But I do anyway.
Unknown Number
White suits you. Always has.
My breath catches, sharp and traitorous.
Another vibration.
Shame it’s not for the right man.
I feel it then—that slow, deliberate unravelling inside my chest. Like a thread being pulled, one patient inch at a time.
I don’t reply. I don’t dare.
The consultant is talking about alterations, about timelines, about how “lucky” we are that the atelier can prioritise us. Noahstands, circles me once, and adjusts the fall of the fabric at my hip himself. His touch is clinical. Proprietary.
“Perfect,” he says. “We’ll take it.”
My phone buzzes again.
Two days.
That’s ambitious.
I swallow hard, my fingers curling into the silk.
Noah’s hand closes around my wrist.
He doesn’t look at my phone. He doesn’t need to.
“You’re very quiet,” he observes. “Is everything all right?”
I lift my chin. Force my smile.
“Of course,” I say. “It’s just… a lot.”
His grip tightens, just enough to remind me of yesterday. Of blood. Of promises made without witnesses.
“It will be over soon,” he says softly. “Then you’ll be safe.”
Safe.
The word tastes like ash.
As we move on to cake tastings—tiers of sugar and buttercream and obscene excess—I sit between Noah and a woman explaining flavour profiles, nodding, smiling, pretending my life isn’t being compressed into a forty-eight-hour countdown.
My phone vibrates again, hidden beneath the table.
I’ll see you before he does.
I don’t know how Kai knows.
I don’t know how he’s everywhere.
But as Noah reaches for my hand, his fingers closing possessively around mine, I realise something with terrifying clarity:
This wedding isn’t about love.
