The Trouble with Love
Page 73

Poem?
She licked her lips but couldn’t respond, and his expression turned slightly desperate. “Wait, there’s more. The night of our rehearsal dinner when you told me you didn’t want to marry me…you destroyed me, Emma. Not just in the We’re in a fight kind of way, but in the heartbreak kind of way. Real heartbreak. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I…”
He scratched his cheek. “I threw my phone away. Actually, I threw it out the window going about eighty miles per hour on the freeway.”
Cassidy reached for her then, slowly, one hand resting against her cheek, the other coming up to join it when she didn’t reject him.
“Emma,” he whispered. “If I’d known you wanted to marry me…that you’d changed your mind…If I’d gotten even one of your phone calls, I would have moved heaven and earth to be there that day. I wanted to be your husband more than anything, Emma.”
Her fingers lifted to her mouth, stunned with realization. “You didn’t know that I’d called.”
He shook his head. “I went off the grid completely. I fled to San Francisco and didn’t look back. And that’s not an excuse. I’m not letting myself off the hook, because I still should have come home to fight for you, even without knowing you’d called. But I swear to you I never got your messages. I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”
“But surely your parents, your friends—”
“By the time I got in touch with anyone, I forbade them to even mention you. You’d be surprised how respectful people can be about a canceled wedding.”
Emma closed her eyes. “So you didn’t leave me at the altar. You thought I’d left you.”
“We left each other, Emma,” he said carefully. “We hurt each other. If we’re going to move even a little bit forward, we need to come to grips with that.”
“I know,” she said, her eyes watering. “I know. And I’m sorry for my part. I’m so sorry. You said it the other day: we were immature. Horribly so. And I’m not sure we’ve gotten any better, because if we’d just talked to each other like rational adults…”
His thumbs brushed over her lips. “There’s nothing rational about love.”
Love.
He loved her.
One of his hands left her face, and she immediately missed the contact as he dug a hand into his pocket and came back with…a crumpled receipt.
“What’s this?” she asked, taking it when he handed it to her.
“You told me that you wanted me to prove that I intended to marry you before your father issued his stupid proclamation about his company going only to family. I’d held off showing you this because of pride. I wanted you to trust me. To trust in our love. But I realize now that my pride’s gotten us nowhere. And I can’t blame you for being skeptical. The facts…the facts were damning.”
She still stared at the paper, not quite following.
“It’s the receipt for your engagement ring,” he said quietly. “I kept it, in case we needed to have the ring sized. It’s dated weeks before I asked you to marry me. That proposal was no scheming power play for your dad’s company, Emma. That was the real deal. I was simply a boy who asked the girl he loved to spend the rest of her life with him.”
Her eyes watered. “I didn’t believe you. I belittled it. I belittled us.”
His fingers closed around hers. “Read the paper, Emma. Believe it. Please.”
She looked up at him, even though he was a little blurry through her tears. “Where are the matches?”
“What?”
She spotted the discarded matchbox on the counter and wiggled free of him, reaching for it as she pulled out a match and lit the receipt on fire. She dropped it into the garbage can when the fire got too near her fingers, and they both watched as the flame sputtered out in the cold metal can. “I trust you.”
“Well,” he said quietly, staring at the ashes. “I guess it’s not the end of the world. Unless your fingers have gotten fatter, we shouldn’t need to resize it.”
“Resize what?” she asked, still staring at the smoking embers.
She glanced at him just in time to see him lower to one knee.
“Cassidy—Alex.”
Between his thumb and forefinger he held a ring.
The very ring he’d slipped onto her finger all those years ago.
The same one she’d thrown at his head in the fit of a righteous bridal tantrum.
“You kept it,” she whispered, staring down at it. It was a simple emerald-cut diamond, but she’d know that ring anywhere. She’d spent hours staring at it.
“I kept it,” he said, his voice husky. “I tried to get rid of it at least a dozen times, but…”
He shrugged.
Emma reached for it, and he pulled it back with a quick smile. “Nope. You don’t get something for nothing.”
His expression turned serious as he dropped his arm, the ring disappearing into his palm before she could reach for it.
She felt a surge of panic.
“What do you mean? What do you want?”
His eyes were earnest as he looked up her. “Love me?”
Emma’s heart melted and flew at the same time. And then slowly, deliberately, she lowered to her knees so they were at eye level.
Her hands reached out tentatively, her fingertips touching his cheeks before she cupped his face. Cassidy’s eyes closed.