all entirely financial.
‘He might have mentioned the advantages of having control over which boats and sea planes arrived at—and more pertinently left—the island,’ Ash said diplomatically.
‘You mean he was trying to make sure I couldn’t run away.’ Zoey frowned. Was He manipulated my wedding venue choice a good enough excuse not to marry him? And why did she need an excuse at all beyond I don’t want to?
Because your mother is going to pitch a fit. Not to mention all the other people you’re letting down.
Not Ash, though. Even if he had gone along with David’s possibly nefarious scheme.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?’ she asked, trying to feel outraged and failing. ‘I mean, you’d let me marry a man who didn’t give me an out on my wedding day? What kind of a friend are you?’
Ash rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, obviously this is my fault. Zoey, you know that if you told me you wanted out then I would get you out—planes, boats and automobiles be damned. But, if you recall, you also told me—quite definitely—when we had dinner last month that David was absolutely the one, and that I wasn’t to let you get cold feet this time, because you’d regret it for the rest of your life.’
Had she really said that? It was hard to imagine somehow, here and now. Impossible to summon up that certainty again—and not because of the island, or his father’s pompous speeches. But because now it came down to it she simply could not picture spending the rest of her life with David.
But she had been able to once. She must have done, to say yes to his proposal. She’d loved him—or believed she did—and had been planning their life together right up until the moment they had arrived in paradise to get married.
People might laugh at her history of running out on weddings—and, yes, there had been a few family members who’d refused to even come to this one, just in case—but when she said yes to a guy on one knee with a sparkly ring, she always, always meant it.
It was just getting from ‘yes’ to ‘I do’ that seemed to cause her problems.
Her whole life with just one person—that was a big ask. And Zoey had seen first-hand what a disaster it could be if she picked the wrong one. Her own parents were a shining example of how not to do marriage.
And then there was Ash.
Ash, her only friend, who had been her best friend’s husband. Ash, who’d had the perfect marriage—until it had been ripped away from him and had left him broken.
Zoey bit her lip, contemplating the question she wanted to ask but didn’t know if she dared.
‘What?’ Ash sat up straighter, watching her. ‘Whatever it is, just ask, Zoey. You know I’ll help if I can.’
He always had. Ash was one of only two people she’d known beyond doubt that she’d always be able to rely on, ever since she and Grace had met him in the student union over a decade earlier. But she didn’t want to hurt him by bringing up painful memories.
On the other hand, she needed to know the answer, if she were to make a real decision about what to do next—not just bash her way through a window and hope for the best.
‘When you and Grace...on your wedding day. Weren’t you nervous?’
Unbidden, memories of that perfect English summer day came back to her. Grace, her best friend since junior school, ethereally beautiful in her delicate lace dress. Zoey’s rose-pink bridesmaid’s dress, a perfect match for the tea roses in Grace’s bouquet. The tiny stone chapel in their home village. The afternoon tea reception on the village green, with mismatched china and bunting strung all around.
And, through it all, Ash and Grace smiling at each other as if their hearts were on show. So in love, so certain that the future would be perfect, as long as they were together.
It hurt now to think of how happy they’d all been, never imagining that it could all be torn away from them in a heartbeat.
‘Nervous?’ Ash shook his head. ‘I was terrified.’
He hadn’t looked it. He’d seemed like a man whose every dream had come true.
If Ash had been nervous, maybe it was okay that she was too?
Or maybe it depended on why. Because Ash had gone through with it. He’d said ‘I do’ and promised his whole life to another person.
And six diamond rings later, that was something Zoey still hadn’t managed.
* * *
Ash took in the look of confusion on Zoey’s face and wondered how he could make her understand, when the depth and strength of his love for Grace had always been something he’d just had to take on faith, rather than pick apart and puzzle out.
He was telling the truth when he said he’d been nervous, but perhaps not in the way Zoey meant the question. It hadn’t been the wedding—all those people there looking at him—that had worried him, or the fear of anything going wrong. And it definitely hadn’t been the concept of marriage itself; the idea of spending the rest of his life with Grace had only ever made him smile.
No, he’d never been scared of committing to Grace. But he’d been petrified of not being good enough to deserve her. Even now she was gone, the idea of not living up to the man she’d believed he could be kept him awake some nights.
Sometimes, he wondered if it was only Grace’s belief in him, in what he could become, that kept him going after her death. That, and Zoey’s blind determination to drag him out of the pit he’d buried himself in the moment the doctor had told him the news.
But that was him. It was all so different for Zoey. For her, it was the commitment she was terrified of. The idea of forever with one person.
Not that she’d ever told him that. But Grace had tried to explain it to him once, back when they were blissfully happy in their extended honeymoon period, and Zoey had just run out on her latest fiancé.
‘It’s not that she doesn’t want to get married. She does, desperately, I think. It’s just that after so many years of watching her parents perform the perfect How Not to Be a Happy Couple show, she’s terrified of getting it wrong.’
That had been three fiancés ago and now, sitting in a tiny storeroom of a luxury hotel, watching Zoey eye up the too-small window as a viable escape route again, Ash had to admit that his wife had been right. As usual.
Hardly surprising, he supposed. Grace had known Zoey better than anyone in the world. Almost as well as she’d known him.
And now he and Zoey were all that was left, trying to muddle through together. She’d literally picked him up off the floor after Grace was pronounced dead following a frantic ambulance ride from the scene of a multi-car pileup that stole three other lives. In return, he tried to be the best friend he could to Zoey, to make up for the much better one that she’d lost that day.
Some days he was better at it than others. He hoped today was a good day. Zoey looked as if she needed it.
And she was still waiting for him to explain his fears.
