“I thought she would hate it and love my princess dress,” Nadia crosses her arms and looks at me with narrowed eyes. “I didn’t expect she’d be this hot. I thought I was her best friend.”
“Yeah, but he’s been yearning from a distance for years, meaning like you know Lily, but Alek like knows Lily,” Gwen says, standing and pulling Toni onto her hip.
“Fair,” Nadia huffs, just as her phone rings.
“Alright, I am going to put Toni and myself down for a nap so we’re not fussy during the ceremony,” Gwen yawns and starts walking to the door.
“Kenny,” Nadia snaps, and the tailor looks up at her. “Finish up, and see me before you leave to sign the NDA. Leave before signing it and I am going to have to make sure you’re permanently silent, okay?”
“Jeez, Nadi, no need to scare Kenny,” Gwen says, pushing Nadia to the door as she answers her phone in Russian. “Make up and hair will be here in thirty, Lils. Try not to get anything on the dress!”
The door clicks shut behind them, leaving me alone with Kenny the tailor. My heart is still hammering, because all I can think of is Aleksandr. All I can think about is the fact that I need to see him. I need to know how long. I need to see him look me in the eye and tell me that he’s wanted me for just as long as I wanted him. I need to make sense of all this kind of stalker-like, overly romantic gesture of planning the perfect wedding for me, because this is not normal. I mean this is amazing, but this isnothow normal people show that they like normal people. I just…I can’t breathe.
“Hold still, miss,” Kenny says softly, fingers deft as they tug the last loops of the corset tight.
“Sorry,” I whisper, forcing me to stand up straight.
“No worries,” he smiles. The fabric molds even closer to me, forcing me to stand straighter. Then with a practiced motion, Kenny ties the long silk cord into a neat bow at the small of my back. “All done.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding, staring at myself in the mirror. “Yeah,” I whisper, the word rough in my throat. “I just… I have to let the groom know just how much I know.”
Kenny’s reflection tilts his head at me, a knowing smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. He gives a soft laugh, light as the whisper of the train behind me. “You know it’s bad luck for the groom to see the wedding dress before the wedding, right?”
“Well, the groom normally doesn’t plan every single detail of the wedding.”
“You got me there. You’re a very lucky bride,” Kenny smiles, stepping back with a final glance at his work. “You look amazing.”
“Thank you,” I say, still unable to pull my eyes away from the woman in the mirror. My pulse is everywhere—in my hands, in my chest, in my throat. It’s reckless. It’s completely unlike me. But I don’t care. “Can I go?”
“Yeah, go get your man, girl!” Kenny claps, and I manage a breathless smile.
I gather up the train in both hands, the soft weight of the fabric sliding across my arms, and I run. Out of the room, down the hall, my bare feet silent against the floors as I search for Aleksandr, the sound of my own heart drowning out everything else. The silk brushes my legs with every step, the corset keeping me upright even as adrenaline tries to make me float away.
Then I hear him.
His voice rolls out from the end of the hall, low and edged with steel. “Either the shoes are here in an hour or I will go down there myself—and trust me, you don’t want to see me.”
That voice stops me for only a heartbeat. Then something in me—whatever wild thing has been pushing me all day—snaps into focus. My grip on the train tightens and I walk, then stride, then nearly run toward the door it came from.
I don’t knock. I just push the door open, stepping into the office like I belong there, like I wasn’t just standing in a room staring at myself in shock.
“Aleksandr?” My voice is softer than I want, breathless, but it stops him in his tracks.
He turns half an inch at the sound of my voice, but I blurt, “Don’t look!”
He stills completely, one hand braced on the desk, the other curled around his phone. His head tilts, confused and wary, but he doesn’t turn.
“I’m in my wedding dress,” I say, trying to sound firm, trying to sound like I didn’t just sprint across the house barefoot to find him.
There’s a pause—a stretch of silence that seems to swallow the whole room.
“What’s wrong, Lily?” Aleksandr rasps out, his tone low and rough. I watch him slowly remove the phone from his ear, setting it down on the desk.
He hasn’t turned around yet.
From behind, he’s devastating. The black suit molds to his broad shoulders perfectly, tapering down his back, the fabric stretched over muscle in a way that makes my mouth go dry. His dark hair is swept back but not perfect—like he ran his hand through it in frustration. Even the way he stands, braced over the desk with one hand on the polished wood, looks like a warning and a promise.
My fingers tighten around the fabric of my skirt. “So… Nadia told me some things…”
