Always a Bridesmaid

by Lizzie Shane

  What the fuck did that have to do with anything? “I told you about it. I told you right away.”

  “Yeah. Right after you started doing inventory in case you wanted to escape. But did you even think to ask what I thought? Or consider what you leaving would mean to me?”

  What was happening? How had this conversation gone so far off the rails? “You’d come with me. You’d love Thailand.”

  “You didn’t invite me, Max. You didn’t ask. You just went off to think and then came back as if nothing had happened. What was I supposed to think?”

  “Okay, I screwed up. One time.” That hadn’t been his finest moment, but he was new to this relationship thing. Wasn’t he allowed to have a learning curve?

  “One time.” She breathed out a soft, disbelieving laugh. “Do you remember Katie’s engagement party?”

  “You think I forgot the first time we kissed?”

  Her smile turned sharp. “Well, you did pretend it didn’t happen for weeks afterward, but that wasn’t my point.”

  “Fine. What’s the point?” And what the hell did it have to do with this?

  “Why didn’t you tell Sidney you were going to the party with me?”

  “What?” He was supposed to remember what he’d said to Sidney in November? “I don’t know. That was months ago.”

  Parvati folded her arms—less like a pissy girlfriend and more like a woman holding herself together. “Sidney invited you to dinner with her and Josh and you said you couldn’t go, but you wouldn’t tell her why. Why didn’t you just tell her you were with me?”

  “I don’t know. And I can’t imagine why it matters. We weren’t even dating yet.”

  “You keep people at a distance, Max,” she insisted.

  “She didn’t need to know where I was. I can’t believe you’re bringing this up now.” How long had she been holding onto this, waiting to bring it up when they were fighting? It was such a freaking relationship cliché.

  “But why not tell her?”

  “I wasn’t ashamed of being with you, if that’s what you’re trying to imply.”

  She shook her head. “I wondered at the time, but now I think it’s just habit for you. You don’t explain yourself to anyone. If you don’t tell her why you’re missing dinner with her, she can’t argue with you. You don’t have to justify anything. You don’t have to make yourself vulnerable in front of anyone or let them really know you or have a say in your life. You’re an island.”

  “Stop saying that. I’m not an island.”

  “No? Then who are you responsible to? Not responsible for, but responsible to. Who do you explain yourself to? Who really knows you? Because I don’t think it’s me, and I can’t be an afterthought. I just can’t, Max.”

  “You aren’t an afterthought. How can you think that? You know me. I explain myself to you.”

  “Do you? When?”

  He knew there were examples. A thousand examples. A million. But he couldn’t think of one. A hive of angry bees were taking up all the space in his brain. “I don’t know, but I’m not an island. I’m not unreliable or isolated. How can you not see that? How can you think that I’m pushing you away? Because I’m not the one running this time, Parv. I’m not the one who’s scared.”

  She shook her head again, backing away. “I’m sorry, Max. Maybe I am scared. I love you. I really do. But I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Parvati.” He hadn’t been prepared for her to bolt. She didn’t run away from the tough stuff. She hung on—sometimes for months after she knew something was a lost cause, but she was already ten yards away now. Fleeing down the steps. Running. “Parvati!”

  His shout got lost in the sound of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” blaring through the ballroom. She didn’t stop. Not when she reached the bottom of the steps and had to shove her way through a knot of women gathered there. Not even when the bouquet came flying through the air and smacked her in the face.

  “Parvati!” Max chased after her, jogging down the steps as she caught the flowers against her face and forced a smile for the cameras. He was still too far away to see the real expression in her eyes as she ducked through the spectators gathered along the edge of the dance floor and rushed toward the side door.

  She was leaving him.

  No.

  The reaction was visceral. Primitive. The most basic part of him objecting to losing her.

  She was wrong. He wasn’t an island. He was a freaking peninsula and she was his connection to the rest of the world. He needed her. And he needed her to see that need.

  If she wanted to walk away after that, fine—well, not fine, but he would make himself let her go if that was what she really wanted, but he wasn’t giving up without a fight.

  “Max! You’re single, buddy. Get your ass over there.”

  Max shook off someone trying to herd him toward the cluster of men waiting for the garter toss and cut through the crowd. She’d been moving toward the west doors—

  “Maximus! Just the man I was looking for.”

  “Sorry, Dad. Not a good time.” He started to weave around, but his father blocked his path.

  “Nonsense. You have five minutes for your father. Especially when I’m about to be your new boss.”

  “Not now, I don’t.” He tried to dodge again, but his father grabbed his arm and he whirled, shaking off the grip, fists clenched. “What? What is so fucking important?”

  Titus puffed up, swollen with his own importance. “There’s no need to take that tone—”

  “You don’t even have anything to talk to me about, do you? You just want to pat yourself on the back for your fucking legacy, regardless of what I want. But that isn’t going to happen. You don’t get to dictate my life. You aren’t the boss here. And you aren’t going to be mine. I’m not coming to work at Titacorp and I’m not selling Elite Protection.”

  His father’s mouth tightened, unaccustomed to the sour taste of rejection. “Don’t be ridiculous. The timing is perfect—”

  “I don’t care. It’s more than just a business to me. I’ve built something pretty damn amazing and I’m going to continue to grow it.”

  To his father’s credit, he adjusted quickly. His demeanor took a one-eighty and he clapped Max on the shoulder, nodding proudly as if Max keeping Elite Protection had been his idea. “Good for you. You always were just like me.”

  “No,” Max shrugged off his hand. “I’m not. For years I wanted to be. I was so messed up by being the great Titus Dewitt’s kid—always pushing for more, trying to be the best, trying to be enough, never satisfied, never happy, so fucking caught up with success that I almost missed seeing what I’d created in Elite Protection. A family. Which is something you know nothing about.”

  Indignation made Titus seem to inflate. “That isn’t fair. I’m still your father.”

  “You are. The only one I’ll ever have. And we both have to live with that.” Suddenly Parvati’s words echoed in his mind. You aren’t accountable to anyone. “Why didn’t you tell us your mistress was pregnant? Why didn’t you let us know you were getting married? Why let your children find out from a tabloid?”

  “I wanted to tell you after the divorce was final—I didn’t want you hating Claudine, thinking she had broken your mother and I up, so I chose to wait. Claudine argued for telling you, but I thought it was better to keep the divorce and my new marriage separate, so you wouldn’t apply your emotions about one to the other. But then when I came out to tell you, you didn’t join Sidney and me for dinner. So I decided the time wasn’t right.”

  “And after that?”

  He shrugged. “The time wasn’t right. I still think Sidney is overreacting. Refusing to let me walk my own daughter down the aisle—”

  “You told her she shouldn’t marry Josh.”

  “She could do so much better. He’s insubstantial. And she’s a Dewitt. Though lately she seems determined to become a Kardashian.”

  Max shook his head. “You don’t know us at all, do yo
u? But why would you? You’re an island.”

  He started to push past his father, determined to track down Parvati, but his father caught his shoulder. “Max. Please. Claudine wants us to have a relationship. It’s important to her.”

  “Yeah, well. We wanted a father who gave a shit for the first thirty years of our lives. We can’t always get what we want.”

  Later he might relent, but right now Max wove through the crowd, moving quickly, looking for Parvati, though he couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation with his father and the disconnect between who he was and what people seemed to see when they looked at him.

  His father saw a chip off the old block. Parvati saw someone who would never commit. He knew he’d done a lot to perpetuate those ideas of who he was, but he wasn’t that guy anymore. But could he ever overcome those ideas of him? His father might be a lost cause, but how could he make Parvati see him differently? See him as a man who could be her forever?

  He found the bride and groom before he found the love of his life.

  “Max!” Sidney flung her arms around him in a rustle of tulle. “How’s the best big brother on the planet?”

  He wasn’t sure if she was drunk or just that happy, but he didn’t want to burst her bubble so he kept his answer vague. “I’m actually looking for Parvati. Have you seen her?”

  “Not since she caught the bouquet with her face.” Sidney’s dizzy-happy expression faded into concern. “Is everything okay?”

  His instinct was to say yes, everything was fine, and solve the problem on his own—but he wasn’t his father, damn it. And it was time for him to prove it.

  “Actually, I could use your help.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Running out of a wedding reception into the rain, carrying a bouquet and sobbing, she’d probably terrified the parking attendant, but by that point Parvati had given up on any pretext of dignity or caring what other people thought of her.

  When they delivered her car, she managed to keep it together long enough to get out of the parking lot before pulling over less than a mile down the road to bawl.

  Breaking up with Max was nothing like breaking up with Parker had been.

  She was wrecked. Destroyed.

  Max had teased her about not crying at Sidney’s wedding? Well she was crying now, damn it.

  The second thoughts began almost immediately.

  Had she ever given him the benefit of the doubt? Or had the stories she told herself about him been designed to remind her that he couldn’t commit? Had she ever really committed to the idea of them either? Or had she always had one foot out the door because she was afraid he was the same way? Had her fears been a self-fulfilling prophecy? Was that fair to him? Had she been too guarded with her heart? Had she made a huge mistake?

  She hadn’t even said goodbye to Sidney, running out the side door. The happy couple would be headed off to their honeymoon by now. Would Sidney wonder why Parv wasn’t there to wave them off? She would never get that moment back—but right now all she could think of was Max and the way he’d looked at her when she’d told him it was over.

  She made it to Angie’s house in one piece, but was still such a basket case when she got there that her sister took one look at her and groaned, “Dear God, you’re a mess,” with the perfect amount of disgust to snap Parv out of her urge to bawl for another two hours.

  Angie wrapped her in a towel to keep her from marring the furniture and put Parvati in her sitting room again—the one part of the house that was completely Angie’s, not overrun by Kevin and the kids—and thrust a glass of water into her hands with a command to hydrate. Then she leaned against the arm of the loveseat across from Parvati’s chair, folded her arms, and glowered.

  “I think you’re being an idiot, by the way.”

  “I know.” Parvati sniffled and sipped her water.

  “What happened?”

  “We broke up.” Parvati didn’t elaborate. There really wasn’t anything else to say.

  “For a reason? Or just because you care about him more than you’ve ever cared about anyone and that terrifies you?”

  “Is this supposed to be helpful?” Parvati glowered as Angie glanced at her phone, her thumb moving across the screen. “Who are you texting in the middle of my emotional crisis?”

  “Katie. She thinks you’re being ridiculous too. I thought you believed love conquered all. What happened to that?”

  “Well maybe I’m afraid he will never love me as much as I love him. Did you think of that? That maybe love only conquers all when you both love one another, not when one of you has had an unhealthy crush since she was fourteen that she really needs to get over.”

  “So that’s all this was? A crush? The realization of a fantasy?”

  “Of course not. I just…I was always going to be that girl to him. The one who was obsessed with him. The one who would take whatever scraps of affection he wanted to give her.”

  Angie cocked her head to the side, considering that. “That may be where you started, but relationships change all the time. What makes you think yours wouldn’t?”

  “He doesn’t let people in, Angie,” she explained. “I probably know him better than just about anyone and his first instinct is still to shut me out. I bet no one we know would even know we’d broken up if I didn’t tell them. Max doesn’t share his feelings. He doesn’t share himself.”

  Angie eyed her phone again. “People change.”

  “Not that much. And I can’t ask him to change who he is.”

  “What if he could show you that he wanted to change? That he was already changing? Would that make a difference?”

  “That isn’t going to happen, Angie.”

  “Hypothetically.” Her thumb moved over her cell phone screen.

  Parvati narrowed her eyes. “Are you still texting Katie?”

  “And Devi. And Asha. Ranee’s at a conference in Atlanta and I think she’s already asleep or we’d definitely patch her in.”

  “I’m glad to know my crisis can bring the family closer together.”

  Angie rolled her eyes. “Don’t be sarcastic. We love you. We want to help you fix this.”

  “I know this might go against your worldview, Angie, but not everything can be fixed. Not even with a color-coded to-do list.”

  “I don’t accept that.” Her oldest sister looked at her with militant determination.

  “I know if you could give me a happy life through sheer force of will you would—and I love you for it. But sometimes you have to accept that things aren’t going to work out the way you want them to and move on with your life before you become so tangled up in trying to force a fairy tale that you make yourself miserable.”

  “I agree. But what if this isn’t one of those times? What if this is just the time where Prince Charming is a little slow on the uptake but he really loves you like crazy?”

  “That is a fairy tale—but the sad thing about fairy tales is that they aren’t real.” The doorbell rang and Parvati frowned in the direction of the front door. “Did you invite someone over?”

  Angie glanced at her phone. “It’s probably Katie. Sit tight.”

  Her sister vanished to go answer the door and Parvati stared fixedly at the curtains, wondering exactly how long it would take her to get over this gaping, empty feeling, as if her emotions had been scooped out by a melon baller.

  She’d read somewhere that it took half as long to get over a relationship as the length of the relationship—but did that mean half of the three months they’d been together or half of the fifteen-plus years she’d loved him?

  The scuff of a footstep in the doorway drew her attention off the diamond pattern on the rug—but it wasn’t Angie who hesitated on the threshold.

  Max stood between the propped-open French doors, still wearing his wedding tux and looking like something out of a bridal magazine, though his expression was more tentative than would have been allowed to grace the pages of The Vow or Modern Bride. “Can we
talk?”

  Parvati stood, needing to not be looking up at him—at least not so much. “What are you doing here?”

  “I needed to see you. You ran off before I got to my rebuttal.”

  “But how did you know I was here?”

  “I asked Sidney where she thought you would have gone and she suggested Katie’s, so I called Katie, but she hadn’t seen you so she texted Angie and Angie told us you were planning to stay here and then updated us when you showed up at the door, but by then we were already headed this way.” He took a half step into the room and she took a step back, which made him stop. “I must have broken every speed limit on my way up here.”

  “I can’t believe Angie ratted me out to you.” Though frankly she could. It was so freaking Angie to think she knew best and act accordingly.

  “Don’t be mad at Angie. It was either this or have Tori call you and pretend to be in labor. She offered—which was really very sweet—but I thought you might kill me if we did that to you.” Another half step and this time she forced herself not to retreat, even when he was only three feet away. Close enough to reach out and touch her. “Your friends were pretty determined to help me get you back. Don’t you think you should at least listen to what I have to say?”

  Something about what he’d said caught at her brain. “Did you tell them we’d broken up?”

  “I was telling anyone I thought might know how to help me get you back. I know you don’t think I’m capable of admitting weakness or asking for help—and a few months ago, you may have been right, but I have changed, Parvati. And not because you asked me to, but because you changed me. You opened my eyes. I’m not sure I ever would have realized how empty my life was without you. You’re my link to everything. You’re my heart. I’m not even sure I knew I had one before I gave it to you. So please. Give us a shot. Break up with me if you don’t love me. Or if I hurt you. But not because you think I can’t love you enough. Because if there is one thing I know I will always do, it’s love you.”

  She couldn’t seem to speak. The space where all her emotions had been scooped out was full again—bursting, so full she couldn’t find room for words. “Max…”