“I know what you feel.”
She tilted her head. “No you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.” He was amazed that his voice sounded as calm and steady as it did. Inside he was anything but calm and steady.
“No you don’t.” Now, instead of looking at him with confusion, she looked at him like he was a liar. And it was obvious by the fact that the volume of her voice rose with each statement she made that she didn’t like liars. “You can’t. You want to know why you can’t? Because I never told you! I never told anyone!”
“You told the Colonel.” His voice was strained, letting some of what he was feeling seep through. “I heard you.”
Her head shook, obviously confused about what he was talking about.
He cleared it up for her. “I heard you tell him that you already walked down the aisle. You didn’t plan on doing it again. The third time was not going to be the charm, because it will never happen. You were single and you would be single till death do you part. No more weddings. No more marriages. You had been there, done that. You would not be walking down any aisles with anyone, especially that Holmes boy. You said we were friends. Nothing more.”
“How did you…you were gone…you left…you left in the middle of the night. You left me.” Tears appeared in her eyes. “Why did you leave me?”
For a moment he hesitated. His first impulse was to shut down. It was his survival instinct. She’d already come close to completely destroying him, why would he let her in so that she could finish the job? But when he looked into her eyes, he knew. He knew that whatever she wanted, he would give her. If she wanted to know why he’d left, he would tell her.
“I left because I couldn’t sleep. I had a surprise I wanted you to see when we got back home. So I drove home, got it ready and drove back. When I was walking up to the castle, I heard you in the garden with the Colonel.”
“Wait…you came back?” Her voice was quiet as she covered her chest with her hands.
“I told you I would.”
“No you didn’t,” she argued.
“Yes, I did. In the note.”
“There was a note?” The tears that had been pooled in her eyes fell over her lids and just like the words that had poured from her mouth, once they started it was like a dam that had burst.
“I left it on the nightstand.” A tiny bit of hope sprung in him.
He couldn’t predict how this was going to end but he was starting to get the feeling that, once again, there’d been a misunderstanding between them and things weren’t what they seemed. He was just glad this one wasn’t taking ten years to sort out.
“What did it say?” Her voice was small, almost as if she was scared of his answer.
“It said that I had to go take care of something, but I’d be back soon. And I left you my phone number and told you I programmed it into your phone.”
Her movements were hasty and clumsy as she pulled her phone out of the pocket of her lab coat. Her thumb swiped the screen scrolling through contacts, and he saw the moment that she saw his name, she sucked in a sharp breath.
“You did.” She nodded as more tears fell down her cheeks. “I have your phone number.”
“I know.”
She began talking a mile a minute again, her hands waving as she did. “I thought you left. I thought you left without saying anything. When I woke up, your side of the bed was cold and I just got dressed and went to my room. I didn’t even look on the nightstand. And then Aunt Wendy told me that you left in the middle of the night and I saw Bailey and I thought, if you didn’t want to be serious with her, then…” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “And Grandpa J was asking me about Neil, because he saw us dancing at the wedding. Neil was the Holmes brother I was talking about not going down the aisle with. And I only said all that stuff about getting married again because I felt so stupid that I did want to get married again. I did want to walk down the aisle with you…to marry you…to be with you till death do I part.
“I do want that. I love you. I’ve always loved you. It’s always been you, Nate. Only you.”