“What are you talking about?” I asked when I could speak again.
“For a girl known around town as the discovery queen, you sure didn’t do a very good job of checking your facts,” he said mockingly as he moved in to take me by the elbow. “Come on. Time to go home.” He looked over my head at Mack. “No harm, no foul, guy. You’re single. Might as well live it up while you can.”
I looked back at Mack and felt something like a knife entering my chest at the expression on his face. He was staring at me like I had done it, like I had tricked him into thinking he was married.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I let Bradley lead me to the front of the house.
The crowd in front of us parted and fell away. An almost clear path led from the banquet table to Bradley’s shiny silver rental car. The only thing standing in our way was Grandma Lettie.
Chapter Forty-Three
SHE FROWNED AT ME, BRINGING what looked like a hundred years of practiced shaming down on my head.
“Come on, Andie.” Bradley pushed me so we could go around her. I stumbled numbly to the side.
“Are you just going to let him boss you around like that?” she asked.
I was in a fog. I could hear the words, but they weren’t making sense. “What?”
“I said, are you going to just let him boss you around like that? Because if you are, you’re not the girl I thought you were.”
I looked up at Bradley and could tell he was at the end of his patience with the situation.
“Just let me talk to her,” I said, trying to keep him from blowing his stack.
His grip on my elbow tightened. “No. You’ve talked enough. It’s time to go home.” He pushed on me again, but I dug my heels in, refusing to move.
“Just let me talk to her for a second. Then I’ll go.” I owed the old woman that much. She was going to be hurt by all this too.
He let go of my arm and stood there, hulking over me like a dark, angry shadow. “So talk.”
I looked at the older woman. “I’m sorry, Grandma Lettie.” It took everything I had not to bawl.
“Don’t say sorry to me. Say sorry to the man whose heart you’re breaking behind you.”
I couldn’t look back. I just couldn’t.
“He’ll be fine,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as I was her. “Mack’s an amazing man with everything going for him.” I tried to smile, but my lips were trembling too much. “Now he doesn’t have to worry about a crazy wedding out in Vegas that made no sense anymore, so he can get on with his life.”
“Exactly,” Bradley chimed in. “Let’s go.”
When he tried to push me this time, I smacked him lightly on the arm. “Stop pushing me, would you? I’m not done talking yet.”
He put his hand on the back of my neck. He didn’t squeeze, but his threat was clear enough. He leaned down and spoke softly but menacingly in my ear. “The time for talking is over. Now get to the car.”
Grandma Lettie shook her head. “Poor girl. You are walking into the biggest mistake of your life. Why can’t you see that?”
“Grandma,” said Mack from behind me. “I think you’d better step aside.”
The minute the words penetrated the fog in my head, my heart collapsed in on itself. Pain like I’d never known before came rushing in to fill the empty spaces. Mack didn’t want me anymore, and he didn’t want his family trying to convince me to stay.
The crushing blow had been delivered, and it was everything I deserved. This is what people like me should get out of life. A life of happiness and wedded bliss is for other people, not me.
“If you say so, son.” Grandma Lettie stepped off to the side and disappeared from my view.
I took a step forward, guided by Bradley’s hand still on the back of my neck. I was fifteen again, being pushed into a back room by my mother’s boyfriend. He was going to teach me a lesson about life he said, about back-talking grown-ups and not doing what I was told. Not staying on plan. He undid his belt as he walked.
My shoulders heaved with the silent tears that poured out of me. My throat ached with the screams that I couldn’t give voice to. I imagined I knew in that moment what a person walking down death row must feel like, saying goodbye to the light of day and entering the prison of darkness, forever paying for sins committed.
“Andie?”
Mack’s voice rose above the din of the music and whispered conversations behind me.
I stopped but didn’t turn around.
“I think you’d better step aside too, babe.”
I stopped breathing for a full five seconds, my heartbeats slowing, slowing, slowing. The word babe was like a ray of light, penetrating the darkness that enshrouded me. A term of endearment so simple, but so full of meaning at the same time.
Bradley turned around, his hand falling away from my neck. “Don’t even think about it, cowboy.”
I heard footsteps in the dirt coming towards us, first slowly and then faster until they were running.
Bradley pushed me and I fell to my side on the ground. I was in the perfect position to see Mack make a flying tackle into Bradley, taking him down into a cloud of dirt.
Chapter Forty-Four