For often times, grief is the price we pay for love.
-'♡'-
She spent seven years burying her feelings for him. Now, he's marrying someone else - and asking her to be his best man. Charlotte Everhart is a...
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CHARLOTTE HATES GOING to weddings.
It wasn't limited to just weddings — social gatherings of any sort, baby showers, potluck dinners, were the one thing she always tried to avoid whenever the occasion came up. The idea of standing around in a venue with people, sweaty and enthusiastic while forcing small talk wasn't exactly her idea of ending off a tiring week after work.
But when she received an invitation to her ex-boyfriend Declan Montgomery's engagement party six weeks ago, she knew that there was no getting out of it.
They had split up amicably two years ago, and despite her practice of not keeping in touch with any of her exes, Declan had become the exception. He remained a good friend of hers afterwards, and if it wasn't for him being such a genuinely nice guy, Charlotte wouldn't have kept in contact with him at all.
Luckily for her, she was entitled to one guest, and she knew that there was no one better to invite than Jasper.
She knew she could depend on him to entertain the swarm of people that were going to be there, carrying the conversation for her in the event her social battery ran out, which she knows will happen once she's there.
That, and the fact that Declan's fiance was Jasper's longtime ex-girlfriend, Chloe Kensington. Unlike Charlotte, Jasper's relationship with Chloe had ended messily. They were together for three years until he found out that Chloe had been seeing someone else behind his back.
He never found out who the man was, never wanted to either, but when Charlotte had shown him the crisp, white letter the day she had received her invite, everything had clicked.
The four of them had known each other in college, occasionally hanging out together with a group of friends. Declan and Chloe though, had always seemed too close to be friends for people who were attached, and the card had Jasper scowling at Charlotte, who offered him a sorry but I-told-you-so look.
Knowing that Jasper wasn't going to miss out on the opportunity to show his ex-girlfriend that he was doing better, Charlotte had convinced him to come to the party as her date.
It hadn't been an easy task, with him repeatedly telling her that she was out of her mind if she thought that he was ever going to his ex-girlfriend's wedding — but after three weeks of pestering and pleading, he had given in to her request, though not without showing his obvious discontentment with the whole situation.
"Do we really have to go to this stupid thing?" Jasper grumbles, fiddling with his tie.
As usual, his hair is slicked back with precision, but instead of sporting his blue scrubs, he dons a smart gray suit tonight, looking absolutely dashing. Over the years, his once vibrant auburn hair had deepened to a darker shade, now often resembling maple brown. Someone meeting Jasper for the first time would never have guessed that he was born with red hair.
