Harlequin E New Adult Romance Box Set Volume 1: Burning Moon\Girls' Guide to Getting It Together\Rookie in Love (19 page)

Everyone stared at me. I was probably just confirming their suspicions,that I’d lost it.

“Michael.” I turned my attention to him. “You left me at our wedding
.
Our wedding.
In front of five-hundred people.”

He took a step forward. “I know and I’m sorry, I freaked out. I made a big mistake, and I’m sorry—”

I cut him off with a wave of my arm. “No, no, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not angry with you. At all. In fact, I want to thank you for doing it.”

You could hear the sound of jaws dropping to the floor.

“You did me a favor, actually. In the last few days I’ve learnt so much about what I
really
want. I’d thought I wanted you, because you ticked all my boxes and fit into all my plans, but…I don’t want you anymore, Michael.” I took another drag and let the smoke billow out of my mouth. It made beautiful shapes as it curled and twisted in the breeze.

You could have heard an ant drop. You could almost feel the shock waves rippling through the room.

“So you want some tattooed junkie?” Michael’s eyes flared with aggression now, and James instinctively took a step forward. Bless his overprotective heart. Bless all of their overprotective hearts.

But I didn’t need them right now. I was more than capable of handling this by myself—I was smoking a cigarette, after all.

“Michael.” My voice was so calm. “What I want is for you to leave.”

Michael stared at me in disbelief, he couldn’t have looked more stupefied it I were naked and mud wrestling another woman on the floor.

“One day you’ll make some woman very happy, but I’m not that woman.”

Michael opened and closed his mouth like a fish.

He blinked his wide eyes.

He shuffled from foot to foot.

I could see him trying to process the info; and when he finally recognized what was going on, I saw his wounded ego fluffing it’s feathers and puffing up.

He struck an aggressive male pose. “You’re making a huge mistake. Huge!” This was his big clever retort. “You’ll regret this, Lilly. Trust me.” He turned and started walking out, but swung around as he reached the door. “But…but when it doesn’t work out with that weirdo, and he knocks up some hooker and comes home with a disease, don’t come crawling back to me. Okay? Don’t you dare come crawling back to me because it didn’t work out with the junkie.” He glared at me with such hatred.

“Junkie? Knock up a hooker?” I smiled at Michael’s ignorance, and then I laughed.

This, of course, pushed him over the edge and he said very some ugly things about me before telling my brother that they should lock me away and he’s glad he didn’t marry me, because I was clearly unstable, etc. You know, the usual wounded-male-ego-type responses.

He slammed the door behind him so hard that I thought the glass would fall out of the windows. My laughter tapered off and I flicked my cigarette outside. The others all looked at me, and as much as I wanted to explain it all to them—where I had been, the amazing Damien, what he was really like, how he’d changed me, the party, the new Lilly—I was too tired and I knew they weren’t going to get it or understand it all right away.

“I’m really sorry for causing all this chaos. I didn’t mean to worry you guys and have you come here, but…” I turned to Val and Sue first. “I love you guys. You’re my best friends. But right now, I need to be alone. I need some space to figure a few things out in my head. I promise I’ll explain everything when we get back home, but right now, I need to be alone. Please try and understand.”

I wasn’t sure if they understood, but they both agreed to leave only if I promised to tell them on the plane home the next day. And so I promised them twelve long hours of uninterrupted girl talk, which seemed to make them happy.

I turned to my family now. “And I love the way you all love me so much and are always there to protect me, but…I think from now on, you won’t need to come to my rescue as much.” I wasn’t sure if they all understood either, but they respected my wishes, too, and left. But not without allowing Adam to examine my head wound first. He concluded that it wasn’t life threatening and it wouldn’t leave a scar. My dad hugged me and told me that he was just happy I was all right.

And then I was alone.

I was totally alone for the first time in my life.

* * *

It was my last night in Thailand, so I walked down to the beach, sat on the sand and looked at the moon. It was a very mixed bag of emotions. The moon would always look different to me now and would always remind me of our night together. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing, to have a nightly reminder of him, but then again, I also didn’t want to forget him,
ever.
I wondered if he was also looking at the moon right now. And in the future, no matter where he was in the world, the same moon would always link us.

I looked at the calm, pale sea; it, too, was reflecting the moon’s light. And even though this was one of the most beautiful places on Earth, it did nothing to alleviate the complete heartbreak that was twisting my gut into knots. I took a deep breath. It was almost painful to breathe.

A tiny white crab ran past me on the sand, it stopped and looked at me for a moment before scuttling off and disappearing into its hole. I wondered what was waiting for it in its hole: was there a Mrs. Crab and perhaps some bouncing baby crabs?

Or maybe it was also a sad, lonely crab.

I smiled at myself. Even though my heart was broken, I’d also never felt so strong in my entire life. I kind of wish someone had secretly filmed that scene, because if I tried to replay it in my mind I couldn’t help but be amused. Where that inner, cool, calm, collected power had come from was beyond me.

Before coming on this so-called honeymoon, I was the girl who’d never eaten at a restaurant by herself, had always had a boyfriend, was always surrounded by friends and family, had never really done anything on her own, was afraid of change and paralyzed by the unpredictable things that didn’t fit into her plan. And sex, I was afraid of that, too. But I would be returning home totally different. I’d left the old Lilly behind at Burning Moon, but I’d also left a little part of my heart there. Sigh. Maybe you can’t have it all?

I wanted Damien.

I wanted him so badly, but I also knew that I didn’t need him.

I would be able to live without him; I wouldn’t die in his absence. It would be hard and painful and there would be a lot of tears, tissues and ice cream, but I would eventually get over him.

But I would never forget what he’d given me.

I was awakened. Changed. New.

I felt the warm tears start running down my face again. The breeze was picking up and the temperature was starting to drop. I looked around once more and, I admit, a part of me was hoping for the big Hollywood ending. I was hoping that the guy would come out of nowhere on the horse, ride up in the limo with opera music blaring, run through the airport chasing the girl and shouting. I half-hoped that I would turn around and see Damien somewhere, illuminated by the million-and-one candles he’d brought and lit for me.

But I knew he wasn’t going to be there.

And I didn’t want him to be.

I loved him, truly and unselfishly, and I didn’t want him to give up his dreams for me. He was the ultimate free spirit that couldn’t be tamed, and that’s what made him special and unique and so, so loveable.

As much as I felt different, I was also still not the girl who could disappear for a year and leave everything behind.

No amount of Burning Moons could change that, and the same applied for Damien.

It was like he said: the timing was just off. Maybe in a year from now…who knew? But right now, there was no magical alignment.

I got up off the sand and took one last look at the moon before turning my back on it and walking to my room. I was looking forward to a bath and some sleep, and by this time tomorrow, I would be back home. And I was okay with that.

Chapter Sixteen

Heartbreak.

Real, searing, pulling, ripping, burning heartbreak. The kind of heartbreak that affects every part of your body. It makes your head hurt, your legs sluggish and your arms feel too weak to even pick up the giant spoon of ice cream with chocolate sauce—so that you almost just end up burying your face in it.

I’ve never actually had a triple bypass or open-heart surgery—but that’s exactly how I imagined it would feel. No matter how much I filled my stomach, which was
a lot,
it didn’t transfer to the open cavity behind my ribs. And the worst part was that I had no idea what would fill it, other than Damien, of course.

That was my life, for the first couple of months anyway. The days blurred into night and the nights blurred into endless, hot summer days as I moped around my apartment with unshaven legs. Luckily my dad was also my boss, so he gave me some much-needed time off.

For the first few weeks I was a complete disaster, a basket case to top all other basket cases.

As usual, my family rallied around me. But strangely enough, it was Adam who finally slapped me to my senses. “You have to get up, pick yourself up and carry on. I’m going to give you the number of a psychologist colleague of mine and I insist you go and see him!”

I’d never been to a psychologist before. Sue had gone to one after catching Matt in bed with that other woman, and it had helped her tremendously. So at 4:30 p.m. on a Monday afternoon, almost one month after returning home from Thailand, I found myself sitting in the waiting room of one Kevin Stanley, MD. I didn’t really know what to expect.

His waiting room was an interesting place, and if I didn’t know his profession, I would have said anthropologist or archaeologist. The walls were awash with tribal-looking ethnic masks. One item in particular caught my attention. It was a disturbing thing with slit eyes and long fang-like teeth carved out of a dark wood.

“It’s a North African voodoo dancing mask,” I heard a voice say.

I looked up to see a man that looked nothing like Indiana Jones, and who I assumed could only be Kevin himself.

“It’s said to be a conduit that allows the spirits to journey into their ritual ceremonies.”

“Mmm, interesting,” I said, not meaning that in the absolute slightest.

“Would you like to come inside, Lilly?” He gestured for me to follow him.

The office was exactly what I imagined: a large mahogany table dominated the center of the room with a chair in front of it, facing a large comfortable-looking couch. Next to the couch stood a side table, very well prepared with a bottle of water and a giant box of tissues. But by this stage I had no more tears to cry, unless I wanted to dehydrate and shrivel down to the size of a raisin. Kevin gestured for me to sit.

An awkward silence followed. Was I supposed to talk? I didn’t really know how these things worked.

Finally he saved me from the toe-curling discomfort. “Do you know why I collect masks, Lilly?” he asked in a voice that you would imagine a psychologist to have. Soft, monotone and purposeful, as if each of his words was deliberately chosen to elicit a certain response in you, which they probably were.

“Um…” I looked at the walls and noticed that they were also covered in masks. “Because you like them?” God only knew why anyone would choose this form of decor—it certainly wasn’t to set his patients at ease, because I was now face-to-face with a gold, grotesque devil bird!

He shook his head slowly and jotted something down in his note pad. I wondered what the hell he’d managed to extrapolate from that single sentence of mine.

“Because my work, Lilly, is all about masks, Lilly. We all wear them, and it will be our job to find out what ‘Lilly’s’ mask is and to remove it, so that Lilly no longer needs to hide behind it.” He smiled a warm smile and jotted something else down. I mentally rolled my eyes, scoffed and sniggered—what the hell had my brother sent me to? I hated this kind of thing, this wishy-washy stuff that could neither be quantified nor categorized. And I also hated it when people used my name too liberally. What was going to happen next?

“And now we need to find out what mask Lilly is wearing. And why Lilly is wearing it. What does your mask look like, Lilly? Let’s find out how we can take it off, so that we can reveal the real Lilly. So, please lay back
Lilly
and make
Lilly
comfortable and tell me,
Lilly,
about your first childhood memory…
Lilly, Lilly, Lilly.
”

Needless to say, I never went back.

I walked out of his office that afternoon feeling very dejected and perhaps the lowest I’d felt throughout this entire ordeal. I didn’t feel like going home, but I didn’t feel like going anywhere else either, so I just stood on the sidewalk for a while and watched the people go by.

I wondered how they were feeling. Happy? Miserable? As I watched each and every one of them walk past, some to their parked cars, some to coffee shops and some to meetings and maybe even home, it struck me that I had to start walking, too. I couldn’t wallow in this anymore. Life went on. I would be okay. I would get over this and move on, even if it was one small step at a time.

So in that moment of clarity, standing there on the street corner, I picked my head back up, pulled my shoulders back and started with one foot in front of the other, albeit rather shakily. I knew what I needed to do to get on with my life. I needed to cut off all contact with Damien, because as long as the two of us were sending each other messages on Facebook and I was looking at his profile every two minutes, the longer it would take to move on.

But doing this would prove even harder than leaving Thailand. It was the severing of the last cord that tied us together, because every couple of days since I’d been back Damien would send me a message, nothing too hectic. Just a simple:

Hi,

Hope you are okay?

I’m in Vietnam now with Jess and Sharon.

Keep well,

Love

XD

But the messages kept me tied to him. Kept me desperately, hopelessly and devotedly in love with the guy that was a million miles away and totally out of my reach. So that evening, after a glass of wine to calm my shaking nerves and hands, I sent him one last message.