Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) (40 page)

CJ started after her, but Arthur stopped him.

Elsie turned, probably expecting CJ and Arthur. In her moment of surprise, Natalie stepped forward, and Elsie stepped back.

CJ moved again.

“Mrs. Sparks,” Natalie said into the microphone, “on behalf of CJ and myself, we respectfully withdraw from the Golden Husband Games.”

Her voice, clear and confident, echoed throughout the hall.

She’d captured control of not just the microphone, but the attention of every last person there.

“My father has dedicated the last thirty-five years of his life to Bliss and everything it stands for. He was a wonderful husband to my mother, and I would give anything if she could be here to see this today. I would say there’s no one in Bliss who deserves this award more, but it’s not entirely true.”

A few surprised gasps went up from the guests. Arthur inhaled sharply. His eyes went shinier, and his chin wobbled.

“There’s one person on this stage who’s given more. A person who’s been both mother and father, both husband and wife. She’s been married to Bliss for longer than I’ve been alive, and God knows I’ve spent a lot of time hating her. But she’s been a friend to my father when he desperately needed one, and so she’s been a friend to my family.”

This wasn’t like the cupcake incident. Sincerity shone in every syllable Natalie spoke. CJ’s chest swelled. With pride. With respect.

With love.

He loved her. How could he not?

She was magnificent.

She turned, looked back at her father and Marilyn, her eyes clear, her shoulders straight, her voice strong. “Marilyn, thank you for all that you’ve done for Bliss, and for all that you’ve done for my father.”

She wasn’t just magnificent.

She was ten times the woman Marilyn Elias was.

And if the crowd couldn’t see that, they were blind.

CJ didn’t care what title the Knot Fest and Husband Games committees wanted to bestow on any of them. He hadn’t played for a title.

He’d played to win her. Even before he’d known it, he’d been playing to win her. To give her this moment.

Natalie turned back to the crowd. “Please join me in congratulating the Golden Husband, my father, Arthur Castellano, and his partner, Marilyn Elias.”

She stepped back from the microphone so she was facing them. She met CJ’s eyes, only the barest hint of a question in them.

He grinned.

She smiled back, and his heart soared.

Arthur turned to CJ. “Go on,” CJ said. “She’s right. You deserve this.”

“Her mother would be very proud of her.” Arthur blinked against his ever-dampening eyes. “I am too.”

While he and Marilyn approached the microphone, CJ ducked behind the row of husbands and wives still onstage. Natalie mirrored his movements in front of the other couples, and neither of them stopped until they hit the stairs.

He loved her. She was his, and he loved her.

“Natalie,” a commanding voice boomed around them.

They linked hands and turned as one. Marilyn stood at the microphone, her shoulders draped with a royal red robe. Arthur was beside her, trophy in hand and a red velvet crown balanced on his graying hair.

“By the power vested in me by the Knot Festival committee, I declare your mother’s spot on the committee to be yours for as long as you’ll have it,” Marilyn said. “Thank you for your own sacrifices and commitment. You will always be a welcome member of The Aisle.”

Natalie inhaled sharply, put her hand to her throat.

Marilyn’s head dipped in a single regal nod. She turned back and waved at the crowd. A crowd that was now whooping and hollering louder than before while the spotlight rested on the true star of tonight.

And there in the spotlight, with her entire hometown cheering her on, Natalie smiled.

She smiled so hard, so big, so thorough, that the force of her smile made CJ step back.

It was a smile of absolute wonder and happiness. The smile of a woman who had finally found how she fit into her own skin, where she fit into the world, and in a single instant, it transformed her from
his
Natalie to Bliss’s Natalie.

To the Natalie she’d always been inside, but never allowed to be outside.

It was beautiful.

It was beautiful, and it was terrifying, and it was wrong.

CJ’s gut quaked. Deep, deep down, under his lungs, behind his stomach. It didn’t start as a small tremor. It hit hard and fast. A shiver crashed over his chest. His shoulders bunched.

The spotlight shifted off Natalie. Arthur’s voice overtook the noise in the hall.

Natalie turned her blindingly happy smile on CJ.

The quaking slid down his thighs.

She couldn’t want to stay. To give more of herself to the Knot Fest committee. To sacrifice her free time. Her self-worth. Her family.

Could she?

No. No, this was wrong.

Natalie skipped down the steps, dragging him along. They hit the ground behind a floral arrangement the size of Mount Kilimanjaro, and her verbal floodgates opened. “I’m sorry, I should’ve asked you first, but Dad can’t even boil water, none of us can, and it felt so right, and you—you know you’re golden too. Right?”

He needed to answer.

Just nod.

Breathe.

But he’d done it again.

Again
.

He’d fallen in love with a woman who had a higher purpose.

“Will you stay?” he choked out.

He had to know.

He had to know that she thought more of herself than that. That she knew she was better than the games that went on in Bliss. That three sentences from Marilyn Elias—three sentences that didn’t include the words
I’m sorry
—weren’t worth shit.

He loved her.

He
adored
her.

He wanted her to have the life she wanted to have.

But he couldn’t stay here with her. Because if he told her he loved her, if he stayed, he’d make the same mistakes that had led Serena to leave him to go to war.

The tremors in his body reached his heart, and it doubled over on itself.

“Will you stay?” he repeated.

Her smile dimmed.

He’d broken her smile.

This wasn’t right. He didn’t want to break her. He wanted to save her from here. Save her from herself.

“Pepper’s offered me a place at the boutique,” she said slowly. Hesitantly. As if she didn’t know, which wasn’t like his Natalie at all.

But she wasn’t
his
Natalie. She never had been.

“It would be different, working for her,” she said, “and I didn’t expect this, but—but Bliss has always been home.”

“You’d stay.” CJ needed to shut up. He needed to shut up, and he needed to get out of her way.

But he couldn’t. Because he’d seen what she’d sacrificed to make this happen. He knew what she’d sacrifice to do it again.

And again.

And again.

Until it killed her.

Just like Serena’s sacrifices had killed her.

“CJ?” Her eyes were crinkling, uncertainty and hesitation dulling her glow. “What’s going on?”

He had to go.

Now.

Because she had to stay. She was
born
to stay.

To lead the Knot Fest committee into the next generation.

She had a destiny. A destiny bigger than her, bigger than him, bigger than both of them together.

Well, CJ, I’m off to war
.

He loved her.

He loved her, but he couldn’t have her. Because he wasn’t a big enough man to live through being second in a woman’s life again.

She put a hand to his arm. “CJ?” she said again. “What’s wrong?”

“Thank you,” he managed. It wasn’t sufficient, but it was all he had. He brushed a kiss against her cheek. “Good luck.”

It wasn’t enough that he loved her. So he did what he did best.

He left.

W
HEN CJ COULDN’T get his flight bumped up, he cleared out of the rectory and put himself up in a hotel room near O’Hare Airport instead.

He’d thought about bumming a room off Pepper, but she liked Natalie.

So did Jeremy.

And Kimmie.

And Fiona and Bob and—and basically, everyone CJ liked in Bliss.

Everyone who had liked him. Until now.

He hadn’t been more than three feet outside the civic center before his phone exploded. Even over text messages, his sisters squawked. And if they hated him for leaving, the rest of Bliss would too.

He gave Cinna his car, told her to spread word that he needed a break, turned his phone off, and disappeared from the world. Not from himself, but from the world.

When Tuesday morning finally arrived, when it was finally time to board his shuttle to the airport, he packed his bags, took the elevator downstairs, stepped into the lobby—and came face-to-face with Basil.

“How the—”

“Don’t underestimate a man of God,” Basil said.

Endearingly pompously, of course.

CJ’s ticket sat like a lead weight in his back pocket. “Got a plane to catch.”

“Taking the chicken way out, you mean.”

As if CJ didn’t know it. “Fuck off.”

“You’re a damn fool to not love her because you’re scared.”

CJ didn’t need Basil’s lecture.

He’d been giving it to himself for the last two and a half days. “She doesn’t need me,” he said.

“God only knows why, but she
wants
you.
You
. Don’t suppose it’s easy to love a strong woman, but before you get on that plane today, you ask yourself if you’re leaving because you think she’s better off without you, or if you’re leaving because you’re too afraid to be the one man who can stand by a strong woman and help her be stronger.”

Didn’t have to ask. CJ knew.

He was a worthless shithead.

Basil sighed the same heavy sigh CJ had heard Arthur make once or twice. “Don’t stay away too long. The girls aren’t the only ones who miss you when you’re off trying to kill yourself. And they won’t be the only ones who miss you if you finally succeed.”

Basil turned, head down—all his holy pompousness, all his obnoxious righteousness, all his eldest sibling insufferableness gone. He wasn’t Father Basil.

He was simply CJ’s brother, and truth was, CJ would miss him.

He’d miss Basil. And he’d be jealous of Pepper being around Bliss, of them seeing Jeremy and Gabby, seeing Kimmie, and Arthur.

And Natalie.

And Noah.

CJ squeezed his eyes shut. His chest was tight with grief and self-loathing and disappointment. And now Basil was walking away too. Leaving him alone.

Completely, utterly, miserably alone.

He was a dumbass.

Basil was right. He had a choice. Face his fears, or isolate himself for the rest of his life.

He could fail. Natalie could tell him to take a flying leap.

Or he could man up. Press past his fears. Be what she wanted.

What she
needed
.

Have a place in her life. In Noah’s life.

In his own life.

“
Dammit
,” he growled. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone. “When’s Pepper closing on the shop?”

Basil’s smirk wasn’t as smirky as CJ would’ve expected. “Now.”

“The hell she is.” CJ punched her number on his phone.

He loved Natalie.

He loved her, and he trusted her, and he would win her. Even if it took the rest of his life.

A
FTER CJ HAD fled the reception and then refused Natalie’s phone calls last Saturday night, she did what she’d gotten entirely too good at doing.

She picked up the pieces of her life.

Or tried to, anyway.

She’d packed herself and Noah, and they’d headed north. Initially, she’d intended to go to Chicago for a few days, but they ended up in Wisconsin Dells instead.

Chicago was too close. Too close to home, too close to old memories, too close for breathing room.

She’d fallen in love with CJ, but he didn’t love her back. And this week, he was flying out of Chicago. So they went to Wisconsin instead.

Being welcomed back into her hometown—it was surreal. Especially since, as of Tuesday, Bliss Bridal belonged to Pepper. Dad had given her one last chance to change her mind, but she couldn’t run Bliss Bridal by herself. Nor did she want to.

Natalie tried to lose herself in the water parks with Noah. On the Duck tour. Reading that Mae Daniels book while Noah was sleeping.

It hadn’t worked. And Noah—innocent, optimistic, perfect little Noah—had asked about CJ every couple of hours.

Watching the Husband Games had obviously been confusing for him.

Natalie could relate.

But how could she explain to a four-year-old that she needed a man who not only loved and accepted both her and Noah, but could also understand that Bliss would always be a part of her?

Derek hadn’t understood. Natalie hadn’t either. Not fully. But she’d grown up in Bliss. She’d adored dresses and weddings and being a member of the Most Married-est Town on Earth. She’d spent five years trying to flip that switch in her brain, to convince herself that the town was right to shun her, to accept that she needed to shun herself.

She’d been wrong.

So now, a week after CJ had walked out of her life, a week after she’d discovered what true heartbreak was, she was going back to Bliss. Back
home
. To make her own mark on her world.

Not because Marilyn had given her permission.

Because she’d given herself permission.

Playing in the Games, then standing on the stage and giving up her own grievances against Marilyn—Dad had been right that she’d needed a friend, and he had too—Natalie’s world had shifted into focus.

She’d accepted herself.

If she could accept herself, they damn well could too.

And CJ could—

No. No, she couldn’t go there. She had to stay strong. For Noah, if not for herself.

So Saturday, a week after the Golden Husband Games, while Dad was off somewhere enjoying retirement, Natalie dropped Noah at Lindsey’s. They were all due at Jeremy and Gabby’s wedding soon, but first, Natalie had a stop to make.