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Chapter 27

CARA

It was a good thing that the seatbelt had more sense than me. I was very much into the kiss and Quinn’s hands on the small of my back that I forgot I was still strapped to the chair and when he pulled me a little briskly towards him, the seatbelt pulled back and brought me back to my senses.

“Oh my God,” I moaned. “We shouldn’t have done this,” I said in haste, unbuckling the belt and opening the car.

“Hey!” Quinn called out to me as I walked to my car while looking for the keys in my bag. “Hey, Cara, please. Let’s talk.” He touched my arm and I pulled away sharply.

“We are done talking today, Quinn! Please! It was just a mistake. You have a wedding to attend to for Christ’s sake! And I don’t want to be the person to ruin it!” I said, my eyes brimming with tears.

“Cara, please,” he pleaded but I was not looking at him anymore. My head was bent down on my bag and when I found what I was looking for, I pushed my way around him. “Please, let’s forget this ever happened. I’ll tell Bridgette to handle your wedding from now on. I don’t think I can do it any longer,” I finally said before opening the door of Bridgette’s car.

Quinn did not say a word and it even made the pang in my chest worse. Did I hurt him? But I only said the truth. And he did not give a big argument. He simply kept quiet.

So much for effort, I thought as I climbed inside the car and drove away, not looking back. If that was the last I would see of him, fine. I couldn’t be friends with someone who couldn’t make up their mind. He couldn’t just ask me to talk about us when he was still to be married.

BRIDGETTE

Ever since that night she and Quinn crashed my date, Cara had been looking and acting lonely. Yes, she told me what happened. She told me how they kissed after laughing about my most embarrassing day in high school. She told me how she pushed him away and decided not to meet him again.

So yes, I was now holding two jobs because Cara was too weak to even face the man that she love. But I quite agree with her. She couldn’t just say yes to Quinn while he was still engaged. And the moron hadn’t pulled the wedding off because his gold-digging girlfriend was still meeting with me.

Quinn never showed up in any of the meetings I had set up after I resumed my task of the wedding planner. Natalie seemed not to mind that her original wedding planner couldn’t make it because of a minor accident. She was all about how she would look in her wedding and how expensive everything would be.

I was itching for the moment that Quinn would show up so I could finally tell him he was being a jackass and that he should make up his mind. But maybe he was a jackass. Maybe he had been playing with Cara all along. Maybe he was not over what we did ten year ago and he finally made his revenge. That was the only thing I had never told Cara. She would definitely take it seriously and then she would even be more hurt.

Add the problem I was having in the hospital trying to avoid the gossip of Scott dating someone in the hospital and I was one messed up, stressed lady.

I had to constantly tell Scott that he should avoid going to our unit for no medical reasons but he wouldn’t budge. He would suddenly show up with a cup of coffee and he would deliberately forget about it. Of course, I wouldn’t always be the one to get the coffee. Sometimes, I had to give it to someone in the unit just to avoid talk.

But as the days went by, I was becoming happier. Some days, I would even forget I was not in my own body. And some days, I would have the strong urge to tell Scott about everything. He had become completely different from the man I met months ago. I had learned more about him than anyone he knew in the hospital ever did and it was killing me that I couldn’t tell him a thing about my big secret.