Cassidy’s eyes burned into hers, begging, but she could only shake her head.
Their first meeting was a lie. His proposal had been a business move.
Their entire relationship was a lie.
“Emma, please—”
She turned on her heel, and did the only thing she could think of: She walked away. Walked out of the private room into the main area of the restaurant. Walked blindly past tables until she got to the reception desk, and then kept going.
Only when she stepped out of the restaurant did she halt, stopping to suck in the humid summer air in gasping breaths that didn’t quite help to clear her head, nor ease the ache in her chest, nor soothe the nausea in her stomach.
She heard the door of the restaurant slam shut behind her as someone joined her outside. Knew it was Cassidy.
And then she turned to face him.
She turned to end it.
SEVEN YEARS LATER
“Emma, you okay?” Grace asked, touching her arm softly.
Emma put a hand to her throat, blinking to reorient herself before sliding her palm over her pounding heart.
Mitchell’s father was still droning on, something about never going to bed angry, as Julie and Mitchell stood beside him, nodding and fake-smiling.
This wasn’t her dad giving a speech.
And this was New York, not North Carolina.
She was thirty-one, not twenty-four. She wasn’t the bride.
This wasn’t that night.
Emma smiled at a concerned Grace. “I’m okay,” she whispered. “Just…just a few bad memories.”
And then, because she had to, she turned her head until she found Cassidy. Found him watching her, just as he had been all those years ago.
And from the bleak expression on his face, she hadn’t been alone in her miserable walk down memory lane.
He’d been right there with her.
Chapter 19
Emma made it down the aisle at Julie’s wedding without looking at Cassidy even once. She kept her eyes on the pastor, a smile firmly in place, and concentrated on not slipping in her high heels.
The night before, she’d slipped up. At the rehearsal dinner, she let herself become self-absorbed, let the moment be about her.
It was a mistake that she wasn’t going to repeat on Julie’s wedding day.
Today she would be fully present as a bridesmaid.
As it turned out, she didn’t have to try that hard.
Because there was something stronger than memories: friendship.
Her friend was getting married.
No, friends, because Mitchell had become fiercely dear to Emma as well—her fellow introvert in a group full of chatty yappers.
And when Julie started down the aisle on her uncle’s arm, wearing her gorgeous A-line dress, adorned only with a satin sash crisscrossing Julie’s tiny waist, Emma felt it. That knot in her throat and a prick behind the eyes.
A quick glance at the dazed, smitten expression on Mitchell’s face when he saw Julie pushed Emma over the edge. She wasn’t much of a crier, generally speaking, but she put a hand over her mouth anyway lest a hiccupping sob of happiness sputter out.
Grace was standing in front of her and offered a tissue over her shoulder, which Emma happily accepted.
“God, I hate weddings,” Riley whispered from behind her, her voice also watery.
“Get it together. Julie will kill us if her entire bridal party is up here with mascara running down our faces,” Emma whispered, dabbing the corner of her eye.
“Good,” Riley hissed back. “Then I won’t feel as bad for wanting to kill her for making me wear beige.”
Julie had selected champagne-colored cocktail dresses for the bridesmaids, which Grace and Emma had deemed classy and lovely, but which Riley insisted washed her out. Julie had insisted that that had been, in fact, the point.
But Emma needn’t have worried about Julie catching sight of their happy, weepy faces.
Julie had eyes for only one person.
And he for her.