The Wedding Boutique: A Sweet Small Town Romance (Blue Moon Bay Book 7) by Susan Hatler

Author:Susan Hatler [Hatler, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hatco Publishing
Published: 2019-04-16T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Alex suggested a walk through the park behind his lab after dinner and we strolled hand in hand along the tree-lined paths among the other college buildings. A cool breeze played a soft tune through the leaves and the moon danced in swaying patterns along the cobblestones. Alex’s hand felt warm wrapped around mine, and my heart skipped a beat every time he turned to smile down at me.

“I want to be honest with you,” he said, guiding me toward the left side of a fork in the path. “It’s not the easiest subject for me to talk about.”

I glanced up at him, but he was looking straight ahead. I’d been wanting to know why he held such disdainful views toward love and marriage since the moment he shot down my design for Missy’s wedding dress. I’d tried multiple times to get him to open up to me, but every time he blew me off or changed the subject or squirmed out of it some other way. Was he finally going to tell me?

I noticed a thick line of tension between his eyebrows and his chest seemed to rise and fall faster than before. “Alex, listen, if you’re not comfortable talking about it then you really don’t—”

“No,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I want to. It’s a little ways ahead.”

A few minutes later we came across a small cemetery connected to an old chapel used by the college. He opened the gate for us and we walked to a small stone engraved with the name Rachel Lee Hawthorne.

I looked up at Alex in confusion. I didn’t know who Rachel Lee Hawthorne was, but by the pained lines etching his forehead, he certainly did. A thousand questions flooded my mind, but I remained silent, giving him the time he needed to talk.

“When I was a kid,” he said, the muscle in his jaw tightening, “I went to friends’ houses for dinner as often as I could. I’d sit with their family, everyone at the table, and eat with them. We’d laugh and I’d even help clean up with them after. I loved being a part of a family where the mom would kiss the dad’s temple, or the dad would hold hands with the mom, or where one would offer to do the dishes while the other relaxed. Like the family loved each other.”

I remembered Alex having dinner with my family a few times when we were young, long before our kiss in the seventh grade. I wondered, though, why he was bringing this up.

“It was so different from my life at home,” he said. “I would lay in bed and pretend that my mom and my dad acted like that with one another. I’d wish we had dinners together where everyone smiled and no one fought. But it wasn’t like that at my house.”

“That couldn’t have been easy,” I said.

He shook his head. “There weren’t many times I remembered my parents being happy together. They were always arguing over this or fighting over that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.