Page 155 of The Sun & Her Burn

I was so distracted by my melancholy that it took me a moment to process her comment.

‘Giselle,” I said on a quiet hiss. “We are surrounded by gossips, be careful what you say.”

“Okay,” she said, but her mouth curled into a sad little smile. “You don’t have to say it, but I can see it plain as day.”

I scoffed but didn’t try to refute it.

I was shocked the entire room couldn’t see the love shining from my eyes every time I looked over at the golden-haired couple who had stolen my heart.

“What happened to Savannah?” she asked quietly.

I sighed. “I do not know if I have the kind of heart that can ever stop loving someone once that love is given freely. Part of me will always love her, but she doesn’t feel the same way. As I was waiting, two people came along and made it clear that I was waiting out of habit. That if I just turned my head away from Savvy, I might find something better.”

Giselle hummed, trailing her fingers over the stem of her wineglass. “I don’t know Savannah well enough to speak much on her feelings. Though, over the years, it’s become obvious to all of us that she loves you in her own way. But maybe this is better…can they love you where she couldn’t?”

Absently, I rubbed a hand against my aching breastbone. “As much as they’re able, maybe, given the circumstances.”

“Is that enough for you?” my sister asked, because she had known me my whole life and understood better than most what a voracious heart I harbored.

“I don’t know,” I murmured, shocked to admit it even to myself. “I hope so.”

Giselle leaned into my side, her familiar lavender scent washing over me like a cleansing balm. “The Lombardis have never chosen the easy path to life, but as someone who has made it out the other side to the happily ever after, I can promise you, the struggle is worth the reward.”

I caught the bright edge of Linnea’s laugh over the crush of ambient noise and followed it to the source, seeing her with her head thrown back, Adam’s arm around her waist so snugly, she seemed bound to him.

My throat ached with the need to be with them.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” I asked Giselle, taking advantage of one of the commercial breaks to go to the bathroom for a moment of much-needed solitude.

I only offered up nods and smiles to my friends and acquaintances as I weaved through the tables to the back of the room and waited for security to open the doors for me. The hallway and restroom were mostly empty this close to the end of a commercial break. If I did not hurry, I would have to wait for the next one to be let back into the ceremony.

“Meno male,” I said, thanking God for the quiet.

I braced my hands on the sink basin and breathed deeply for a few beats before running my hands under cold water and pressing them to my cheeks.

Could I live in the shadows forever, loving Linnea and Adam from a distance in public and carefully, always carefully, in private?

What of my own dreams of marriage and children?

Unbidden, images of a small daughter with Linnea’s Italian plum-purple eyes and my dark hair running with a little boy with Adam’s green gaze and dimpled chin flashed through my mind’s eye.

My gut cramped with longing.

Yes, I thought, as I stared down at Adam’s grandfather’s watch, as I looked at the kiss stain I’d been questioned about ad nauseum by reporters tonight, I could endure anything if it meant those quiet moments of loving them both.

I’d been born and raised both a lover and a fighter because I had been taught if you were not willing to fight for love then it wasn’t real.

And I was willing to do anything to protect Adam and Linnea, even if it meant living half a lie.

Resolved and eager to end this interminable evening, I twisted to leave the restroom and go back to the ceremony.

Only to find someone leaning in the doorway with their arms crossed.

I hadn’t seen Oscar Hampton in ten years, and even then, it was only once, at Pinewood Studios, when he had warned me off Adam and Savannah.

Still, I would never forget his narrow, almost pretty features and the slim, elegant lines of his body. Once, I had been jealous of him, of how he seemed to be Adam’s type.

I now had the evidence inside my sore ass thatIwas more to his taste than any other man before or since I’d entered his life.