He looked awkwardly toward the bed and back again, closing his eyes to erase the image. It was now or never. He had to.
“Daisy, I’m so sorry to do this to you now. Believe me, if I had realized any sooner, I would not have chosen your wedding day, but...” He swallowed, opening his eyes and fixing them on her. “I broke up with Sophie. I broke up with her before I even knew that I am completely and utterly in love with you, and if I didn’t tell you now, I would never forgive myself.” His eyes filled with tears that he wasn’t expecting. He so desperately needed her to understand. “You once said to me that you felt like we didn’t need words to know what the other was thinking and I see now what you meant by that. I think that I... I could see you every day, or not at all, and it wouldn’t matter. You’re just in me, Daisy, all the time. Your words. Your gentle way. Your wide eyes as you consider something I’ve said. Your thoughtfulness. Your beauty. Your acceptance of me. Your strength.” He swallowed, taking a step toward her. He couldn’t read her expression. She was just watching him, motionless. “The flaws too. Your absolute inability to talk about yourself. The way you wear what’s wrong all over your face, but won’t speak up about it. Putting other people’s needs ahead of yours so that you’ll sit through an entire ice cream with a child to make them happy, even if it puts you at risk of harm. The time you gift others, but not yourself. I love you for all of the things that make youyou, and I don’t need to take a single photo of you to see you. I just do. I always have. And I think that you see me too. And as the greatOrlandosaid,” he went on, before stopping to clear his throat, “‘One can only believe entirely, perhaps, in what one cannotsee.’ I believe in all this, Daisy, because I cannot see it. I just feel it. I feel it, and I know that it’s true.”
He paused, watching her face and waiting. He hadn’t got the words exactly as he’d planned them, but it was close enough. It was the truth, and as Laura had said the other day, everyone deserves the truth.
Daisy let go of Tom’s hand, pressing a forefinger under each eye as she bit down on her lip, her hands trembling. “Tom, I’m getting married today. I—” She looked around her.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“I can’t... This isn’t... I’m already late.” Her voice was close to a whisper. Shaking, she moved for the door, her fingers on the handle. She turned back to look at him, eyes wide. “I can’t hear my own voice. I can’t... I’ve got to...” She signaled toward the door and he nodded, swallowing.
“Of course. I’ll...” He gestured to his camera. “I’ll go out first so I can... I’ll get some photos.”
She stepped back toward him, and the scent of her filled him.
“Zack’s a lucky man,” Tom said. “I hope he makes you as happy as you deserve to be. I hope...” He had so much more to say about everything he hoped for Daisy’s future. He thought about how to get it out in one sentence. “I hope he makes your life as brilliant as you make everyone else’s.” Tom closed his eyes, reached for the door and opened it, walking straight past the four faces that waited, once again, on the other side.
He walked down the corridor, heart pounding as he turned back to see Daisy on the arm of her brother, standing and waiting for Tom to start taking photos so she could walk to the man she was choosing to marry. He lifted his camera to his face and started pressing down on the button, over and over again. Looking down at his screen, a group of slightly flat faces stared back. He was going to have to become the type of photographer he despised.
“All big smiles,” he said, his voice a higher pitch as he fixed a grin on his own face. He couldn’t look at Daisy because he saw her eyebrows lower before she shook her head and wiped the expression away.
“Perfect,” Tom said, taking some photos. He continued to walk backward ahead of them, pressing down on the shutter and adjusting his zoom. He wasn’t capturing any of the photos they wanted and he didn’t know what to do about it. It was almost impossible to now that they were all late, thanks to him. The energy was off and there wasn’t one genuine smile across any of their faces, including his. Especially his. He’d have to do better at the ceremony.
With every step he took back and away from Daisy, daggers stabbed at his chest. It was a taste of the life he was about to live; a life without her.
“I’ll run ahead now to grab some of Zack,” he said. “See you at the altar.”
He turned his back on them and ran down the stairs of the hotel and into the outdoor area off reception, where the ceremony was being held.
First he took a few long distance shots of the white chairs on the lawn and the arch at the end of the aisle, with Zack standing beside it. Tom grimaced at the sight of him. Hertherapist. Could that be true? He had to remain professional and so he held on tighter to his camera, walking closer. Zack turned and locked eyes with Tom, nodding. He had his hands in his pockets and he was wearing black shoes with navy trousers, which Tom wasn’t sure about. How couldthisbe the man Daisy had chosen to marry? It didn’t make sense to him, but there was nothing he could do about it. If this man was who made Daisy happy, he had to support it.
At the sound of footsteps approaching from across the reception, the string quartet started to play the wedding march—yet another string quartet as the backing track to Tom’s heartbreak—and the sparse amount of guests stood up, filling the garden with the standard excitable mutter of voices as they all turned their heads for a sighting of the bride. Tom moved to stand a little away from the arch, taking a final photo of Zack with the cage of doves beside him before turning to zoom in on Daisy as she walked toward him up the aisle, to marry another man.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Daisy
Daisy was clinging to Dan’s arm in a desperate attempt to remain upright, her legs shaking beneath her dress as they crossed the hotel reception and prepared to walk down the aisle.
What the fuck had just happened back in her room? The timing of it was so typically Tom in a way that made Daisy dizzy, but she couldn’t think about that now. She absolutely couldn’t focus on the fact that Tom was—what was it he’d said?—completely and utterly in love with her. That he was no longer with Sophie.
Clara had been hissing at Daisy as she walked behind her. “Psssst,” she whispered, tugging gently at the back of Daisy dress, trying desperately to get her to turn around.
Daisy couldn’t turn around. If she so much as met Clara’s eye, then everything would fall apart, let alone if she repeated Tom’s words out loud.
She bit down hard on her lip, trying to stop his speech from filling her head, but she couldn’t do it. As she walked slowly toward Zack, her eyes fixed on his shoes that didn’t seem to match his trousers, she thought of Tom.
She’d always felt as though Tom got her—really got her—but she hadn’t prepared herself for the level of understanding hehad. And he was in love with her not in spite of those things, butbecauseof those things. All the things that Daisy hated about herself or doubted about herself, Tom had listed as reasons why he loved her. Reasons why she was someone worth loving. There wasn’t anything he wanted to change. Wasn’t that all she’d wanted to hear from someone? Wasn’t that, in fact, why she had been jealous of Sophie? Because Daisy could admit it now. She was fiercely jealous of Sophie for being loved by Tom. Tom, who saw the small good things in people they couldn’t see in themselves. Who really listened. Who would move to stand beside a stranger to protect them, without second-guessing it. Who would answer, earnestly, “I’m Tom” when someone asked him who the fuck he thought he was. Beautiful, unique, talented, heartbreaking Tom.
She couldn’t help it. Daisy lifted her head from Zack’s shoes and instead of meeting the face of her fiancé, she moved her gaze right by him until her eyes landed on the man standing under the arch of flowers, a camera pressed to his face as his index finger went down repeatedly on the shutter. She stared right into the lens as she kept walking and eventually Tom lowered his camera for a second, his pale blue eyes fixed on Daisy’s face, his lips slightly parted. He lifted one hand to his head, moving it through his hair so that all the effort he’d gone to in order to make it smart was undone. It was sticking up in places and Daisy wanted to reach her hand out into it, run her fingers through it, just to see what it felt like.
He looked right at her and she stared back at him, unable to draw her attention from his face. Could it really be possible that this man loved her? It was, because he had told her so, and she trusted his words. She trusted him more than anyone.
What was she doing? Daisy pulled her gaze from Tom and looked across to Zack who was smiling as he watched her walk toward him, his hands in his pockets, as though this were somecasual outing as opposed to his wedding day. There was a movement behind him and she was drawn, almost immediately, to the doves that sat in the cage. One of them flapped its wings, hopping up and down on the bar before resting again.
Daisy hadn’t wanted the doves. She had read that there were rumors wedding doves were kept in cages until the day of their release. Zack had booked them anyway, because apparently he didn’t mind things being caged. Had called her his little bird, even, and now she knew why. All those years ago, when he admitted his feelings for her, he had caged her. He’d kept her caged since. Maybe she had caged him too, in a way. They’d united under such terrible circumstances that it was easier to hold on to each other, but turning back to him now, Daisy could finally feel clarity forming in her mind, as though she had just dived into the pool and felt the cold water against her face. It wasn’t him she wanted. She wasn’t sure it ever was. It was just the first time she’d ever felt understood by someone... but then she met Tom.
She met Tom, and she realized there were different ways of understanding people, and Tom understood her in a way no one else did. In the way she truly wanted.
