Total pages in book: 176
Estimated words: 164533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 823(@200wpm)___ 658(@250wpm)___ 548(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 823(@200wpm)___ 658(@250wpm)___ 548(@300wpm)
This was all was true, but it wasn’t the whole reason I’d called things off. Far from it.
It had started out with an argument about the wedding day itself. I’d told Stephanie I was going to ask my cousin, Shay, to be my best man. She’d gone strangely quiet after that, and a little while later, she’d approached me, sweetly suggesting Derek might be upset by me choosing Shay over him since we’d been best friends since we were kids.
I told her Derek wouldn’t give a rat’s arse about being best man, and that after his divorce, he was cynical about marriage and weddings in general. I knew for a fact that even attending would be a pain for Derek, but Steph kept on insisting that choosing my cousin over my best friend was rude and could cause a rift.
She just wouldn’t let the whole thing drop until I’d grown suspicious that there was more to it. So, I’d asked her outright if she had a problem with Shay. She’d finally expressed her worry that it would ruin the speeches at the reception since Shay was mute and couldn’t give a regular speech. I’d countered that we’d hire a sign language interpreter, and it would all be fine. After this, she’d thrown a fit and yelled at me, saying I was trying to ruin her big day.
Note she said hers and not ours.
At that moment, I’d seen everything that was wrong with our engagement and how poorly matched we were. I’d realised with startling clarity that I couldn’t marry her. I couldn’t marry a woman who didn’t want my cousin—someone I was closest to in the world—to be my best man because his disability might make her wedding day less shiny and glamorous. She couldn’t bear the thought of him signing his speech, and it was abhorrent to me. It had made all the little niggling irritations I’d had about her, all the signs that deep down she was a materialistic, shallow human being come to blaring light. I’d been too blinded by her beauty and by how she’d fawned over me to see the truth.
Steph was a snob, not to mention ableist, and it made me sick to my stomach.
To be honest, I should’ve called things off when I’d heard her on the phone to one of her bridesmaids, Magda, insisting the woman have her braces removed before the wedding. She’d wanted everyone to have “pretty” smiles in the photographs. That had been her exact phrasing, too. I’d been appalled and insisted she’d call Magda back and apologise. That there was no need to have her bloody braces out. Steph had acted like I was the one being unreasonable.
So, that was how I currently found myself: my engagement broken and the woman I’d been hopelessly besotted with at nineteen sitting across the dining table. Charli was even more beautiful than I remembered. She’d grown into a stunning woman, but she seemed unhappy and a little withdrawn. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there were shadows in her eyes, and the way she’d flinched when I’d tried to hug her earlier twisted something raw and painful inside me. Tristan had told me she’d just gone through a divorce, so it was expected that she might not be herself, but how not herself she was … it was disconcerting.
I couldn’t count the number of times I’d wanted to contact her over the years. A couple months into my recruitment with the French Foreign Legion, Mam had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The minute she’d called to tell me, my entire world had turned grey. I’d been in a state of disbelief. How could we have survived my dad, gone through it all, and come out the other side, only for the short period of relief and peace to be shattered into a thousand fractured pieces? I’d wanted to rage and break things. My fury had been terrifying even to myself, the injustice and unfairness of it all. So much threatened to fall apart, and I’d been drowning under the weight of it. I’d stopped writing to Charli. I’d been numb, and I couldn’t handle hearing about her life, missing her, when everything around me had been crumbling.
I’d had to apply for a special leave of absence so I could be with Mam while she’d gone through treatment. I’d been in such a bad state that for months, I hadn’t even told anyone I’d been home. Mam hadn’t been living in Malahide any longer, so there was little chance I’d bump into any of my friends. As far as they’d been concerned, I would still have been in France.
By the time Mam was in remission, several months had gone by, and I’d returned to base. I’d started working up the courage to get back in touch with Charli. But when I’d looked her up on social media, I’d seen a photo of her with some dark-haired bloke, both smiling into the camera as she’d presented her engagement ring.