Max
Six Years Ago
I shouldn’t have been here.
Out of everyone here tonight, I was the one person she didn’t want to see. I knew that.
Perhaps if I had been more like Mason, if I had acted and damn all the consequences, had made her mine and not hesitated, all this wouldn’t happen.
It was all the what ifs that I couldn’t go back to, and it was killing me to be here, to see her like this, and to know there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
I moved forward into the room where she sat alone, her head downcast, one hand in her lap, the other curved protectively around her belly.
She wasn’t showing yet.
It was too soon for that.
She looked sad. Sad and beautiful, dressed in white and looking very much like a fairytale princess, with her long red hair tied in an updo, little curls of hair falling around her face.
My beautiful girl.
Only she wasn’t mine.
Never had been, and she could never be mine now.
In my attempt to give her the chance to grow up without any interference from me, I had pushed her away, and into another man’s arms.
And now she was getting married.
She looked up when she heard me come in, and for one small moment, I could see the full devastation in her eyes before she shut it out and changed her expression into one of happiness. I wasn’t fooled.
“Max, what are you doing here? Are you looking for Olivia? I think she and my mom went out to make sure everything’s in place.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not looking for Olivia. I was looking for you.”
“Oh.” There were an infinite number of ways in which that small Oh could mean coming from her lips, and I couldn’t guess it even if I tried. “Well, you found me.”
I found you, too late, I didn’t say.
We didn’t say anything for a while. She shifted slightly on her feet. I still made her nervous; that much hadn’t changed. I had known about her crush on me from the very beginning, since she was twelve. I had treated her as nothing more than Olivia’s best friend, because that was what she had been to me for the longest time. Then she turned seventeen, and it felt like she had changed in my mind overnight.
I had felt like the worst kind of monster for wanting this young, this beautiful, this innocent girl.
I kept my distance from her after that.
Then she met Sam Costner, and now it might be too late.
“Don’t do it, sweetheart.”
Her eyes dimmed, and I knew she understood what I meant. She stood up and turned her back to me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I need to finish getting ready, and you need to get back to your seat. The ceremony is about to start.”
I moved closer, so close I was sure she could feel the heat of my body as surely as I could feel hers. I wanted to pull her tight into my arms, but I knew I didn’t have the right to. She tensed when I placed my hands on her small, delicate shoulders. Everything about Lizzie was small and delicate.
I hadn’t wanted to taint her with my hideous hands. Hadn’t wanted to affect her with the monster living inside me, and now—now, I just didn’t want to let her go.
“Don’t marry him.”
She turned around, pushing my hands away from her shoulders, fire brewing in those green eyes of hers. “Fuck you. What right do you have to tell me not to marry him?”