“Then why wouldn’t we get married?”
“Because you don’t love me!”
I’m surprised by the force of her words, but she doesn’t even give me a chance to respond before she continues.
“And you never claimed to, so I understand that I’m the one… backing out of this or whatever, but I can’t do this to you. I can see that you don’t want to marry me anymore, Brant. I can see it plain as day, but you still will because you’re crazy.” She shakes her head. Then, with considerably less heat, she adds, “Because you’re—because you’re crazy and honorable, and I’m some pregnant stray you opened your doors to, so you’ll still marry me, but you won’t love me. You’ll never love me, because I made a stupid mistake once, and now you don’t think I’m worth trusting.”
“That’s not true, Alyssa.”
Her eyes widen crazily. “It is true! And you never really wanted to marry me—not when you were sober, anyway. The only reason we’re standing here right now is because I was awful, and I told Bri I was pregnant knowing what it would mean for you. I trapped you, and I knew it would trap you, and it was so awful, but you were being so mean to me, and you made me feel so wretched, and I just—” She throws her hands out wildly then drops them and shakes her head. “But you’re still mean when you want to be, and I love you now, so it’s so much worse. Before you offended me and hurt my feelings, but now you reach right into my chest, yank my heart out, and squeeze it to death in the palm of your hand.” Looking up at me sadly, like she’s at the end of her rope, she says, “I get it, Brant. I do. I’ve made mistakes, really bad ones, and I understand why you can’t let your guard down with me. I know you can’t love someone you can’t trust. I wish I knew how to make you trust me. I wish you could look inside my heart and see that I would never hurt you that way, that I would never hurt you at all. But you can’t do that, and I can’t change the past, and… I don’t know what kind of life we can have together when I love you and you don’t care.”
Sighing, I push her dress aside and sit down beside her on the window seat. “I do care, Alyssa. I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel that I don’t.”
Sliding me a sad look of disbelief, she says, “Brant, come on.”
Pulling back the sleeve of my tux, I check my watch and see that the ceremony should have started about ten minutes ago. Seeing as Alyssa just unloaded at least an hour’s worth of insecurities at my feet, I consider the need to hurry this along.
Looking over at her, I suggest, “How about we pause this conversation, I tell you you’re gonna marry me today whether you like it or not, and I haul you down the aisle myself?”
Alyssa cracks a reluctant smile. “You’re going to walk me down the aisle and marry me?”
“Hey, it seems more appropriate to me than letting your mom give you away,” I point out. “We are getting married today, and we have an awful lot of guests sitting out there waiting for us right now.”
Her smile fades, and that tells me she doesn’t just have a case of the jitters; she’s serious about not marrying me. “I can’t, Brant. I’m so sorry to have caused all this and then be the one to back out, but I just… I can’t.”
Reaching over and resting my hand on her thigh, I tell her, “I understand why you think I don’t want to marry you right now—I’ve been a real bastard lately. I don’t understand why you’d say I never wanted to, though.”
Laying her hand over mine, she looks at me with sad eyes. “Because I forced you into this. You didn’t want to marry me, you didn’t even want to date me until I blurted out that I was pregnant in front of your sister. You didn’t want it, Brant, I… I forced you.”
“And I forced you to fuck me the night we met,” I offer back, rather casually. “Sometimes we have to push each other a little to get things going. It all worked out.”
“Uh…” Her eyes are wide, her jaw a little slack, and she shakes her head. “Okay, so, we’re gonna talk about that, huh? Cool.” Shaking her head again as if to clear away my distracting points, she says, “Anyway, it’s not the same.”
“It’s not that different. It also doesn’t matter how it happened. I did want to be with you, Alyssa, I just couldn’t bring myself to…”
“Be with your brother-in-law’s slut-whore babysitter mistress without being blackmailed into it?” she suggests.