This time I managed to yank my arm out of his hold. We stared at one another in silence, the bustle of his wedding preparations around us our ugly melody. I wanted to yell and scream at him.
I wanted him to hug me and tell me it was wrong, this was wrong, he wasn’t marrying her.
I wanted to go back in time and have never kissed him.
His tux was perfectly tailored. A deep and intoxicating green, and when the satin emerald lapels caught the light, he was heart-stopping. Everything from his bowtie to the watch on his wrist was so perfectly put together. Meanwhile I was coming apart at the seams.
“That wasn’t your dress. You’re Lottie’s girl—a servant must have addressed it to you.” He checked his watch. “The wedding starts soon.” He lowered his wrist, arching a brow in the direction of his wing. “She probably needs help with her wedding dress.”
“I hate you, Grayson Crowne.”
He paused at my words, eyes pinched.
Maybe. Maybe he would say something, make sense of all this.
He turned on his heel, taking long strides back to the altar, never once looking back.
Fifty-Six
STORY
* * *
I knocked on the door before I entered. Now that I knew why Lottie was so upset, I felt like a bug begging to sit on her food when I came back.
“Come in,” Lottie croaked.
Lottie was sitting with her spine straight, staring into the mirror of her vanity. She was calmer, and her mother was nowhere to be seen.
She caught my eyes in the mirror. “Oh, it’s…you.”
Tension bubbled between us.
“I was told you needed help with your wedding gown, Ms. du Lac.”
She stared back at the mirror with a sigh. “I’m sure you know now I’m soon to be Mrs. Grayson Crowne.”
I was certain she didn’t say it as a jab to me, because there was too much sorrow in her voice. She stared at her face in the mirror blankly. Sometime while I’d been gone, hair and makeup had stopped by. She reminded me of a statue.
I went to the window, where her dress hung, my heart aching when I knelt before her with it, and she took an elegant step inside.
“You know that’s all I ever wanted,” she said as I pulled the dress up her body, “since we were little kids and we shared our first bumbling kiss. I thought, I’ve found my Prince Charming. But then he became Pl
ayboy Gray, and I was too afraid. I couldn’t see beyond it. Because I’ve watched my mom’s heart break over and over again as she loved my dad, who loved everyone but her.”
As she spoke, I swallowed my tears, adjusting the thick strip of satin off-the-shoulder trim. I tried to numb myself to what I was doing, tried to focus only on fabric. Not that I was helping the woman who would marry the man I loved into her wedding gown. My fingers trembled, my chest cracked.
Where did it all go wrong?
“It’s all my fault. All of this.”
I got to my knees, adjusting the snow-white A-line hem that just barely touched the floor. She was barefoot. She would need shoes. I repeated it over and over, looking for shoes, until I found the pair of glittering silver-and-glass Jimmy Choos that matched the dress.
Why did it have to be glass?
I slid one of her feet into them, then the other. I stood up, finished. She looked like a princess in her white dress. All that was missing was a tiara.
“I’m going to be his wife,” she said, rubbing the lace that clung just above her elbows.