Cold Feet in Hot Sand by Lauren Gallagher

somewhere.
     
    Nick was too restless to sit. Apparently Kristina was too, and they faced each other from opposite ends of the coffee table. No one moved and no one spoke.
     
    Kristina raised her eyebrows in an unspoken, “Well?”
     
    “Listen, we — ”
     
    “If you’re here to tell me why I should be okay with what
     
    you did with my sister,” she snarled. “I don’t want to hear it.”
     
    “No, I’m not,” he said. “This is about you and me. I want to bury the hatchet.”
     
    She laughed bitterly. “Oh, sure. Let’s get right on that.”
     
    “Kristina,” he said, almost whispering, “I’m sorry I hurt you, but I couldn’t in good conscience make those vows to you when I knew — and I think deep down you knew too — this wouldn’t last.”
     
    “What?” She threw up her hands. “No, Nick, I didn’t know it wouldn’t last. Not until you ditched me on our wedding day and then slept. With. Deanna .”
     
    “Really?” he said, gritting his teeth. “Come on. About the only things we’ve had going for us the last year are the house and the wedding.”
     
    She shifted her weight. “What do you mean?”
     
    “We’ve had planning the wedding, buying the house, moving in, all of that to keep us busy.” He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans to keep from folding his arms across his chest. “When we weren’t dealing with those? We either weren’t talking to each other or we were fighting.”
     
    “Those were stressful and time-consuming,” she said. “Of course they were occupying us.”
     
    “So what was going happens when we’d moved in and the wedding was over?”
     
    Kristina fidgeted again, almost squirming. “What do you mean?”
     
    “I think the house and the wedding were distracting us,” he said. “They were easy diversions. From the fact that we really do not get along that well. Not well enough to make this work.”
     
    “Is that why you weren’t interested in the wedding, then?”
     
    “Wasn’t interested?” He shook his head. “I was, Kristina, but you didn’t strike me as being very interested in my input.”
     
    Her eyes narrowed. “How often did you offer any input?”
     
    “You mean before or after you decided to go ahead with a location where people who were important to me couldn’t make it if they wanted to?” He exhaled. “It’s like you were so caught up in planning the wedding and making sure it was perfect, but it didn’t matter if key people from my end were there. In fact, it didn’t even seem to matter to you if I was there.”
     
    “Of course I wanted you there,” she snapped. “And if you didn’t want to be there, you could have said something sooner.”
     
    A million arguments flew to the tip of his tongue, but Nick bit them back. He wasn’t getting anywhere this way, and he only had a few minutes before she called time on this discussion.
     
    Ignoring his pounding heart and the sick feeling in his stomach, he said, “I want you to answer something. Just be honest.”
     
    She tightened her arms across her chest. “Fine.”
     
    “Do you really think you and I would have been happy?”
     
    Kristina jumped like he’d shocked her. “What kind of question is that?”
     
    “One that we should both think about,” he said. “If we’d gotten married and none of the rest of this had happened — ”
     
    “You expect me to answer that now that I know you’ve had the hots for my sister all this time?”
     
    He exhaled, resisting the urge to do so impatiently. “I never touched her, or even thought about touching her, until after I left. I swear it.”
     
    Kristina clenched her jaw, but didn’t respond.
     
    “Think about it,” Nick went on, keeping his voice gentle. “Once the wedding was over, and it was just you and me for the rest of our lives…” He raised his eyebrows. “Would we have been happy? Or would we have just tolerated each other until one of us finally pulled the trigger and