Aria’s POV
Hospital discharge happened on a Tuesday, three days after we’d agreed on six weeks, with my shoulder in a sling and Noah holding my good hand with the focused concentration of soone who had appointed himself my official escort and took the role extrely seriously.
"I’m helping Mama," he inford the orderly pushing my wheelchair.
"I can see that," the orderly said.
"She has to be careful because of her shoulder." He looked up at . "You’re being careful."
"Very careful," I confird.
"Good." He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. "I’ll keep watching."
Damien walked beside us with the controlled patience of a man who understood that Noah had claid this particular duty and was not about to interfere with it. When we reached the SUV and Noah climbed in first to make sure everything was properly prepared — his words — Damien held the door, and his hand found the small of my back as I settled in, and the gesture was so practiced by now, so instinctively his, that I almost didn’t notice it.
"Ho," I said, as the city moved past the window.
"Ho," he agreed.
The wedding had originally been planned for eight weeks out — a quiet ceremony, a small guest list, most of it already arranged in the weeks before Marcus escaped and upended everything. The venue was booked. The officiant was confird, half the details were done.
Six weeks instead of eight was not, in the end, the production I’d feared it might be.
What it required was a single phone call to the wedding planner Damien had been working with, a woman nad Petra who had the energy of soone who thrived on being given impossible tilines and who said, with no hesitation whatsoever, "Two weeks earlier. Absolutely. Leave it with ."
I liked her imdiately. The planning had started, technically, before I was even discharged — Damien coordinating from the hospital chair, Olivia sending ssages from the waiting room, Petra sowhere in the city making calls with the focused efficiency of soone who understood that the constraint was ti, not budget. By the ti I ca ho, the venue was confird for the new date, the caterer was adjusted, and the guest list — already small, already exactly the people who mattered — was finalized.
Twenty-three people. Olivia. Lucas. Mrs. Dora. Detective Barnes, who had looked genuinely moved when Damien called him, and said he’d be there. The legal team who had stayed late on the rger docunts three months running. Damien’s assistant Maya, who had covered for him more tis than either of us wanted to count. Noah’s preschool teacher who had sent him a handmade card during the lockdown and had no idea it had ant anything, and would be surprised to be invited, and would co anyway.
Twenty-three people who had, in various ways and degrees, been part of how we’d gotten here.
"The board will have opinions," Damien said, reviewing the list at the kitchen table two days after discharge, Noah at the other end eating cereal with great concentration.
"The board can have them privately," I said, not looking up from my own notes. "This is ours."
He looked at . "Ours," he agreed.
*********
Dress shopping happened on a Thursday, a week out, in a boutique in Ravenwood’s quieter shopping district that Olivia had sourced with the focused energy of soone who had been waiting for this assignnt for a very long ti.
I hadn’t expected to feel anything. The first ti I’d bought a wedding dress — or rather, had one selected and presented to as part of an arrangent — it had been efficient and joyless, chosen for what it would communicate in photographs rather than what I’d feel wearing it. I’d stood in front of a mirror in sothing expensive and felt absolutely nothing.
I’d expected similar neutrality this ti but the third dress changed that.
It was simpler than I’d have predicted choosing for myself — ivory rather than stark white, with a neckline that sat just right, I looked at myself in the mirror. Look at you. Look at where you are. Look at what you built from nothing. My eyes went bright before I could stop them.
"Oh," Olivia said softly, from behind .
But I kept looking at my own reflection.
She’d told once, in the early years, that the day would co when I’d let myself actually have the life I was building. I’d believed her approximately thirty percent and worked like I believed her a hundred, and sowhere in the distance between those two numbers this had happened — the ring on my finger, the dress, the face in the mirror that looked like a woman who was not afraid of her own happiness anymore.
"This one," I said.
"Yes," Olivia agreed, imdiately and firmly. "Absolutely this one."
I turned away from the mirror.
"Don’t tell Damien the style," I said. "He’ll want details."
"Absolutely not." She was already making notes. "Aria." She looked up. "You’re radiant."
I looked back at the mirror once more, briefly and she was right.
"Five weeks," I said quietly.
Five weeks, and I would walk toward him in this dress, and he would see in it for the first ti, and it would be real — all of it, finally, completely real and I couldn’t wait.
********
A few days before the wedding, Olivia sat with on the penthouse balcony while Noah slept and Damien was sowhere inside doing sothing logistical, because Damien’s love language was logistics and he had leaned into it fully for the past few weeks.
"Nervous?" Olivia asked.
I thought about it honestly. "No," I said. "Which is — strange. I thought I would be."
"Why would you be nervous?" She pulled her knees to her chest. "You know exactly who you’re marrying. You’ve known him for years, you have seen every version of him."
"The bad ones too," I said.
"Especially those." She looked at sideways. "That’s why you’re not nervous. You already know what he’s capable of at his worst, and you chose him anyway, and he chose you anyway. There’s nothing left to discover that could surprise you into changing your mind."
I turned my glass slowly in my hands. "That’s actually a very beautiful way to describe a marriage."
"I have my monts." She bumped my shoulder gently, careful of the sling. "You’re going to be so happy, Aria. You already are. But soon it will be official."
I looked out at the city.
"Can I say sothing without you being professional about it?" Olivia asked.
"When have I ever asked you to be professional?"
"Fair." She turned to face fully. "Aria. The way you have been eye fucking that man for the past few weeks." She shook her head slowly. "In front of people, even in front of ."
I burst out laughing before I could stop it. "I have not "
"You absolutely have. At the venue walkthrough, you stared at him for forty five seconds while he was arguing about table arrangents. I counted."
"He has very good arms," I said, with as much dignity as I could manage. "And it has not been easy. It’s been weeks, Olivia. The doctor said six, and I have been." I pressed my lips together. "A girl has to think about her health."
"Her health."
"Wellbeing, her overall wellbeing." I took a sip of my drink. "Two days cannot co fast enough."
Olivia laughed, bright and genuine, and I felt the warmth of it settle over the whole evening. I turned to look at her. "Speaking of which." I softened my voice. "Now that you and Lucas are engaged."
"We are," she said, smiling.
"And I know you shifted the date, your wedding date." I held her gaze. "Because of . Olivia"
"Don’t."
"I’m serious. I’m sorry, I know how much that"
"Aria." She said it simply, the way she said everything important. "I would do anything for you. Lucas would do anything for you. We moved a date, it is not a sacrifice, it is a calendar adjustnt." She bumped my shoulder again softly. "Babe, I would do anything for you. Don’t apologize for that."
I looked at her for a mont, then nodded, because anything else would have made cry.
"Okay," I said. "Now, since we are being honest with each other."
"Oh no."
"I’m working on not being sorry about this." I turned my glass in my hands. "Last Tuesday, during lunch break."
Olivia went very still.
"Your office, Olivia. Your office."
"How did you."
"Your assistant has a very expressive face and zero poker skills." I looked at her sideways. "A patient could have just walked in. Anyone could have walked in. Tell that man to at least lock a door, and tell your assistant that her job includes not looking mortified every ti soone ntions Lucas’s na."
Olivia covered her face with both hands. "You are not supposed to know that."
"I un-know nothing, I have tried." I set my glass down. "I sanctify my eyes, Olivia. Every morning."
She dissolved completely, laughing so hard she had to put her own drink down.
When we finally settled, Olivia wiped her eyes and let out a long breath.
"You know what the next 2 days an though," she said, in the tone that ant nothing good was coming.
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