The Runaway Bride

Chapter 28 --- Hesitations

 

I did nothing the whole evening but to pace back and forth across our carpeted bedroom floor, unable to process the idea in my mind. We had arrived home three hours ago, and while Tyler had made a direct beeline for the television, I had rushed to our bedroom, where I had been running over the morning's events in my mind ever since.

 

I just couldn't shake the feeling that had risen in me as Tyler's arm had slid around my waist to catch me. It had been the same feeling that I had been left with two days before, when Tyler and I had shaken hands in the kitchen. 










It was a familiar feeling, and yet foreign all at once, like a pleasant childhood recollection resurfacing after many years of clouded had felt my skin tingle beneath his touch, and while my mind had known better than to let Tyler's lips anywhere near my own, my heart had been begging him to just close the distance between them with a kiss.









I had wanted nothing more than to brush my lips against his, to remind myself of what it felt like to kiss someone and actually feel something, to put an end to this god damn misery of being so stuck, even if only for a moment.

 What is happening to you, Diane!!!

And yet I didnt turn away, didnt deny him the opportunity that I knew we had both yearned for in that moment. I wasn't quite sure how I managed it; for such a huge part of me had wanted the contact more than anything.









But a much larger, more rational part of me understood that I shouldn't allow it to happen, and that  I needed to stay away from Tyler.








If I put my future ahead of my momentary desire, I knew that getting involved with Tyler Walton a second time would lead to nothing but trouble.








He had broken my heart multiple times already, and it had taken time to put the pieces together again. Wasn't those times enough for me? Really, was I willing to risk going through the aftermath for another time?

 

A more irrational, impulsive side of my brain wanted to argue that it was worth it, and that following my heart was always worth a shot. I wanted so desperately to know what my future would hold if  I just opened up again, if I let Tyler back into my life.








What would have happened if I had let Tyler go beyond that kiss? Would I have apologized immediately after, labelling the whole thing as a mistake? Would he have expressed how sorry he was for cheating on me, for tearing apart everything that we had once shared together?








Maybe he would tell me that his feelings hadn't changed, that he still loved me just as much as he had before, back when I had deluded myself into thinking that I was enough for him.

 

But it was that exact sentiment that turned me away from Tyler altogether, that reminded me that  my dream-man fantasies were just that; fantasy. If Tyler felt the same way about me as I did about him, he would have never been able to hurt me like he had months ago.








I knew what it was like to love someone, totally and completely, and to be able to devote yourself to that one person for what you hoped would be forever.








Tyler had made it perfectly clear that he wasn't that sort of guy, and that one woman could never be enough for him. Sure, he had been moments away from kissing me today, that much was obvious.








And true, I could no longer deny that Tyler must still have some unresolved feelings for me, or he was lonely, at the very least. But the idea of his desire being nothing more than leftover lust, a pent up sexual attraction... well, I, Diane Bustamante-Walton, just couldn't push that away from the front of my mind.