Michelle Major - Still The One

A hundred wicked images flashed across her mind in the space of a second. A shiver of anticipation traveled the length of her body, starting at the top of her head and leaving a trail of goose bumps from the base of her neck to the tips of her toes. She shoved away from him and crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly aware that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

His eyes gleamed black as night as he stared at her shirt.

She dug in her heels and blurted, “I already apologized. I left you the letter. Right after …” Her voice faded as a murderous expression crossed his face. “I thought you would …”

“I burned it.”

The words slammed into her with the force of a hurricane. “Did you even read it?”

He looked away for a few beats then jerked his head. “Before I burned it.”

Her eyes widened. She’d poured her soul onto those pages, hoping he’d come after her. She’d spent days in that hotel room in Charlotte waiting for him, wanting to start over and make a life together. Hope had faded into uncertainty and finally a despair that had left her curled on the floor of the hotel bathroom, the blood vessels in her eyes broken from crying so hard.

“Do you know what it took for me to tell you those things? You never …”

“Do you know what it took,” he shot back, “for me to stand at the front of that church waiting for you? Half the town watched me get dumped on my wedding day.”

Her anger melted away as fresh waves of guilt washed over her, filling her lungs until her entire body ached with it. “I didn’t dump you,” she whispered.

“Pardon me if I don’t get the terminology right. What would you call it? Jilted? Screwed over? Left behind?”

Is that what he thought? That by leaving she’d abandoned him? Maybe he couldn’t understand how it had hurt her to watch the pity in his eyes as he’d said he’d still marry her. She’d been so grief-stricken and ashamed, she couldn’t face him and the letter had seemed her only option.

If he’d burned the letter after what she’d written, she knew without a doubt she’d done the right thing. All these years later there was no comfort in that fact.

“Things happen for a reason,” she said, not believing it. Acid rose in her gut as she forced a smile. “The way I see it now, you should have been relieved. Didn’t I let you off the biggest hook in history?”

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