Why did it feel like he’d driven away with her heart, too?
Chapter Seventeen
Going home wasn’t as bad as she’d built it up to be in her head. Neither, surprisingly, was her mother. In the two months since the wedding, she’d accumulated a bit of a phobia about seeing everyone again. But in one sense, the white party was the perfect venue for reentry. Her mother was too busy running around yelling at the hired catering staff to pay much attention to her children beyond giving them a cursory kiss and ordering them to stay out of the way in the den upstairs. To Amy’s amazement, not a word was uttered about the wedding.
Despite her objections, Michael had insisted they come early. Once he’d decided to capitulate, he’d done it utterly, it seemed.
But now, as she sank back against the overstuffed sofa in the den—the only room in the house her mother actually permitted anyone to live in—she was glad for the time to soak up a little calm before the storm.
“The move went well,” Michael said.
She nodded her agreement because of course he had no idea that she’d spent the whole night sobbing. She’d intended for them both to go to a hotel, assuming that the unpacking wouldn’t be advanced enough that they’d be able to stay in the new apartment. But with Cassie and Jack’s help—the pair of them just would not quit—they’d made a ton of progress. Exhausted by putting on a brave face for everyone, she’d sent her brother to the Sheraton alone and crashed on her mattress on the floor, kept awake by the traffic noises from the busy street below, and, of course, by her own tears.
She assumed that once she unpacked and got used to the new space, everything would normalize. It had to. Because this shaky, vulnerable feeling was the worst. This was not who she wanted to be. What had happened to the defiant girl who pitched her cell phone into Lake Ontario?
As she looked around the small, comfy room—this really had always been her favorite room growing up—a part of her missed her old life. Not Mason, exactly, and certainly not her parents. But the idea of the life she’d been going to have. Of knowing where you were, knowing where you were going, and traveling the path to get there.
What if she hadn’t sold her house? What if she hadn’t assigned the house all that huge symbolic meaning? She could be there right now, having a cup of tea in her backyard, blissfully alone. And if someday, she met someone she wanted to share the house—and the life—with, well, what was wrong with that?
And if that someone was nice, considerate, and successful? Seriously, what was wrong with that? Because if she had to choose between nice, considerate, and successful or…she struggled to put words to the image in her head she’d conjured to stand in for the opposite concept.
The image of Dax.
“Don’t give it another thought! I’m sure she’ll be delighted to see you.” Amy shook her head at the sound of her mother’s voice, just outside the door, rousing herself from her thoughts.
“And so it begins,” Michael murmured.
Indeed. She wondered whom her mother was bringing to foist upon her. Possibly Carolyn, their cleaning lady, who was usually engaged to help at parties. She couldn’t imagine her mother letting anyone else see the den.
Except maybe Mason.
“Michael, can you help me with the flowers downstairs?”
Her sweet big brother had jumped to his feet at the sight of Mason, as if to physically protect her. Now both men stood staring at her, uncertainty on their faces.
“It’s okay,” she said to Michael. And it was. She had known she would have to face Mason at some point, so why not now? Why not make this craptastic weekend just a little bit more so? She smiled at her brother. “Go ahead.” When he didn’t move, she had to make a shooing motion. “Mason and I are overdue for a chat anyway.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering strength. When she opened them, Michael and her mother were gone, and Mason was staring at her, looking as bereft as if someone had just set fire to his record collection.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She shrugged. “It was for the best.”
“That’s the thing.” He folded and unfolded his hands a few times, which is what he did when he was nervous. “I’m not sure it was.”
“Excuse me?” He might as well have slapped her across the face.
He grabbed her hands. “I made a horrible mistake. I was scared. All the wedding stuff freaked me out. I lost sight of the fact that after the wedding, nothing was going to change. That we’d still be us.”
Amy blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the impossible words that were coming out of his mouth. She could not disagree: if they had married, after the wedding, everything would still be the same as it always had between them. The clincher was that the same was no longer acceptable.