank you,” I said, smiling at the angel, feeling like the muggy Charleston air was dispersing and thinking about finally letting me breathe. “Thank you,” I repeated, louder since I wasn’t sure he’d heard me the first time.
“You’re welcome.” His shoulders relaxed as he ran his finger down a few of the cracks. “I figured since it was kind of my fault it broke, it was my job to fix it.”
“It wasn’t just your fault. I’m just as much to blame as you are.” I lowered the angel to my side and turned my attention to him. My hand found its way around the back of his neck. As I moved closer, so did he. Our bodies were connected, so close together they were one. “You were right, you know.”
“I was right about what?” His hands slid over the peaks of my hips, tying together at the small of my back.
I smiled at him. “Everything.”
Something gleamed in his eyes. “Everything?”
“Every.” I raised an eyebrow. “Thing.”
“Even the part about you feeling the same way about me? Even the part about me telling you—”
“I love you.” I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t look away. I didn’t blink or blush or squirm. I looked him right in the eye, stood my ground, and was confident I’d never been more certain of anything in my life.
“Clara Belle . . .” My dad’s voice rolled across the lawn, but before he could say anything else, I shook my head.
“I love you, Dad,” I said, looking over Boone’s shoulder at him, refusing to release my hold on Boone. “But no.”
“Clara, sweetheart, don’t—”
It was my mom’s worried eyes I locked onto next. Somewhere in the course of unearthing what had really gone wrong between Boone and me, I’d uncovered where my family and I’d seemed to go wrong. Both cases were chock full of good intentions gone horribly awry, bound together by an unending yarn of miscommunications. I found myself forgiving them as easily as I had Boone.
“Mom, I love you,” I said in the most soft, firm voice I was capable of, “but no.”
I couldn’t miss Charlotte bouncing in place, rattling like a volcano on the cusp of exploding. “But no, Mom. But no, Dad. But no. But no. But no?” She thrust her bouquet my direction. “What does that even mean, Clara Belle?”
Boone turned us a quarter turn, almost like he was trying to deflect Charlotte’s spite, but it was unnecessary. Along with my parents, I think I was finally understanding who Charlotte was, not just who she appeared to be. She wasn’t borderline vicious because she was just plain mean, but because she was plain scared. Scared of playing the middle child role her entire life, never measuring up to the firstborn and never being as infectious as the third. Scared of being alone and abandoned and discovering all she’d worked for had been for nothing. While I’d never quite fit in in this family, Charlotte had been the one desperately trying to.
I cleared my throat. This was her wedding day. Her day. Whatever Boone and I had to figure out, she didn’t deserve to be caught up in the middle of it today.
“It means I love you all, but please stop interfering in my life and just let me live it the way I want, with who I want to live it with,” I said.
For a long moment following that statement, my family stared at me. At me in The Thing. At me with Boone’s arms twined around me. Every moment that passed, another grain of acceptance sifted into their expressions.
It was my dad who cleared his throat and backed toward the driveway first, just as the line of limos arrived to take everyone to the church. “Clara Belle’s right. We all interfered enough the first time around. Let’s do our best not to this time.” As my dad backed away and looked at me, a rare smile formed. “So if you two make it or not this time, you’ll have no one but yourselves to thank or blame for it.”