Runaway Groom

by Virginia Nelson

  But when his fingers cupped her heat, the alarms shut off pretty quick. Her body wanted him to keep going. Her mind refused to fall into that trap.

  She had to stop him. Fast.

  “Yeah, well, sex with you would be great and all, but we both know that I won’t have a chance to get off before you shoot your load.” She managed to get out between pants.

  He rose above her, expression unclear as he was silhouetted by the night sky. An uncomfortable moment passed when she was pretty sure he could see her clearly, but all she could see was that shadowed shape. She wanted nothing more right then, than the ability to pull back the words that hung in the air between them like some living thing, and never have said them.

  “You’re right, of course. I never treated you like you deserved, not back then. I’m sorry, Abby.”

  She did not want to get into a discussion about premature ejaculation with the ex who left her high and dry on their wedding day. But she had to remove the temptation of him. Drunk, she had no defenses against her fantasies of him, the feel of him, except for the words she could throw at him like knives. “Nothing has changed either. You are still stuck on what you want, what you need. Get off me, Braxton.”

  She found the verbal daggers in the cold dead part of her heart. The part he crushed. They were angry, hurt declarations, and since he’d been her best friend, she knew they were bullshit. Once they were out, she couldn’t take them back even as guilt washed over her.

  But the thing about knowing someone really well was she also knew what to say to hurt him. The barb hit home and he was on his feet in a second, pulling her to hers in the process.

  When he spoke, his voice was clipped and distant. “Fine. If that is how it’s going to be, fine. But we do need to talk. Even if you are too plastered to hear it right now, I still want that eventually.”

  “You still want, huh?” Yanking her arm free from his grip, she stumbled sideways. “How about this? I don’t want to talk to you, Braxton.”

  “Yeah, well a lot of shit has happened that I didn’t want either.”

  With that, he was gone, leaving her alone with only her bitterness for comfort.

  Again.

  Chapter Four

  February 7, 2010

  Abby,

  Happy birthday. I called my dad last week and he says you’re engaged. Congrats on that. I always figured, back when we were kids, if we didn’t end up married then at the very least I would be there on your special day. Since you still haven’t answered any of my letters, I’m guessing I won’t be getting an invite. I will tell you that I wish you the best.

  No, fuck that. I really don’t mean it and I have never lied to you. Why the hell would I start now? I kind of hope it falls through. Part of me still sees us together someday. Yeah, hilarious, I know. I almost got married, what, twice now? And we’re almost thirty. Hard to believe that one. But anything over twenty-five is almost thirty, you used to say. Anyway, yeah, I hope you’re happy but I don’t want you with another man. I can’t be that nice of a guy. Picturing someone else touching you kind of makes me want to shove his dick down his throat. Probably good I have no plans on coming home anytime soon, huh?

  Well, the point of this letter wasn’t to insult your fiancé, no matter how fun that is for me. It was happy birthday, congrats and, well, as usual…I love you, Abs.

  Write me back, dammit.

  B.

  White-hot fire blasted through her eyelids when she tried to pry the dry things apart. A thousand dancing elephants pounded in the space between her ears, and her mouth tasted like someone used her tongue to clean out urinals.

  Rational adults shouldn’t be stupid enough to get hammered out of their gourds. Then again, Braxton made her feel far less than rational.

  Blaming him gave her little comfort when faced with sickly curls of nausea and the pulse point of the pachyderms in her brain. Even her hair hurt.

  Managing to roll out of her bed and get unsteadily to her feet, Abigail headed to the bathroom to wash the urinal out of her mouth and splash cold water on her face. Once this was done, she headed downstairs…slowly.

  She prepared the coffee pot, her fingers dancing impatiently on the countertop as it brewed. Coffee. Need coffee.

  The pealing sound of her doorbell was like a red-hot dagger stabbing through her ear and into her head, where the elephants parted to make room for the extra pain.

  Clutching her temples in defense, she made a lurching run for the door in hopes of opening it before whoever it was rang the damn bell again. Someone turned out to be worse than the hangover, and looked fresh, handsome and as clean cut as an ad out of Abercrombie and Fitch. Braxton held a handful of Shasta daisies and a Styrofoam box.

  She slammed the door back into place and lurched back to the kitchen.

  The door opened behind her. She ignored it.

  Coffee.

  The pot brewed enough that she could steal a mug’s worth. She poured it in a rush and shoved the pot back into place before the coffee could dribble all over her counter. Adding three heaping spoonfuls of sugar and milk, she gave it a brisk stir before blowing and sipping.

  That first mouthful of liquid salvation was better than an orgasm.

  Speaking of orgasms, he hadn’t left.

  Braxton leaned a hip on the counter, watching her adore her hot beverage. He still held the flowers and the white box.

  “What do you want?” Her voice came out scratchy and worn sounding. It matched her undoubtedly crazy hair and still-pained eyes nicely.

  “I remember that your hangover cure involved a greasy breakfast of eggs and bacon. Figured I would bring you the cure and some flowers to make up for last night.”

  “That was my hangover cure when I was not even twenty. Now that I’m old, I prefer coffee and lots of it.” The bacon did smell really good though.

  “You aren’t old.”

  She snorted, took the box and ignored the flowers to open it. He hadn’t lied. Inside was her favorite hangover cure, steaming, and no doubt picked up from her favorite diner on his way here. Stupid, thoughtful man.

  “There are things we need to talk about.”

  His soft words penetrated the haze of bacon lust she was battling, and she met his clear eyes with her pained ones. “What is there to talk about?”

  “Why I left. What it means.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to hurt you more than I already have, Abby.”

  “Really? A decade late, right?” She scowled at him. “How could you hurt me more?”

  “Can’t we have a civil conversation like a couple of adults?”

  “I’m in no shape to talk to you right now. You’re wasting your time.” She scowled at the bacon before looking up.

  His crestfallen expression shouldn’t have fazed her. He nodded. “Yeah, I should have figured.” He turned to go.

  She glanced at the bacon and ran a tongue across her teeth. Curiosity nibbled at her, weighted by guilt. “Fine, we’ll talk, but not now. Later, one o’ clock, Point Park?”

  His nod and quick smile made butterflies dance a little jig in her stomach. She ignored them and frowned in return. “But for now… You. Out.” She pointed toward the front of the house.

  Without another word, he left her and the shining faces of the Shasta daisies on the counter as he went.

  Chugging more coffee, she sighed. The sweet things Braxton Dean did weren’t enough—could never be enough—to make up for ditching her at the altar…

  Still, he remembered, after all these years, her hangover cure.

  Sober, with only a mild headache clinging to remind her of last night, Abigail beat him to Point Park by an hour. Lunch, snagged from her favorite seafood joint, sat in a Styrofoam container untouched beside her as she found a spot on the grass overlooking the lift bridge at the Point. The place was rich in memories of Braxton—like the feel of safety in his arms while they talked about the future. They planned to get out of this one-horse town, to see the world.
Her best friend from childhood, the kid she ate mud with who taught her to climb trees, starred as her first lover in those memories.

  She swallowed back the warmth of her past, reminding herself he’d seen the world and she’d been remained behind in the shadow of him leaving.

  No other man filled the hole he carved out of her heart.

  The last time he kissed her on this hill was the night before the wedding, when he left for his bachelor party.

  All that night, she’d lain in her bed, unable to sleep. Fears about what they were doing, what the future would hold, kept her tossing and turning. She’d graduated from community college earlier that summer, and her whole life stretched out full of possibilities.

  Tired nerves had knotted in her stomach as she rode with Mother to the church. Putting on her dress, fixing her hair and makeup…all of it seemed to take forever. Forever to grasp the gravity of the vows she would speak, the changes they would bring.

  Knowing the long walk down the aisle loomed moments away.

  Her whole life up to that point flashed before her eyes, while others messed with the veil.

  And then she found out he wasn’t at the other end of the church, waiting for her. At first there had been terror, thick enough to clog her throat. The vivid fear still left a sour taste in her mouth.

  Something happened to him.

  Two days filled with that terror. Some of her friends were parents and they’d told her that losing the kids, even for a moment at a zoo or whatever, was horrifying. She lived in that place of panic for two days.

  Then, after a missing person’s report had been filed, his pager went unanswered, and no one knew anything…

  She’d tried to talk to his parents. It seemed so logical at the time. She’d walked into the tool store, up to the man who was going to be her father-in-law, and asked if he heard from Braxton.

  To this day, she remembered the humiliation of that afternoon.

  Whore. Daughter of a crazy woman. Did she really expect he would go through with it?

  Mr. Dean’s words hurt, but she knew—she knew—he was wrong. Braxton loved her.

  Finally, she’d gone to his apartment, where he’d made love to her so many times, and looked for some clue…not caring if she got in trouble for breaking and entering or whatever.

  Unlike everyone else who looked, she saw the truth right away. The things that mattered most weren’t there anymore. He must have packed them.

  That knowledge, that nothing happened to him, he packed and left by choice, and didn’t tell her… All her fear and panic transformed in less than five minutes to the anger she carried today. A thin line marked the difference between love and hate and she’d hated him for so long. The knowledge wasn’t comfortable.

  A silver pickup truck pulled up, shattering the silence on the hill. He was so stereotypical, with his country boy bow-legged walk, corn-fed broad shoulders, dark curling hair and laughing green eyes. His jeans were faded in all the right places, worn thin enough that a girl would have to have a foot in the grave not to want to rip them off him. It should be criminal, really, to look that edible, be so damn fine, and yet be such a jerkwad.

  She opened the lunch, found it no longer warm but figured it would give her something to do other than gaze at him. He plopped on the grass and leaned back on his muscular, tanned arms to look down toward the bridge through sunglasses.

  She wished she’d thought to wear sunglasses to hide her own expression from him. Better to hide than show him her heart missed him, her body sang for him, because she damn sure wasn’t getting involved with him again.

  Chapter Five

  July 4, 2009

  Abby,

  I’ve been drinking.

  Supposed to be my bachelor’s party. I’m supposed to get married.

  I can’t do it.

  I have to call it off.

  Probably you’re the last person I should be telling about that. But all I can think of is the feel of your skin under my hands. Remember that time you didn’t wear panties? All I could think about through the movie was the fact that under that cute little skirt there was nothing between me and the folds of your body. I wanted to slide my hand up that skirt and when I finally caved and felt how wet you were… Well, I knew you weren’t paying attention to the movie either. Do you even remember what movie we were supposed to be watching?

  Yeah, like I said, if all I can think about is you, I can’t put a ring on her finger.

  It isn’t just the sex either. I miss my best friend.

  But the sex…well, I miss your body. I miss the little sounds you made when I touched you.

  I’m older now. There are things we never tried…I want to try them with you.

  Sorry. Like I said. I’m more than a little drunk.

  Anyway, love you.

  I’d give anything to taste your sweet lips one more time.

  Love, B

  She looked relaxed and he realized it might not matter what he had to say.

  Her hair, which used to be so long and dark it hung around her like a cloak, was short and sleek. The look was more mature, more sophisticated, than what he was used to, but he had to admit it framed her heart-shaped face and showed off the pale line of her neck in a very lovely way. Her eyes looked tired, but they remained the familiar chocolaty brown. How many hours did he stare into those eyes?

  He left a girl full of life, fun and ready to take on the world. He returned to one who seemed somehow poised, calm and collected, her expression so guarded, he couldn’t guess at what went on behind her fathomless dark eyes.

  Somewhere, under all that careful masking, his Abby still lurked.

  He leaned back on his arms, remembering the many nights spent on this very hill, her like liquid electricity in his arms. When they were kids, she climbed trees with him, fished with him…she was his best pal. One day, he boosted her up a tree to pretend to be a pirate and the next—

  Seemingly overnight, she’d grown tits. Truly the most outstanding breasts he’d ever seen, he’d fought every testosterone-driven instinct not to brush up against them. He spent every waking moment resisting the urge to graze them with his fingertips to watch the nipples harden through the paper-thin material of her T-shirts.

  One hot summer evening, they were cooling off down at the pond behind Manda Watkin’s farm, wrestling around in the water, and their eyes had locked. The moment was engraved in his mind like some kind of mental tattoo. Her pupils dilated, even though the sun beat down on them. She’d bumped into his cock, hard and aching for her. Finally, after months—years?—of jerking off to the thought of his best friend, she knew his secret. The water was far too cold for any other explanation, and she was smart enough about boys to get that, even though she was a virgin. He’d answered all of her boy questions, so he knew she understood.

  It seemed an eternity, frozen in the water, legs pumping to keep them afloat, while she stared at him, seeming to digest the information. The whole time, her body hung in his arms, held tight to his as he throbbed for her.

  When her lips began to curl into a smile, and he sensed she was about to turn it into a joke so they could laugh it off, something inside him snapped. Fuck that. He wasn’t going back to the way things were because it was easier.

  His lips crashed over hers, more enthusiasm than skill, and hungry for one taste before she banished him back to best friend status.

  Instead of pushing him away, her fingers delved into his hair, clinging, as they both went under the water and his hands finally filled with the breasts that’d kept him awake more than one night.

  Their relationship became a steamroller from there. In a small town, they were two kids who thought they could change the world, and they were no match for everyone else’s expectations for what they would become.

  Proms, engagement, wedding plans…all of it seemed to flow in a well-organized, predetermined way. As if the town decided the first time he saw Abby skin her knee on Main Street when she was four and pulled
her up to her feet, they were destined to marry.

  None of it scared him. Not while she was in his arms.

  But when she wasn’t…

  The doubts crept in. And at his bachelor party, too young to buy his own damn beer, when his buddies joked about balls and chains and the reality sank in—he would be responsible for her—he ran.

  He ran hard and fast.

  He’d stopped running now and, as he refused to look at her on the hill and the sun beat down on him like an accusing fist, he told her all of it.

  “And even though I never felt about anyone the way you made me feel, Abby, I wasn’t even twenty. How could I keep a roof over our heads? How could I take care of you if you got sick? We’d been lucky so far, not like Ben and Stella, and you hadn’t gotten pregnant, but what if you did one day? One little slip and two becomes three and could I take care of us? Keep a job? Be a man?”

  Her eyes were steady on him. “I never asked you to take care of me, Braxton. We planned to be a partnership. We didn’t plan on the picket fence or—”

  “See? That’s just it, Abs. You plan and you plan, but my parents didn’t plan me! How many kids in this town were the results of a moment of passion in the back of a Chevy? Shit happens. Birth control is fucking wonderful except when it isn’t. Darcy Buchannan tells the story of Denny all the time and how he is her miracle baby born from spermicide and a condom. And one round of antibiotics can throw off the pill. Shit happens. How long until more of the chains of this town wrapped around us and—”

  “You selfish sonofabitch.”

  Her quiet words stopped him cold. She blinked damp eyes and something inside him flopped, sickly. “Abs—”

  “No, you talked. I heard you out. But what about me? I couldn’t leave, d’ya know that? The day of our wedding, my grandmother got sick. We found out later it was a mini stroke and when she died, I was left here, taking care of my mom. You know Gracie wasn’t going to help me so I took care of her, wore the chains of this town that you’re bitching about because I love her. You’re right. Shit happens. But if you love someone, it doesn’t matter.”