21 Days (Time for Love 2)

“I get what you guys are saying,” I admitted. “And, yes, I did try to call off the wedding at one point, but Victoria was devastated you guys. She cried and begged me to take her back. She promised to be a wonderful wife, and to try harder to get along with you guys.”

“I’m sure she was upset, Scott, and I’m sorry for that,” Gaby said, pulling my attention back to her. “But Victoria, isn’t our concern… you are. If you stay with her, you will end up in a cold and loveless marriage, just like your parents had. Is that the way you want to live? Is that how you want to raise children?”

“You told TJ and I, at your house the night we were playing cards, that you were having second thoughts about marrying her… You asked us to “tell you the truth before you ruined your fucking life”… Well, we’re telling you now, Scott,” Cal pleaded. He stood up and walked toward me, laying his hand on my shoulder and looking me dead in the eyes, “We’re begging you … Don’t do it.”

I closed my eyes and stood, unable to look into the faces of the most important people in my life. “I have to g

o.”

“Scott …” Gaby pleaded coming towards me.

“Gaby,” I looked down into her worried eyes. “I hear you… Okay? I hear you all,” I looked each of them in the eye before turning on my heel. “I have to think,” I said over my shoulder as I hurried back out the way that I’d come. I tried to avoid their gazes, but the look on Gaby’s face was imprinted on my mind, and as I started up my car and pulled away, I couldn’t shake the image.

“Fuck!” I screamed out in my empty car.

I meant what I said, I heard them. Loud and clear … And I knew they were right, but I was a coward. A total fucking coward. I hated the thought of dealing with the confrontation that I would face if I told Victoria the wedding was off … Again. She’d flipped on me last time, and deep down, I knew that she knew exactly what she was doing. Victoria was just like my mother, a master manipulator, and she knew how to push my buttons. She’d known that I would cave at the sight of her tears.

I’d been trying to convince myself the marriage would be fine, that she would be the perfect wife for me, and the position that I held, and maybe we’d even be happy… but I knew my friends were right. I was just fooling myself. Victoria was exactly like my mother, and my mother was one of my least favorite people in the world.

I was going to have to man-up.

It would be better to end it now, before we were legally bound together, than to live miserably.

What Gaby said about raising kids cemented it for me. I didn’t want my kids to be raised in an environment similar to the one I’d been raised in. I wanted my family home to be like Cal’s parents. I’d always loved going there as a kid, and I still did. It was obvious that his parents loved each other, and their children. That’s the life I wanted.

I turned the corner towards Victoria’s and pressed the accelerator.