The Wedding Shop (20 page)

“Yeah, well, we'll see.” Cole started off, trotting backward, taunting her, loving the liberty swelling in his soul. He'd not felt this free since before Tammy died. Since before she called off the wedding.

They'd arrived at the trees, the flag flapping in the breeze over Cole's head.

“I'm going to plant the flag and set up my base. No cheating, Morgan.” He grinned. “At least not in the first five minutes.”

“I don't have to cheat.”

“So you say, so you say.”

“Hey, there are a lot of disadvantages to being the baby girl in a family of four boys, but being the best at paintball isn't one of them.” She peeled off, racing toward her tree, running under the lowest limbs. She was compact, a cannonball, a lightning strike. “You best get going, Danner. I'm itching to shoot you.”

Cole watched her run up a tree trunk, leaping to catch onto the bottom limb, then bounce back to the ground and disappear among the dense trees. He was in trouble. Big trouble.

In more ways than one.

H
ALEY

I
warned you.” Haley breathed in the cold, crisp, beautiful air, her gun anchored on her hip, watching Cole limp toward her, his Tennessee flag all but dragging on the ground.

“That you were going to cheat like crazy.”

“Cheater? If that's how you have to guard your pride . . .”

“Give me
something
, please. I was humiliated.” Cole stopped beside her, out of breath. “But between you and me, well played, Morgan, well played.”

“Next time I'll let you win.” She laughed, turned for the house, and two steps in Cole tripped her up with the tip of the flagpole, sending her face-first into the snow. Haley scrambled up, protesting. “Oh, I see how it is.”

He feigned shock. “What? I don't know what you're talking about.”

Dropping her gun, Haley inhaled a cold, deep breath and ran at him with a rebel yell, hitting him so quick he had no reaction time. Tackling him to the ground, she scooped snow into his face, on his head, and around the back of his neck.

He tried to fight back but was laughing so hard he just laid there and took it. Haley rolled into the soft snow next to him and stared at the brilliant blue day, breathing deep.

“Thanks, Cole.”

He sat up, brushing the snow from his neck and face. “For
what?” He motioned to her torso. “You have no paint on you whatsoever. Please don't tell anyone about this. I'll never be able to show my face in town again.”

She sat up. “I already posted on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.”

He smashed a wad of snow in her face. “Ha-ha, I win. I win.” He tossed his head back and beat his chest.

Haley hit him square in his open mouth with a ball of snow. He sputtered, laughing, coughing, shaking the cold crystals, then regarded her for a moment.

“I had fun.”

“Yeah, me too.” She tried to hold his gaze, tried to see beyond his “just-a-guy-having-fun-with-a-friend” demeanor. Was it her imagination or did they have
moments
here and there? “Th-thanks for today. I needed this. Been a long time since I laughed.”

“Me too.” He angled forward to see her face. “Tammy's death took the joy out of life for a while.”

“I should've been there more for her. But I was so wrapped up in my life-sucking relationship.”

“She understood, Haley. Besides, everything happened so fast. She was so worn-out and weak . . .”

“When I made it to the hospital the week before she died, I cried in the hall at how emaciated she was. But her eyes, you know, I could still see my Tammy in her eyes.”

“She had an inner fire to the end.”

Haley looked back at him. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, but I don't promise to answer.”

“Do you see your dad? Ever?” Haley was at the community pool the day the FBI arrested his dad for fraud. She was there when his mom frantically demanded they let him go, declaring to everyone the feds were railroading her husband.

Cole shook his head. “He's out, lives in Nashville, but our paths don't cross.”

“What about your brothers or your mom?”

“Not sure about Mom. I think Chris and Cap do, but I don't ask.” Cole patted down the snow on his right, then shoved the crystals at nothing.

“Know what I've learned over the years, Cole? Good people make bad mistakes.”

“If they're good people, then why do they make bad mistakes?”

Haley had been asking herself that for the last year. “I wish I knew. But isn't your dad repentant?”

“Sure, once the feds got hold of him. He turned over and showed his belly. But he still bilked people out of their money.” Cole shoved up from the snowy ground. “I have forgiven him, Haley. After Tammy died, I got back to church and realized if God required my life from me, I'd not be ready to face Him. I didn't want to go into heaven with unforgiveness toward Dad. Not when God had forgiven me. But that doesn't mean I want to see him or have a relationship.”

“It's easy to walk out forgiveness from a distance.”

“I'm required to forgive, not have a relationship.” He jammed the flagpole against the ground. “What about you? Have your forgiven the person who wronged you?”

“Only a thousand times.” Haley fought to stay in a place of letting go, forgiving, not reliving the past. “My first Sunday back in church, I slipped in the back, and this sweet woman was preaching. She said the most profound thing I've ever heard in the most gentle voice. ‘The problem,' she said, ‘is most people talk as if we will demand an account from God one day. But the harsh reality is God will demand an account from us. He will owe us nothing but justice.' Scared the what's-it out of me.”

Haley edged around the rest of the truth. How her life with Dax took her soul places she never, ever wanted to go.

“I remember you were pretty much a Jesus freak in high school,” Cole said.

“Well, remove Jesus and you have just a freak.” Once she decided on a direction, she gave herself to it. No going back.

Cole laughed low. “What? I can't see it. Little, blonde, beautiful Haley Morgan a freak? Like how? You dyed your hair black and wore a nose ring?”

“Child's play. Externals. Symbolism over substance. I gave myself to my freakishness.” She shivered, the body heat she'd generated during the game was dissipating, and the cold settled in her bones. She shoved up from the ground. “I think I'll go. I'm getting cold.”

“As long as we're asking questions . . .” Cole pushed himself up with the help of the flagpole. “How come you never ask me about it . . . you know, Tammy and me?”

Haley squinted up at him through the shifting sunlight. “Ask about what? How much you loved each other?”

Cole regarded her. “She never told you, did she?”

“Told me what?”

Cole hesitated with a sigh. Then, “Haley, we broke up. Called off the wedding.”

“No.” She tented her eyes with her hand, trying to see his expression. If he was joking, he showed poor taste. “You broke up? A call-off-the-wedding breakup?”

“It all happened so fast. We broke up the November before last, right before Thanksgiving. So we kept it quiet. Didn't want to ruin the holidays. Though I thought she told you. She quietly canceled things and we figured we'd tell everyone in January. But a week later she was diagnosed with cancer, and we were in a swirl of surgeries and treatments.”

Haley stared off over the white snow-covered field. “She never said a word.”

“I'd have called you if I'd known.” Cole crunched a wad of snow in his bare hand. “The cancer took over everything.”

Haley glanced over at him. “Why? Why'd you break up?”

“She said she wasn't ready. Wanted to go to law school.”

“Do you have to be single to go to law school?”

“Apparently she thought so. Getting close to the marriage she realized she'd never gone on the adventure you went on. Said she'd determined at eight she was going to marry me and now at twenty-eight, that seemed foolish. Did she really want to marry
me
or her childhood idea?”

“I keep asking myself that about the shop,” Haley said. “Do you know why she didn't tell me? I-I can't believe she didn't talk to me about this. Of course, I was filling her ear with my woes.”

Was she so consumed with her fears and mistakes over Dax, how she felt betrayed, how she wept over the choice she had made that she didn't
hear
Tammy?

“She didn't feel good, Haley. I'd wondered if that's why she called things off at first. She'd been fighting blazing headaches and all kinds of stuff for months.”

“It hurts to know how much she suffered in silence.” Haley brushed a cold tear from under her eyes. “So that's probably how she felt about the wedding shop? Just a childhood fantasy?”

Maybe this whole wedding shop ordeal was a farce. She was only pining for something long gone—the innocence and hope of her youth.

“I don't know. Just that she never said a word to me about it.”

“And she never said a word to me about walking away from the only boy she ever loved? It doesn't make sense.”

“Looking back, I see how the onset of the cancer changed her. After the diagnosis, she really changed,” Cole said. “Guess I can say it now, but things had been strained between us. Got worse after we got engaged and the closer we got to the wedding. I thought it was just stress, but she was pulling away. Meanwhile, I kept waking up with dread, realizing I didn't love her the way a man should love the woman he's about to marry.”

“But you'd been together forever. How could you not have
known?” She was one to talk. How her emotions had fooled her. She stuck with Dax far too long. She had no gavel to bring down in judgment here. “Why did you propose, then?”

He shook his head, tossing another snowball into the icy wind. Overhead, thick gray clouds rolled in from the northwest. “I never officially proposed.”

“What? Then how were you getting married?”

“I don't know . . . We were talking about our relationship, the future, and the next thing I knew her parents were involved—you know how her dad can be—and they were pulling out calendars and setting a date. I left the house in a daze.”

“But said nothing. You went along with it.”

“Haley.” His voice spiked as he faced her. “I thought it was right. Tammy was beautiful, smart, talented, a good woman. Why wouldn't I want to marry her? Whatever hesitation I had seemed stupid. I refused to let my fears and wounds hold me back. We'd dated off and on since high school . . . Well, you know. You were there. If Tammy and I weren't meant to be together, why'd we keep coming back to each other? So I went along with it.”

“Wow. I don't know what to say . . .” Haley started for the house, stopped, then spun around to Cole. “This makes me angry. I'm sorry, it does. Tammy was my best friend. I can live with the fact she wasn't interested in the wedding shop, but breaking up with you? Being diagnosed with cancer? I wasn't there for her. In any of it. Only at the end.”

She was so blinded and stupid with Dax. The world could've spun off its axis for all she knew or cared.

“Being sick changed her, Haley,” Cole said. “As for the shop, I don't know that she wouldn't have come around to the idea eventually. Five, ten years from now.”

Haley started away, her boots slipping over the solid snow, warm tears stunning her cold heart. Was she just chasing a sentiment? A faux childhood dream? Haley paused outside the garage
doors, a reservoir of tears leaking to the surface, zapping her strength.

“It's just . . . I don't know . . . What's the point . . .” Haley fell against him, pushed by the power of her sobs.

“Shh, shh, it's okay, Haley.” Cole wrapped her tight, his strong arms holding in the heat of her tears. “It's going to be okay.”

The broken pieces of her heart spilled out—her sorrow over Tammy, over Dax—and soaked Cole's chest.

She molded into him, slipping her arms around his back, finding his steady heartbeat a calming reassurance. But when he drew her closer with an intimate, “Haley . . .” She pressed out of his arms, backing up, brushing her hand over her wet cheeks.

“I should go . . . I can't . . .” The wind muscled up, slapping against her with an ice refrain. “Not again.”

Cole reached for her but she stepped out of his grasp. “What are you talking about? What ‘not again'?”

“Cole . . .” She shook her head, shivering from the cold, from her emotions, making her way into the garage. “I need to go.”

“Haley,” he said. “Come inside. Warm up. Have some hot chocolate. We can talk more. Tell me what's going on.”

“I really need to go.” Being in his arms, being with him, felt like a place she'd wanted to be for a long time. But he wasn't hers. Never had been. More concerning was she'd barely washed the stench of Dax from her soul. Romance was the last thing Haley Morgan wanted or needed.

Inside the garage, she dropped her gun and gear on Cole's workbench, slipping from his fleece and his brother's camo pants. On her way out, she paused for one last thing. “Tammy
really
never spoke of the shop?”

“She didn't.” Cole held her arm with a light touch. “However, you should follow your heart, Haley. Forget what Tammy would or wouldn't have done. Go for what you want. If she were alive today, you know that's what she'd tell you.”

Haley raised her gaze to his, finding there all kinds of unspoken sentiment. “Do I? Because after today, I'm not sure.”