Chapter 6
One director cleared his throat.
“Lucas, perhaps we should discuss this privately.”
“We can. With counsel present.”
Diana rose.
“You would embarrass your own mother?”
Lucas stood, too.
“You taught me that appearances mattered more than people.”
He looked around the table.
“I spent five years believing that. I'm finished.”
He resigned from the family foundation's board that afternoon and retained his own legal counsel to separate his personal investments from his mother's control.
He didn't destroy the company.
He didn't threaten employees' livelihoods.
He simply stopped allowing his mother to use the family empire as a weapon.
That evening, Diana called him seventeen times.
He answered the eighteenth.
“You've ruined everything,” she said.
“No, Mother. You ruined something beautiful five years ago.”
“I was thinking of your future.”
“You never once asked what future I wanted.”
There was silence.
Then Diana said, “I suppose you'll marry that girl now.”
Lucas looked out his apartment window.
“I don't know if she'll ever forgive me.”
“Then what was all this for?”
He answered without hesitation.
“Because doing the right thing isn't supposed to depend on whether you get rewarded.”
And he ended the call.
Saturday arrived beneath a pale blue sky.
At three o'clock, the Sea Rose Inn should have been filled with wedding guests.
Instead, the garden stood quiet.
The florist had already removed most of the arrangements.
Only a few white roses remained tied to the wooden arch.
Laurel stood beneath it wearing jeans, a cream sweater, and no engagement ring.
Becca approached with two coffees.
“You know, most brides spend their wedding day drinking champagne.”
“Most brides actually get married.”
Becca handed her a cup.
“Any regrets?”
Laurel looked toward the ocean.
“About Matt? A thousand.”
“About calling off the wedding?”
She thought for a moment.
“No.”
Becca nodded.
“Good.”
Laurel smiled faintly.
Then she reached into her handbag.
Inside was Lucas's letter.
She had read it every night since Tuesday.
Not because she wanted to torture herself.
Because she was beginning to understand something.
For five years, she had believed Lucas chose not to love her.
Now she knew he had never been given the chance.
But that didn't erase five years.
It didn't erase the loneliness.
And it didn't mean they could simply resume the life they'd lost.
“Becca?”
“Hmm?”
“I think I need to go somewhere.”
Lucas was sitting alone in his Newport apartment when the doorbell rang.