Her mouth tightens. “That’s bullshit.”
My teeth grind once more before I force them apart. She always had an uncanny way of reading me like a book.
“Are you regretting your decision?” She questions it without looking at me, like she already knows the answer.
“No.” My voice comes out lower than expected.
That earns her full attention. She turns then, eyes sharp and unyielding, the same look she’s always used when she’s about to strip a situation down to its bones. “You here to start somethin’?”
“No.”
“To save someone, then?”
Something in my chest tightens hard enough to make my breath hitch. My hand curls against my thigh, fingers digging into muscle like I can anchor myself there. I don’t look at her. If I do, I’ll say too much. “No.”
She watches me for a beat longer, then exhales through her nose. “You sittin’ there thinkin’ this ends with a miracle and a goddamn end-of-the-movie soundtrack?”
I shake my head once.
“Then why are you here?”
Pressure builds behind my ribs like something inside me is being pried apart one inch at a time. “To let her go. If I don’t,” I grit through my resolve, voice rough and stripped bare, “she’ll own me forever. I’ll rot wonderin’ if she gave us up without knowing she has another choice.”
Grandma Jo studies me in silence. Then she nods once, sharp and final, as if I’ve just confirmed something she already knew. “Wonderin’ will eat you alive. But knowin’… that hurts worse and heals straight.”
A breath scrapes out of me. “You always make things sound so damn practical.”
Her mouth curves. “Pain is practical. It teaches fast.” Her hand closes around my forearm. An anchor that doesn’t allow collapse. “You don’t do a goddamn thing today. You don’t interfere. You sit there, and you take it.” My jaw locks. A muscle jumps beneath her grip. “You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“You walk outta here wrecked if that’s the price,” she continues. Her fingers tighten once. “But you walk out knowing that you showed up. What she does with that is on her. I won’t have you turnin’ into a man who haunts himself.”
The room shifts around us. Conversations thin. Heads start turning toward the back doors. Grandma Jo straightens, smoothing her skirt, already braced. Her ironclad grip lingers on my arm. “Are you ready, kid?”
My heart slams hard enough to tilt the room, and I draw in a breath that doesn’t feel like it belongs to me.
And then, everyone stands. The music begins softly, almost cautiously, as if it understands the kind of moment it’s being asked to carry. The sound spreads through the room, and everything tightens around it. The doors at the back open, and light spills in.
For a moment, my mind refuses to settle on her. I register white before Noah appears—motion, fabric, the shape of something inevitable moving toward me, whether I’m ready for it or not. If I don’t look too closely, if I keep my focus unfixed, maybe this moment won’t finish happening.
She steps forward, and whatever resistance I had left collapses. My throat clogs with the lump that forms. Beautiful is an understatement. She’s stunning, stealing my goddamn breath like she always does. But something is missing—her spark.
Noah looks composed, like she gathered herself piece by piece and bound it all together with sheer will. The dress fits her as if it were designed around restraint. The lace at her collarbone leaves her shoulders bare, fabric that moves with her, obedient in a way I know she never has been. Her hair is pulled back tightly, but it’s loose at the edges, as if someone tried to tame it and failed.
She takes her first step down the aisle, her face calm, eerily so. Continuing toward her forever, she moves likeit’s rehearsed. The room begins to fall away at the edges. Sound dulls until it’s just the music and the heavy thud of my heartbeat, each pulse pressing harder than the last. My lungs forget their job, refusing to inflate and starving me of oxygen. At my sides, my hands stay loose, only because I force them to.
Her eyes lift and sweep the room the way people do when they’re grounding themselves, when they’re making sure the world is still there to hold them up. Is she looking for me? She shouldn’t be. But her gaze drifts to mine anyway, pulled by something older than intention, something she hasn’t permitted herself to name.
The world stops moving, sound tuning to the silence of her and me, and the melody of magic only we could make.
Time doesn’t shatter. It thickens, stretches, and fractures slowly, like bone under pressure that can’t be released. Her step falters—just barely—a hitch so slight no one else would ever notice, the kind of hesitation that lives in the body before the mind has a chance to intervene.
The question is written on the furrow of her brow.What is he doing here?
My reply twists my facial features.You invited me.Her breath catches, visible in the way her chest lifts too fast, the way her shoulders draw tight as if she’s bracing against a sudden wind.
Then it clicks. My neck swivels toward the altar, eyes catching on the smug grin widening Bradley’s mouth. Fucking dickface did this. I bring my attention back to Noah. The moment stretches until it feels suspended, fragile, as though the room itself has stopped breathing. And in that stillness, I say everything without uttering a word.
