I’ll never forget that quiet that roared from her nearly gray body as she lay in that hospital bed, one that we thought she might not ever get up from.
But she did.
Though I felt like a part of me was left in that bed, in that hospital. A little part of me died watching my sister almost leave this world. Died a slow death in the hours we waited to see if our life was going to be shattered. It was the day I was presented with the brutal reality that the world could take someone from me, from our family like that.
I liked to hear her yell.
And she’d done a lot of that hearing about the wedding.
But she ultimately supported me.
So she was likely either coming to tell me she had a car gassed up and ready to go should I feel the need to escape or coming to try and shove a veil on my head.
Or maybe both.
Whatever it was, it was my beautiful sister alive and vibrant, so I’d take it. And it was also something to push unwelcome thoughts that were not meant to have real estate in my brain.
Especially not on my wedding day.
But the opening and closing of the door didn’t push those thoughts away. It shoved them brutally into my reality.
Heath stormed across the room, his eyes on every inch of me.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered, backing up. “You can’t be here, you need to leave.”
I was terrified he’d keep advancing, he’d yank me into his arms and kiss me. I was terrified because I wanted him to do that.
But he didn’t. He stopped in front of me, hands fisted at his sides, eyes flaring over every inch of me, expression painted with purely male hunger. Flames erupted over my body at that gaze.
It was not the reaction I should be having to a man that was not my fiancé looking at me like that in my wedding dress.
But my fiancé had never looked at me like that.
No one had ever looked at me like that.
“Yeah, I’m gonna leave,” Heath growled, his voice thick. A palpable pause as his eyes moved up and down in worship and in torture. “And you’re comin’ with me.”
I gaped at him. “Are you insane? This is my wedding day. I’m not running away with you.”
His stare melted me. And not in that nice, romance movie kind of way. No, in the lava explosion, flaying my skin from my body until I was liquefied bone at his feet type of way.
“You’re not runnin’ away with me,” he agreed. He nodded to my dress. “That right there, that’s running. And you fuckin’ know it.”
I swallowed ash. Ash that tasted as bitter and toxic as the truth. “No, Heath. This is me moving on. This is me marrying someone I love. This is healthy. This is right.”
The words hurt me coming out. They scratched my throat with their sharp edges. Because they were true.
I did love Craig. In a simple and easy way that didn’t make me feel like I was now. Like I always did with Heath. Like I was minutes from destruction.
“If it’s right, if it’s healthy, then, baby, that’s not love,” Heath argued. “That’s a fucking fabrication. And you know it.”
My palms began to sweat. I kept my hand tight on my stomach. On the flat and suddenly suffocating fabric.
“You come with me right now, it’s not gonna be easy, or healthy, or right. But it’s what you need. It’s what you deserve,” Heath continued, his voice now a low rasp. He stepped forward and his hands framed my face. “You know that I’m right. I know you want to come. I can see it in your eyes.” He paused, letting the words sink into my bones, whittle away at my soul. “I can live without you, Sunshine,” he murmured, uttering the opposite of what all the heroes said in the movies, the books. “But I don’t want to.”
I let the moment caress me for less than a second. I entertained the idea of doing exactly what he said. Half of the guests wouldn’t be surprised. The rest would almost expect it. Polly leaving a guy at the altar was almost as predictable as Polly marrying a guy she’d known less than two months—I’d known him for three weeks before getting engaged.
But then it stopped me.
Love.
Love that was simple and healthy and right, love that was an anchor keeping me here and a barrier to whatever it was I had with Heath.
“You need to leave,” I choked out, hating that my voice didn’t sound stronger.
Because as it fell apart, it gave Heath threads to grasp onto. Yank at with his gaze. With the tightening of his hands at my neck. “You better rethink that choice, Polly,” he growled. “’Cause this is it. The moment in life you’ve got a chance to go beyond the ordinary. Beyond even the extraordinary.”