That’s how importantheis.
Chaos is usually my friend. It’s what I can lose myself in, how I drown out my own feelings of inadequacy and fear, but right now everything is painfully silent. Just me in this room, and Karim, standing quietly by the door, awaiting the right time.
I am perfectly alone. Like I have been for years.
I grip the bouquet so tightly that the stems dig into the flesh of my palm. Music plays past the terrace doors.
Please don’t have another panic attack, I tell myself, and pull up the hem of the gorgeous dress to look at the loafers I’m wearing beneath. A classic pair of Mather & Wilde shoes. They’re wildly inappropriate for a wedding, but Sylvie’s dress skims the floor, covering them. But I’m not going to walk down the aisle in anything else. My dress is one of his brands.
The shoes are mine.
That’s what I’m doing all of this for. It’s for the people working back home, who have hand made our products for decades. The company my parents loved. It’s how I keep them alive.
The music changes, and Karim looks over at me. There’s a kind smile on his face. “Are you ready?” he asks quietly.
I hope Rafe pays him a fortune. Not once has he made me feel insane for the business-transaction-turned-marriage that he has witnessed close up.
I nod and take a deep breath.
Then I step through the doors and out onto the terrace.
Chairs line the path through the garden. There are dozens of people I don’t know and a small handful I do. And at the very end of the walkway, in front of the villa’s famous fountain, stands Rafe and the officiant.
One foot in front of the other. That’s all I have to focus on.
I keep my eyes on him and not on all the people watching me, wondering, thinking, evaluating.
Rafe’s wearing a tux that looks tailored to his tall body, hands by his sides and his dark hair pushed back. He looks at me with an expression I can’t place.
It’s not joy. It’s not adoration or love. It’s not any of the things he’s meant to project to the onlooking audience, the people we’re performing for.
He looks at me like he knows me.
Like I’m his coconspirator in this, his partner in crime, his opponent on the battlefield. The nerves slow down inside me. He will be there to catch me at the end of the aisle. He has as much at stake as me.
I reach him and hand my bouquet to Nora on the front row. She gives me an encouraging smile. It’s amazing that she can be so kind after everything.
I put my hand in Rafe’s. He takes it in his steady one and meets my gaze. “Breathe,” he murmurs in the lowest of voices.
I do what he says and look up at him. He looks so good. All brutal lines and smooth elegance, and he smells good, too. Some kind of cologne.
The vows are a blur.
We decided to keep them short, and I snuck in a sentence about how I love his tenacity.You never give up,I say, and know he’ll catch the true meaning of those words.
To me, Rafe says he’s never met anyone who knows how to push his buttons the way I do.
The crowd laughs, and I paint a wide smile on my lips.
“You may now kiss the bride,” the officiant says. There’s heavy expectation hanging in the crowd, the eyes on us a palpable thing. Like a cloak that surrounds us. I didn’t realize it would feel as heavy as it does.
Rafe leans in, and he smiles a little, pausing a few inchesfrom my mouth. “Behave,” he murmurs. He cups my face, angles my head back.
And then he kisses me like he’s won.
There’s none of the careful pretension of our first kiss at the charity gala. None of the burning desire of last night.
He kisses me like he’s done it a thousand times before. Like he knows my lips intimately, like I’m his, with a hot tongue that brushes over mine. And he does it all in front of this crowd of business associates and family and journalists who need to believe this is a real marriage.
