Chapter 19

**Skyler Johnson**

"Gabriel." I greet as Natalie and I walk over to them. I'm not very happy about him being here but then again, he can't be very happy about being here himself and that makes this whole thing better.

"Skyler." He says in a bored tone and I give him the fakest smile I can manage before looking over at Xavier who has a cold look in his eyes and I don't even want to know what's going on in his head.

"Nat, this is Xavier's best man and all around cave man Gabriel Summers." I introduce them while finding it ironic that they haven't met until now and I'm almost married.

"It's Gabe." Gabriel says and I roll my eyes at him. "Shall we get this over with? I have places to be and people to kill." He says with a bright smile and my stomach turns because I know he's not joking.

"You're not serious, are you?" Nat asks and the blond haired guy shrugs.

"Sometimes I am, other times I'm not. We don't just go around killing people because it's fun, chill." He says when he sees the look on her face.

"Can we just go in already?" I ask, already walking towards the door of the place, not giving them much of a choice.

"Hi, welcome to Cakes and Things. How can I help you?" The very cheery teenager behind the desk asks and I find myself wishing I could be as blissful as she is in my life.

"We have a cake tasting. Skyler Johnson." I tell her and her she nods.

"Of course, follow me." She motions as she walks out from behind the counter and leads us further into the room. We are lead to a table with a whole lot of cake slices laid out on it. "What would you like to drink?" She asks as we take our seats and we all give our orders.

"Where do we start?" Nat asks and I shrug.

"I don't want chocolate, black forest or red velvet so we can put that aside." I say and Gabe frowns at me when I mention red velvet.

"You can cross out that bar-one cake too." Xavier says and we move them to the side.

"Oh, and take away anything with nuts." I tell her because I have no interest in blowing up like a fish on my wedding day.

"You don't like nuts?" Gabriel asks and I shake my head.

"Allergic." I answer him and he nods, probably thinking of a way he can slip them in my food and kill me.

"Okay, so I guess we should start tasting?" Xavier asks, still staring at the many choices left on the table in front of us. The girl comes back with our water, coffee and tea and then we get to tasting. It's a long and sweet process but at the end of the day we decide on a five teared blueberry-lemon cake. Once we've settled the design for the cake we leave and head out to look at venues.

"Maybe we should just find a field and have the wedding there." Nat jokes as we leave the fourth wedding venue. "Or, we could just keep looking." She says when she sees I'm not laughing but I shake my head.

"That's actually a good idea, not the field part but." I bite my lip and think this over. There would be more than enough space because we only have three hundred people coming. "Why don't we just have the wedding at home?" I ask Xavier who looks at me with wide eyes.

"You want to have a wedding in my back yard?" He asks and I shake my head.

"No, I want to have a wedding in our back yard." I say and wait for him to realize what I'm saying.

"Are you sure? That's a lot of work fitting everyone in there." He says and I shake my head.

"No, it's not. It's big enough to host that many people and more." I say and he runs his hand through his hair. "Would you rather wait until next year?" I ask him and he shakes his head.

"Fine, we'll have a wedding in the back yard then." He says and Nat and Gabriel looks confused.

"The house we're moving into after the wedding, it has more than enough space to have a wedding." I tell them and they nod.

"I was only joking, you know." Nat says and I give her a grateful smile.

"Thank you so much for that joke. Now, who wants to go have an early dinner?" I ask and they all nod.

"Natalie, would you mind driving with Gabe? Skyler and I have a few things to talk about?" Xavier asks as we reach our cars. Natalie gives me a confused look but I nod, handing Xavier the keys of my car as he hands his of to Gabriel. Nat gets in with him and I get into the passenger seat of my car as Xavier gets behind the wheel.

"What's wrong?" I ask him as we drive away from the place and he glances at me before looking back at the road.

"I should be asking you that." He says and I frown. "What happened before we met up?" He asks and I tense even though I know he doesn't know I went to Tristan's house because then he wouldn't be asking me about it.

"I don't want to talk about it." I tell him and I pray he leaves it at that but he's Xavier and he doesn't like it when people keep things from him. Not if he thinks he should know about it.

"Bullshit, you had this look in your eyes." He says and I roll my eyes.

"What look?"

"Like your whole world came crashing down but you were okay with it." He says and I bite my lip, allowing silence to fall around us.

"I'll rebuild." I tell him after a while and I mean it more than I thought I would.

"You'll rebuild?" He asks and I'm not sure what he's asking me but the next words that come out of my mouth I also mean more than I though I ever would.

"You'll help." Neither of us tries to break the silence that falls over us this time but I can't help but feel that everything is going to be alright now. Like I got my answer and now I can move on and be whoever it is I was meant to be.

When we pull up to the restaurant Nat and Gabriel are laughing about something but I choose to ignore that, opting to have that conversation with her another day. I can't have her making the same choices I am and by the look I see in her eyes I can tell she's going to make them if I don't step in. I can't have her falling for someone like Gabriel because she wasn't born into this life, I was and I won't have her choose this life because she thinks she can't leave me alone.

As we sit down at the table my phone vibrates but I ignore it until it vibrates again. Annoyed I pull it out and open the text message, only to feel the blood freeze in my veins as I stare at the images on my phone. There's a bunch of them and I find myself creeped out the more I page through them and it seems like more is coming. It starts the day we went to meet Nancy for the first time. Xavier and I in front of the store and then on the beach, eating ice cream. Nat and I having lunch. Me standing between Lauren and Jenna, looking at the different dresses they have on the day we went to look at bride's maids dresses. Me standing outside a dressing room in a tiny robe , looking at wedding dress options. Xavier and I getting into the car after the spat with his mother. Me getting out just hours ago at the cake shop and then the final one where we're entering the restaurant.

"Skyler!" Nat calls and I look up at her. "Are you okay?" She asks and I look around the place before slowly nodding.


"I'm fine, just got a bit distracted." I tell her, pleading for her to let it go and she does. Conversation picks up again and dinner goes by surprisingly pleasant but my phone is still burning a hole in my pocket and those pictures are still burning a hole through my brain.