Page 84 of A Diamond Deal
The chapel would be full.
All eyes would be on them.
It didn’t feel abstract any more.
She couldn’t distance herself from it.
She could no longer trick her mind it was only a job.An event.
It was different.
Shewas different.
This time she wouldn’t walk up the aisle to meet Konstantinos, knowing it was a marriage of convenience. She didn’t carry the heavy burden of the walls guarding her heart.
Her heart drummed with her every step towards the arch made of wild flowers. The arch where they would meet at the altar.
The archshe’ddesigned.
In every corner of the chapel, this time, she was present. Last time, others had designed it. Her wedding. And she’d let them.
This time, she hadn’t.
And she felt it now. The room was not a display for others to enjoy.
It was personal.
It was forthem.
Had she known even then, weeks ago, distracting herself with these plans, she was in love?
She’d been protecting herself, hadn’t she?
Protecting herself from all that lived inside her.
It had always lived there, she realised now.
Every day, since she’d confessed it to herself, the day she’d let the bud of it sprout, it had bloomed.
It flooded through her like a tidal wave.
It couldn’t be stopped.
She couldn’t build a dam.
Love. All-consuming. She carried it with her. She carried love. In her heart. In her soul.
She loved him.
Konstantinos.
Her feet stooped beneath the arch.
When she was young, she’d thought love fixed everything. But she understood now, standing here, that love was a complicated thing.
It could hurt.
It hurt her now, knowing when she stood here in three days’ time, when she met him here, she’d have to wrap them both in her love, because his love…
