“Cold feet?”
I look back at the mirror. The dress. The veil waiting nearby. The pearls at my throat. Everything is exactly as it should be, and still I can’t shake the feeling that the ground beneath me is about to split open.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I just... feel strange.”
“Strange how?”
“Like something bad is going to happen.”
Dante asks, “Do you want to stop this?”
The question sends a sharp pulse through me.
Do I?
I think of Chicago. Of Lorenzo. Of fear. Of running. Then I think of Dante. Of the way he has never once asked for more than I could give. Of the quiet friendship that’s grown between us. Of the protection his name offers my child.
I shake my head. “No.”
And that’s the truth. I don’t want to stop it. I just can’t shake the feeling that peace like this was never meant for me.
Dante turns me gently so I’m facing him. “Listen to me. Nerves do not always mean something is wrong. Sometimes they mean something matters.”
I want to believe him.
So I nod, even though the unease is still there, low and pulsing beneath my skin.
Dante lifts a hand and cups my face, his thumb brushing lightly over my cheekbone. The gesture is gentle.
“Look at me, Juliette.” His dark gaze holds mine, steady and unflinching, like he can anchor me by force of will alone. “Nothing is going to happen to you today.”
The words should feel impossible to promise, and yet when he says them, I want to let myself believe.
“I know this isn’t how you imagined getting married,” he says quietly. “I know none of this is what you would have chosen. But I need you to remember something.” His hand slides down, covering mine where it rests against the flat silk over my stomach. “You are not walking into that church alone. You have me. You have my name. You have every man loyal to me standing between you and anyone who thinks they can take what is mine.”
A shiver moves through me at the possessive edge in his voice. Not because it frightens me but because some reckless, aching part of me likes the sound of it far too much.
His eyes search mine. “If you want to leave, I will take you out the back and no one will stop us. If you want to stand at that altar, I will stand beside you and make sure you get through it. Either way, I am with you.”
Emotion rises too fast, too sharp, catching in my throat. “Why are you being so good to me?”
Something flickers in his expression. Gone almost before I can name it.
“Because no one ever was for me,” he says.
My chest tightens, and for a second we just stand there, staring at each other in the middle of the bridal suite while the house hums around us, while my veil waits on the bed, while downstairs the world gathers to watch us bind our lives together for reasons that were never supposed to be romantic.
And yet nothing about this moment feels cold.
Dante brushes a strand of hair back from my face. “You’re trembling.”
“I know.”
His mouth curves faintly, but there’s no humor in it. Only tenderness. “Then let me give you one thing to remember besides fear.”
Before I can ask what he means, he leans in.
The kiss is soft. So soft it steals the breath from my lungs. There is no demand in it, no force, no urgency—just the warm press of his mouth against mine, careful and reassuring and somehow more intimate because of it. Like he’s trying to soothe something wounded inside me without breaking it further.
