Chapter 151

“Ah, yes,” Lexi said. “Expectations.” For a moment, they both stared at her ring.

“You don’t seem at all angry,” Lexi ventured. She peered up at him.

“You don’t even seem mildly irritated, if I’m honest.” His gray gaze touched hers and she didn’t know how she kept herself from flinching. “I’m not pleased,” he said.

Lexi blew out a breath. She thought about her father and how disappointed he would be with her. But then, that was all about his fear. And she’d let that fear and her own grief hang over her for so long now that she’d accepted that it was simply… how things were. She’d decided long ago she could never be with someone she loved. And she’d never tried, so she’d assumed she could handle a loveless life.

She knew better now. Lexi had no idea if she could make Tyler love her, all these years later. What she did know was that she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t try. She pulled off the ring that Victor had given her, and she met his gaze— and held it—as she placed it back in his hand.

For a moment, he only stared back at her. As unreadable as ever.

“My sister tells me that Tyler has been your best friend as long as she has,” Victor said then. “Though she claims she’s your real best friend, because he’s not really a friend at all, is he?”

“No,” Lexi said. At last. “I’m afraid Tyler has always been a lot more. Even if he did walk away today.”

Victor smiled, then. And his eyes had gone back to that frigid gray. He let the ring roll forward and back in his palm before he closed it up in his fist. He stood, tucking the ring away in his pocket. And it struck Lexi as funny, almost, that she was yet again in a supplicant position, staring up a man.

But not the right one.

“He wanted to tear me apart with his bare hands,” Victor said, gazing down at her. “I thought he was going to try to put me through the wall. Instead, he walked away. Why would a man do that?”

Lexi only stared up at him as her heart began to pound at her like a battering ram.

“I don’t love you, Lexi,” Victor continued.

His voice was matter-of-fact. “If you married me, I never would. Love is not something I have to offer. But even a blind man could see that your friend does not suffer these same restrictions.” He inclined his head, cool and unbothered, and she couldn’t tell if that made it better or worse. “If you’re not content with our arrangement, if you feel even half the things I can see all over your face, go.

Find him. I don’t think you need my blessing, but you have it.”

And Lexi stayed there, still leaning out over the small table, while the man she’d intended to marry turned and walk from the room. She stayed where she was, there beside a lovely tea service she didn’t have the slightest urge to touch.

She thought about all these years since her first sight of Tyler at the University. And it was a temptation to think of them all as wasted. But when she set all those years of friendship next to the past few weeks of absolute joy, she knew, somehow, that she couldn’t have had one without the other. That it had always been leading here.

What she had to ask herself was whether or not, had Victor not turned up the way he had today, she would have called off this wedding herself. Lexi tried to imagine walking down an aisle in the spring, and seeing Victor standing at the head of it.

And it was wrong. It was just…wrong.

There was only one man she’d ever wanted to see smiling at her, from the head of an aisle or anywhere else.

Her breath left her in a rush. She dug into the pocket of the coat she hadn’t managed to take off and pulled out her phone. Then she called a number she knew by heart, though it was ten o’clock at night there and she knew her father didn’t like late night calls. And in fact, he sounded typically put out when he picked up the phone.

“It’s me, Dad,” Lexi said. “I know you’re asleep or on your way. But I have something to tell you and I know you’re not going to like it. I need you to love me anyway.”

And when her father sputtered, Lexi told him the news. Then repeated it when he fell silent.

“I can't marry Victor, dad. I don't love him,” she concluded.

“Dear,” Her father began, and he sounded old, for the first time that she could recall, “We have talked about this several times. What do you expect your fiance to say about this?”

“He seems to be very okay with it”

“Well, I'm not,” Paul Graham thundered, sounding more like himself again. The man she knew, and it was odd that she felt relieved by that… Not scared or troubled, because she knew that she was doing this for herself. For once. “You're not going to throw away your life. Everything I've planned for you over some lowlife. You will come back to Nemford and we will discuss this…Maybe I can talk some sense back into you before it's too late,”

But Lexi had heard enough, “I'm sorry dad,” she said, “I have made my choice, and I have somewhere else to be,”

She hung up and stood, ignoring the vibration of her phone that indicated that he was calling back. She had someone else to talk to.

__________

Tyler ran the coastal path twice, at a speed and intensity he could only call punishing.

It didn’t help.

He slammed his way into his house, and it was starting already. Ghosts everywhere he looked. Memories like an assault. It was hard to believe he’d been so careless. So astonishingly reckless. So certain that it would be worth it, no matter what shape he’d find himself in when she left.

The door to the guest room mocked him. He pushed his way past it, down the hall, not sure what he was doing but absolutely certain that he didn’t need to go in there. Not yet. He was still too furious about his great bloody sacrifice to tip on over to what waited on the other side of all that black, righteous rage.