I drop my gaze fast and hate myself for the heat that follows me down, crawling up the back of my neck and spreading across my collarbones like I've been caught doing something weird. I spent four years in Paris deliberately unlearning this, teaching my body that men are not something to want, that attraction is just your nervous system lying to you. Four years. Now one look at Rafael Caruso and apparently all of that work means nothing.
Useless. Absolutely useless. Well, thank you Mrs Youtube Therapist.
I assume I'm late. That we interrupted something. That the bride is somewhere in the back waiting for guests to sit down so the ceremony can start.
I move toward the pews on the right but father's hand tightens on my arm. "The seats are in front."
Front seats are for family. Immediate family. Parents and siblings of the bride and groom.
So why the hell are we supposed to sit there??
I don't question him as he steers me toward the aisle not wanting to draw attention.
I look back for Laura and that's when I see it. Two women in dark dresses have appeared from nowhere, taking her by the hands, guiding her gently but firmly toward a pew near the back. Laura lets them, because she's learned to not make scenes, and my chest cracks open watching it.
"Wait!” The word comes out before I can stop it. I pull against my father's grip, turning back toward her. "Laura comes with me."
Father's fingers close around my arm like a vice. Not painful enough to be obvious. Painful enough to be a message. "She'll be fine."
I glare at him. "She doesn't know anyone here. Why would she stay separately?"
"She'll be fine, Gia." His voice drops half a degree.
Laura looks back at me over her shoulder. Her eyes are wide and its obviously she's trying to read my face to know if she should panic or not. I make myself look calm. I make myself smile at her, small and steady.
It’s fine, Sweetie, nothing is wrong.
Only, everything is wrong, I just don’t know exactly why.
One of the women says something to her and Laura turns back around, and they guide her into a pew, I watch her small shoulders settle.
I will burn this entire world down before anything touches her.
But I let father steer me down the aisle because making a scene right now helps no one, least of all her.
The church is silent except for the click of my heels on stone.
Every step echoes.
Every face turns.
Whispers move through the room, barely audible but unmistakable. I can feel them picking me apart. The ghost daughter who disappeared and came back different. The girl who left at nineteen and returned at twenty-four with harder eyes and better posture.
I get it, hot gossip, but look the fuck away. Save the ogling for the bride.
I feel exposed walking this path, ridiculous in my dress and heels, my father's hand on my arm like I'm being delivered somewhere. Like I'm being escorted.
Like I'm the one getting married.
The thought slips in and I shove it out immediately because it's paranoid and absurd and the kind of thinking that happens when you've spent too many years looking over your shoulder.
But the dread in my stomach doesn't care what I call it. It spreads anyway, cold and slow, up through my ribs and into my throat.
We're halfway down the aisle. Rafael is twenty feet away. Fifteen. Ten.
He hasn't moved. Hasn't looked away. Just stands there watching me approach with an expression I can't read, somewhere between calculation and recognition, like he can see into the darkest depths of my soul.
Stop looking at me like that.
