“You look very nice, Simon,” I said hoarsely, and indeed, it wasn’t a lie.
Simon was tall like my father, broad-shouldered and intense with his cold blue eyes. A divorce attorney at one of New York’s most ruthless law firms run by his very own father. Nepotism at its finest. But could I say anything, when I’d followed in my own father’s footsteps at Harvard and beyond?
My belly swirled with guilt. Choosing family medicine was a small act of defiance on my part, a way to try and steer my own ship, but it wasn’t enough. When I broke it all down, wasn’t I just like Simon?
The thought made me ill.
As the officiant began the ceremony, I found myself growing more and more lightheaded with every word spoken. I wanted water, a drink of ice water, or I feared I’d faint. Was I having a heart attack? I was in a room full of doctors—somebody should be able to resuscitate me if I keeled over. Could one flatline from complete and utter desperation?
I was starting to think the answer wasMaybe.
I vaguely heard the officiant say, “If anyone has any objections to this wedding, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
I looked out bleakly at the gathered crowd and knew that nobody would come to my rescue. I was alone in this life. I’d always known that, and I’d come to terms with ita long time ago. The only person who could save me was myself, and I wasn’t brave enough to try.
I looked into Simon’s eyes. I blinked, a long, hard blink, as tears trembled, and eventually skittered down my cheeks. Rebellious tears, giving away my deepest emotions. The only saving grace was the fact that nobody in this room knew me well enough to know they were tears of absolute despair, and not tears of joy.
Then I took a deep breath, and I felt something shift. A tiny something, a little tug. Like someone had taken the earth and given it a little shake in their hands, just to rattle things up. I kept my eyes shut, because I didn’t want time to continue.
I wished for time to stop. I wished harder than I’d wished for anything, and I wished I could vanish. Get swallowed up by a crack in the floorboards and emerge somewhere else on the other side of the globe, maybe India or Japan or the Maldives if I were lucky.
I kept my eyes closed so tightly,wishing, wishing, wishing...
And then I heard a voice murmur my name. A voice of darkness and passion and danger and heart, smooth as a calm lake, so crystal clear and sure. A voice that came from before me, but one that didn’t belong to my fiancé.
“Open your eyes,” that tempting voice murmured.
I followed his instructions, and something shifted as I took in the sight before me. I felt a jolt, a real tremor, as ifan earthquake had rattled the tectonic plates beneath my feet. I stared blankly into the eyes of a man who was not my husband.
I stood before this beautiful man in my wedding dress, my lips parted in shock, as I drank him in. For reasons I’d never be able to explain, being here with a stranger felt more right than the way I’d felt moments before standing in front of Simon.
Simon!I’d forgotten about Simon.
As I glanced out at the crowd, everyone had frozen. My mother was mid-dab of tissue to her eye. Simon’s nephew was mid-pick of his nose. And Simon—Simon had been moved to the side like a discarded cardboard cutout, a Fabio version of himself that one might find at a romance bookstore, stashed in a storeroom.
Even the realization that time seemed frozen was nothing compared to the way I felt when my eyes met this strange man’s gaze again. Unlike Simon’s glacier blue eyes, this man possessed deep, molasses eyes, a bewitching depth to their rich amber shade. A brown like layers and layers of bark on a tree, an age and wisdom behind them as if he’d been alive for centuries, older than the oldest of redwoods.
“Alessia,” the man said for the first time, using my real name.
It was the only name I loved, the name I preferred, the name that nobody else used. My parents had never likedit, declaring it strange and offbeat, a bit weird and not in a good way. Someone had once told my mother it was beautiful, and she’d tried calling me by it for a while. But the name had sounded odd, garbled coming out of her lips, like she was talking around a mouthful of marbles.
But coming from this man’s mouth, my name sounded like a melody. A song, a hymn that he’d written just for me—a string of notes that promised everything Simon didn’t. Joy and love and hope. Danger and adventure and passion. My belly leapt with anticipation.
“Who are you?” I whispered. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.” He gestured toward the church. “This was all you.”
“I don’t understand.”
When he turned back to me, a smile toyed playfully on his full lips. “They call me Silas.”
“Silas—”
But he interrupted me with a quick shake of his head. Then Silas opened his mouth to speak, but he fell silent before he could utter a word. His eyes had flicked to the dainty tiara on my head, barely visible beneath the curls. His breath hitched, and then he did the strangest thing. He inclined his head, ever so slightly, acknowledging me with the slightest of bows.
When Silas raised his head, his gaze was fiery and impassioned.
“You look beautiful.” Silas’s voice was a whisper between worlds, as if he were nothing but a figment of my deepest desires. “If I may?”
