After being jilted at the altar, Amber Gardner finds herself in a small beach town and stuck rooming with an unlikely person: her childhood nemesis Cameron, the man she is supposed to hate.
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Amber Gardner and her fiancé were together for two year...
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I FUMBLED WITH THE LOCK AS I HEARD AMBER TALKING TO SOMEONE IN THE ROOM.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
I put my hand on the door. The untamed thoughts swimming in my mind turned my knuckles white and my lips into a thin line.
Is she talking to him on the phone? Is she apologizing to him?
"I was a mess," she continued, her voice thin and rusty like she was holding herself not to break down. I knew it wasn't ethical to stand outside the room, eavesdropping on their conversation, but my feet were cemented to the floor.
I was pissed at her when I had no right to be.
"I am a mess, Pops." Pops? "How could I not see this coming?"
I rested my head on the door with a sigh of relief. She was talking to her father—not the asshole. I tried calming my heart, which was beating wildly in my chest. I knew she would talk to him someday, maybe forgive him—most likely. Take him back.
I was waiting for something that would never be mine—her heart.
But hope was a bitch, and I believed in signs. I went to her wedding ceremony to mark the end of my hopeless waiting, but she ended up in front of me, asking me to take her away.
I could show her I was no longer the man she once despised. I could be the man she deserved—that she could love back.
"Why do we let people walk over us, Dad?" Amber asked with a trembling voice. "Do we have to shoulder the weight of love and try to pick up the pieces of our hearts once they decide to leave? Why do they step out so freely, carelessly, but we stay behind and try to start over?"
Would it be indecent to barge in and hug her? I wanted to tell her that she just picked the wrong people. If she were mine, I'd never walk over her. Whatever weight or baggage she had, we would shoulder it together.
