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“Is everything okay?” She didn’t know why else he’d call after they ran into each other outside the café and he took off.
“Do you have a minute to talk?”
Maggie looked at Rose, who was avidly watching her. The church was empty except for them. All of a sudden, she felt very out of place in there talking to her ex right before she was supposed to rehearse her wedding ceremony.
But she couldn’tnothear what he had to say.
“I’d like to hear what you have to say after all this time.”
“I’m sorry.”
She felt all the sorrow he put into those two words. “We agreed when we ended things that no one needed to be sorry for what we wanted out of life.”
“That’s just it. I didn’t want it to end, but I let you go because I wanted you to be happy. But all I did was make myself miserable without you. And when I heard that you were getting married barely a year after we broke up . . . If you say he’sreally what you want, I won’t say anything more. But if there’s a chance, even a small one that you still feel about me the way I will always feel about you, then I want you to know that everythingyouwant is what I want forus. If there can be an ‘us’ again.”
Surprise and shock zapped through her. “Joel...” Choked up, she barely got his name past the lump in her throat. “I... I don’t know what to say. I’m supposed to get married in a couple of days. I’m standing in the church waiting for my fiancé to arrive for the rehearsal.”
“That’s why I had to call. I did come to town because I knew you were getting married here. I needed to see you to know for sure that you were happy. But I know you, Maggie. I’ve seen the reservation in your eyes. I saw the longing in them when you and I spoke. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“I... I can’t.”
He breathed out a huge sigh of relief.
Maggie still had reservations about doing what her heart so obviously wanted when her head kept telling her that Joel had let her go because he didn’t want to have kids. That was a big deal. One you didn’t just change your mind about easily. One that took a lifelong commitment.
“I know I’m asking a lot.”
“You’re asking me to cancel my wedding and dump my fiancé two days before my wedding.”
Rose gasped, her eyes so wide, Maggie feared they’d fall out of her head.
“I’m asking you to believe in us, the love we share, and thatalthough I’ve been a selfish, childish idiot, I have taken the time to think about what I want, what I can’t live without, and what I’m willing todoandbefor the only woman I want to spend my life with.”
Maggie tried to breathe and think clearly. She’d wanted this call from Joel forever but it didn’t come those first few months after they broke up, so she had accepted that it would never come.
And now that it had, she didn’t know what to do.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. She did.
It wasn’t even the fact that she’d really put her parents out if she canceled her wedding at nearly the very last minute. They’d be upset, but they’d also want her to be happy. They’d been devastated to learn she and Joel broke up and why when they were still so much in love.
She thought of all the plans she’d made with Marc. They’d get married this Saturday, go on their honeymoon, move in together when they returned, spend a few months in marital bliss, then start working on the baby they both wanted. They’d be a family.
But am I going too fast?
Was it all going to crash and burn like the last time?
Her chest went tight, making it hard to breathe. She thought she might actually have a panic attack, or pass out.
“Maggie.”
“I’m here. I just... don’t know what to say. This really doesn’t feel real.”
“I shouldn’t have waited so long to tell you how I feel. ButI want you to know, this isn’t just because you’re about to get married. I really mean it. I want you. I want us. I want the life I know we can have together. You. Me. Our children. It was stupid to be afraid of us having kids and something happening and us destroying them with a divorce. I’m not my parents. I know what it’s like to feel abandoned and like a pawn in their games. I’d never do that to my kids. You’d never do that to them. And you know what I know even more than that now?”
“What?”
“I know how devastating it is to lose you and spend this past year wanting you back with every breath I take and every beat of my heart. I have been living with the loss of you when I should have been doing everything possible to get you back. So yes, Maggie, I’m sorry. Sorry for not telling you and showing you how much I love you. I’m sorry I was afraid of becoming something I’m not. And I’m sorry I denied you something we both want but I was too afraid to commit to until I realized, if anything, my parents’ divorce taught me what not to do to my kids.”
