No. I won’t do it out of respect for her father. It’s Wayne Deluca’s dying wish to walk his baby girl down the aisle.

The rage I feel toward myself festers like an open wound, raw and angry and blistering for an outlet as I slam a fist back into the stone wall.

I knew Sammi was seeing someone. Even that it was getting pretty serious. But I did nothing because I thought I had time. Time to wait it out while she completed college. Time to finish sowing my own wild oats before settling down.

But time is a fucking thief, and I’m about to be left holding an empty hourglass, forced to stand by and watch as the last few granules—and the only girl I’ve ever loved—slip through my fingertips.

This all came out of nowhere: The cancer diagnosis. That big brawny man’s rapid decline. This wedding. I had to steel my reaction when I saw him at the rehearsal dinner last night, wasted away to skin and bones.

How could he be the same man that used to have me and Dane shitting our britches with a stern look?

Fucking Dane, man… This is tearing him apart. I’d give anything to fix this for him. For his mother, Trudy. And for Sammi.

Sweet little Sammi has always been such a daddy’s girl. While he could be a bit of a boar to the rest of us, that man was putty in her hands. She can’t be handling it well. And it kills me that it’s another man’s place to comfort her.

When I heard the news, I offered to pay for the best doctors money could buy—not that the Delucas couldn’t have afforded it themselves. No one in our affluent town of San Robles Shores is hurting for cash. But having more of it than I know what to do with, my first response to any problem these days is to throw money at it. There isn’t much the right amount of the mighty dollar can’t fix. But the harsh reality is that apart from some medical trial he’s so far not responding to, there’s nothing to be done. He’s too far gone.

It’s for this reason alone I know I won’t knock on that door. That I’ll bear witness from a pew in the second row to the woman of my dreams pledging her love and loyalty to a man who could never love her the way I do—the way I always will.

I took for granted that she’d always be there. Truly believed promises whispered in secret from two doe-eyed kids would win out in the end. Because love’s supposed to conquer all, right?

I thought we had time…then fate intervened.