Cold Feet in Hot Sand by Lauren Gallagher Page A

called it off?”
     
    She avoided his eyes. “Nick, I loved you. I wasn’t…”
     
    “I know you did,” he said. “I’ve never doubted that. But marriage means being compatible. Living together every day for the rest of our lives. You and I, we have different ideas about things. We want different things out of life.” He swallowed hard. “You deserve someone who wants the same things you do. And so do I. That is why I left. No other reason.”
     
    Her expression wavered between rock solid and ready to crack. “Then why were we getting married?”
     
    Nick swallowed. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
     
    Kristina stared at the coffee table. Then she sank onto the couch and let her face fall into her hands. Nick approached her cautiously, unsure if she’d want him any closer than he was. He sat beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. When she didn’t recoil, he
     
    put his arm around her.
     
    “Kristina, I swear on my life, I never meant to hurt you.” He pulled her against him and let her rest her head against his shoulder. “But I want you to be happy. I want to be happy too. And there’s no way I could go into our marriage honestly when I knew we were just keeping each other from finding the right people.”
     
    For the longest time, she didn’t speak. Her shoulders were hunched, and he could tell by the way she shook and the occasional sniff that she was, in spite of her best efforts, crying.
     
    Finally, she sat up. She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath, then looked at him. “Did you love me?”
     
    Nick blinked. “What?”
     
    “Just answer me,” she whispered. “Did you love me?”
     
    “Absolutely.” He brushed a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “And when I asked you to marry me, I meant it. I wanted to marry you. I wish I’d told you sooner when I realized things wouldn’t work out, but… I just didn’t want to hurt you. I still don’t, because I do still love you, Kristina.” He smoothed her hair. “And that’s why Deanna and I weren’t going to tell you what happened that night. It wasn’t that we wanted to lie to you or deceive you. We knew what we’d done was wrong, and we knew the truth would hurt you. Keeping it to ourselves meant you didn’t have to live with it like we did. That was all it was.”
     
    Kristina kept her eyes down. “Was it just the one time?”
     
    He chewed the inside of his cheek, hesitating to answer because he wasn’t sure if the truth would hurt more than a lie in this case.
     
    She looked at him, and her eyes were cold. “Never mind. Don’t — ”
     
    “It was the first time,” he said. “It wasn’t until after we came back from the island and tried to talk things over that we realized…”
     
    She exhaled, lowering her gaze again, and her entire demeanor deflated as her shoulders fell. “You have feelings for her.”
     
    Nick nodded slowly. “Yes.”
     
    For the longest time, she said nothing, and Nick couldn’t decide if she was fuming, digesting information, struggling not to break down, thinking. Finally, barely whispering, she said, “Do you love her?”
     
    Nick’s mouth went dry. How the hell was he supposed to answer that without pouring more salt in Kristina’s wounds?
     
    “Just tell me.” She still didn’t look up. “Be honest. Please.”
     
    “Yes,” he said softly, flinching when she did. “But that never even crossed my mind until after I broke things off with you. What happened that night, it just… I promise you, Kristina, it was completely out of left field for both of us.”
     
    She lifted her head and met his eyes. “But you have feelings for her now.”
     
    He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
     
    She lowered her gaze again.
     
    “I’m not justifying what happened between Deanna and me that night,” he said. “And I’m not justifying how much you’ve been hurt through all of this. But I think it was a wake-up call for both of us that we wouldn’t have been