It had taken everything she had to hand him back his ring and walk away, but she’d never worried that she’d made a mistake. And whenever she’d missed him, she’d had Grace there to remind her why she’d done it.
The second time had been more complicated. She’d met Harry at university, not long after Grace and Ash became Grace-and-Ash. Maybe she’d been feeling left out, or maybe she’d just wanted something of the happiness they’d found, because it had been easy to fall into an echo of their relationship herself, with Harry. Except Harry wasn’t Ash and she wasn’t Grace. They weren’t the perfect fit that their friends were, and they’d argued about almost everything.
They’d got engaged six months after they graduated, and Zoey had made it as far as addressing the envelopes for the invitations before she stopped and asked herself what on earth she was doing.
Grace and Ash had been waiting for her with a bottle of wine and a home-cooked meal at their new flat when she showed up, still gripping one of those damn invitations, and told them she didn’t think she could go through with it.
Disentangling their lives together had been hard, and Harry hadn’t understood what the problem was anyway, why she’d changed her mind so suddenly. But just one evening with Ash and Grace, seeing them clearly and realising everything they were that she and Harry weren’t, had made up Zoey’s mind for good.
She’d seen what marrying the wrong person could do to a couple—she’d lived with it growing up and, since her parents were apparently violently opposed to divorce, continued to witness it every time she went home. She hadn’t understood, for years, what had kept them together, but she thought she did now. It was fear. Fear of scandal and gossip. Fear of losing the very comfortable lifestyle they had from the business they’d built up together—nothing on the scale of Ash’s family business, of course, but enough that they didn’t want to lose it in a bitter divorce battle. And, given how bitter their marriage had become, Zoey had no doubt that if either one of them ever caved and left, it would be horrific.
She didn’t want that for herself, wouldn’t let herself settle for a marriage held together by fear of how much worse things might be apart.
She wanted what Grace and Ash had, or it wasn’t worth the bother of the fancy dress and the name changing.
She’d thought she’d found it over and over since then, with men who said they worshipped her, or men who promised to respect her, or even men who claimed they wanted them each to live their own lives, just together. But, in the end, something always changed. There was always a moment when she looked at them and realised that, behind their words, they all wanted the same thing: to lock her in to a life that would no longer be her own.
Every time, it came down to the same problem. Marriage meant sharing a life, letting someone else have equal say in her decisions. It meant giving up control—and most of all it meant risk.
Risking everything on the promise that this guy would be different. That this man meant it when he said that he just wanted her to be happy—rather than actually meaning that he wanted her to be happy as long as it fitted in with what he wanted.
She’d seen how awful marriage could be if you made the wrong choice, and she wouldn’t do that. If she ever finally made it to the altar and said ‘I do’ it would be because she was certain. That the risk was gone, because there were no doubts left.
Which seemed like a pretty impossible bar to reach.
Zoey sighed. Maybe she should just give up on the whole idea of marriage. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had the thought before. But every time she did...she remembered Grace’s radiant happiness on her wedding day, and the way Ash had looked like the proudest, most joyous man in the world, and she knew it was possible.
True happiness, true love, was possible—and Zoey wanted it.
It just seemed she was going to have to keep looking to find it.
Slowly, she forced herself back to her feet, brushing the sawdust from her hands on her soaked dress before wiping away her tears. True love would have to take a back seat for a while. Right now she had bigger problems.
First things first. Survive the night. Then go back after the wedding was scheduled to happen and explain everything to David. Given the lengths he’d gone to in order to make sure she was there for the wedding, he presumably wouldn’t be entirely surprised by her absence. In fact, he’d already know she was gone by now. Still, it wasn’t a conversation she was looking forward to.