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I start to despair, to think there’s no hope…until one night in April, a year and a half after that night in the woods, when Fate conspires to give me one last shot at the one who got away.
Chapter 6
WESLEY
Present Day…
Weddings are fun. I love weddings.
Or at least I always have…until tonight.
It’s been over a year since that night with Tessa in the tent.
Eighteen long months of avoiding eye contact at family functions and exchanging polite smiles when I stop by Melissa’s catering company to fetch food for office parties.
You would think the awkwardness would have faded by now, but it hasn’t. If anything, it’s grown more intense, along with the attraction I feel for this incomparable woman.
She fucking haunts me.
Watching her dance at Melissa’s wedding in my parents’ barn is torture. In a sky-blue bridesmaid’s dress the same color as her eyes and a flower crown topping her chestnut hair, she’s the most beautiful woman in the room. Her smile, her curves, the way the dimple pops when she laughs…they all send an ache twisting through my chest. Every graceful sweep of her arms, every swivel of her hips reminds me of that night I can’t forget, no matter how hard I try.
I close my eyes for a beat and see Tessa silhouetted by the moonlight streaming through the tent, her full breasts bare as she leans over me, whispering, “We shouldn’t do this.”
But we did.
Boy, did we.
And it was filthy and lava hot and so damned wrong. Far more wrong than Tessa realized at the time.
The disappointment on her face the next morning, her shock as I explained my plan to exit my current relationship with as much haste as possible, made me feel like the lowest form of scum.
I wasn’t just scum; I was scum skimmed off a puddle of toxic waste filled with dog shit and chunks of soggy oatmeal cookie.
Opening my eyes, I set my slice of wedding cake down on one of the bar tables on this side of the barn, suddenly losing my appetite for sweets.
I showed Tessa I was a cheater, proving to her before we even got started that I wasn’t a man she could trust. It didn’t matter that I’d never cheated before and had no plans to do so again. Or that there were very real, very valid reasons I didn’t text her until hours later than I promised and had to delay breaking up with Darcy.
But Tessa didn’t want to hear my reasons. She didn’t want to hear anything from me. Her ears—and her heart—were closed against me for good. I’d fucked up in a way there was no coming back from. The only thing to do was move on and try to be a better man, using the incredible woman who got away as motivation to live in my integrity.
If I get another chance with a woman like Tessa, I won’t fuck it up again.
But there’s one problem with that plan.
There is no other woman like Tessa. I’ve been looking, believe me, but I haven’t met a woman I’ve wanted to take on a second date, let alone bring home every night. Tessa’s special, a unique mix of impulsive, playful, and sweet, with a lust for adventure that calls to the deepest part of me.
I don’t want to hike the Appalachian Trail with some other woman, I want to hike it with Tessa. That’s why I postponed my trip last summer.
And it’s why I didn’t bring a date tonight. I didn’t want to share Melissa’s wedding with just anyone, I wanted to share it with Tessa. Or at least be free to watch her from the shadows and beat myself up for screwing up my chance with her without interruption.
Which I’m managing to pull off quite well if I do say so myself…
Right until the moment her ex, Nate Spear, sidles up behind her, putting an arm around her waist.
Nate, who ghosted her without so much as a “see you later,” break-up text.
Nate, who stares right through her when they pass on the street, acting like she’s invisible in a way she confessed drives her absolutely insane.
Nate, who she once thought was her person, the man who would deliver the happily-ever-after she’s wanted for so long…
