But they were onstage, so he couldn't do any of those things. All he could do was make it perfectly clear to each and every person watching that if they dared say even one word to either of them, or took a picture with a cell phone, they'd deeply regret it.
Shit. He couldn't stand this silence. Couldn't stand knowing how much Anna hated him.
Couldn't stand knowing how much he deserved it.
He got out his phone, typed in a text message.
He heard hers buzz in her purse and he thought for a minute that she was going to ignore it. But then she reached into her bag.
I LOVE YOU. PLEASE FORGIVE ME.
She ran her finger across the touch screen and deleted his message, then dropped the phone back into her bag, her expression not changing once.
What hurt the most was being so damn close to Anna, having a hundred things he wanted to say to her, and knowing that she wasn't going to hear any of them.
She was going to walk away from him before they got a chance to see what could have been.
And she would never believe that he loved her.
Chapter Twenty-One
"Mrs. Taylor, I stole your wish for your grandson and turned it into a horrible lie. I'm so, so sorry for what I've done."
Anna stood beside Eugenia's bed and waited for anger or tears or disappointment or all of the above from the woman she'd betrayed with a lie. Cole had wanted to come into the room with her, but she'd told him that this apology was something she needed to make alone.
Surprisingly, he'd respected that decision.
The other surprising thing was that his grandmother didn't look particularly upset about her confession. Anna couldn't understand it. According to the messages her sisters had been leaving her via voice and text and email, thousands of strangers were losing their minds on the Internet and TV over her fake marriage to Cole.
Shouldn't his grandmother be more upset than anyone?
"The truth is, honey," Eugenia said as she reached for Anna's hands and gently patted them, "love was never straightforward for me, either." She paused, held Anna's gaze. "And you do love Cole, don't you?"
"Yes," Anna admitted, unable to do anything but speak the truth now. "I love your grandson. But it doesn't matter. Not when I can't trust him."
"I know."
She couldn't believe his grandmother wasn't defending him. "What do you mean, you know?"
Eugenia sighed, shaking her head. "Just because I love my grandson doesn't mean I don't see his faults. He's bullheaded. Sometimes it's a good thing, like when he was chasing his dream to make a career out of football. But other times, he gets an idea in his head and follows it straight into a dead end." To Anna's surprise, the woman smiled. "Did he ever tell you about the first time I went to bail him out of juvie? He started talking back to me before we even got in the car, so I turned around and took him back inside. He didn't think I'd leave him there, but I did."
Anna shook her head. "He went to Juvenile Hall?"
"Oh yes. He spent a night in prison once, too."
Anna felt her eyes grow wide. "He was in jail?" She tried to tell herself she didn't care, that it didn't matter now that they weren't going to be husband and wife anymore, but she'd told herself enough lies already. "For what?"
"Nothing much. Drinking from open containers. Talking back to police officers. His father was just like that when he was young. Too much energy and nowhere to put it. That's when his father started flying, real fast planes that could take all he could give."
Anna could feel herself softening toward Cole. No! Just because his grandmother couldn't help but see the good in him, didn't mean Anna had to keep seeing it, too. She'd come here to apologize to Eugenia for her lies, not let the woman convince her to make the marriage real.
She needed to get their focus back on the apology. "I really am sorry about letting you believe my relationship with Cole was something it isn't. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me one day."
"Oh, honey." Eugenia patted her hands again. "I appreciate you coming all this way for me, but I don't think you really want me to forgive you for falling in love with my grandson. I think you should forgive yourself first."
"How can I?" Anna whispered. "I've lied to everyone. Not just you, but my family, my friends, my colleagues."
"Cole made his mistakes. And now you've made yours."
Anna shook her head, not willing, not able to believe it could all be that easy.
"I know you're hurting, honey, and I know my grandson is the reason for that. But I've never seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you. Like he's finally seen the sun, like he finally believes it can shine down on him."
Anna's heart almost stopped beating. "He needed to act like that so you would believe that he loved me."
"Oh no. My boy has never been able to get a lie past me. He loves you, honey. Funny thing about us Taylors--we're ornery about relationships. We do our best to act like we don't need anyone. But when we fall in love, that's it for us. Only once. But with every last piece of our hearts."
Anna didn't know what to say, not when the last thing she'd expected was for Cole's grandmother to sit here and talk to her about love. Blaming, yelling, hating--they were all easier than loving.
"If you could, would you take it all back? If I could clap my hands and send you back to Friday night and make sure that you never met my grandson, is that the path you would take?"
Anna opened her mouth to say yes, of course she would take back everything she'd done.
But the words just wouldn't come.
"Or," his grandmother said with such kindness, such understanding, "would you have loved him anyway?"
* * *
"I'll never forgive myself for what I did to you, Grandma." A flash of pain shot through him. "And to Anna." Cole's grandmother held his hand, so gently, as if he were the one in the hospital bed. "I took her innocence and broke it in two." "I'm angry with you, Cole. Anna's angry with you." His grandmother gestured to the stack of papers on her side table. "The entire world is angry with you. You've certainly got a lot of explaining and groveling to do. But anger fades."
"I don't care what the rest of the world thinks." And it was true, he never had. It was what had made him impenetrable. "I only care about you." His throat was almost too tight to say,