Ashley Kelly's solemn reflection stared back at her. Her eyes should have displayed happiness and love, but instead sadness and regret pooled in their brown depths. Her heart felt what her eyes and face displayed and what her lips failed to say. This was her wedding day and she shouldn't have felt the way she was feeling, but Ashley would never be able to forget the way his blue eyes had tenderly gazed at her, the way he had made her feel, or the gentle words he had whispered, words that weren't meant for anyone but her to hear. But it was all too late now. Too late for them, too late for their love, too late for everything that could have been. She had pushed him away, pushed away Nick Carter, her best friend and the person that she had fallen in love with but had failed to realize until it was too late. Too late. Those words continued to ring in her ears, mocking her.
Ashley sat at the vanity of the brides' room in the First Presbyterian Church in Tampa, Florida. The voluminous skirt of her wedding dress gathered at her feet and her veil fell softly about her shoulders. Her chestnut brown hair was piled up on top of her head in curls. Nick had told her to wear her hair down for her wedding. The stiff curls and height were unnatural for Ashley, but her soon-to-be mother-in-law had insisted that Ashley wear her hair up. Mrs. Vanderbilt had insisted on every aspect of the wedding that would be attended by 600 guests, half of whom Ashley had never met. 600 guests who were there to witness as she pledged herself in front of God to a man she did not love, while the man she did love avoided the painful ceremony at all costs, avoided the pain that only Ashley held the power to prevent.
She should have realized sooner. Shouldn't have waited so long.
Should
have stopped lying to herself and to Nick. But she hadn't and now she
was
paying the price. Her mind drifted back to a night that she should
have
realized her feelings, a night that was one of the many opportunities
that
she had been granted but chose to ignore.
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