Page 26 of Forgotten Vows

Perfect.I'm going to walk downstairs in a torn wedding dress to marry a man who kidnapped me, and somehow that feels appropriate for whatever the fuck my life has become.

I give up on the zipper and turn to the mirror. The woman looking back at me is exhausted and too thin, but there's nothing surprising in any of that. I'm used to seeing that face looking back at me. But it's made worse by the fact that the wedding dress hangs on my frame, clearly made for the curves that Lachlan remembers. The white doesn't flatter my tired skin, either, or the shadows under my eyes.

I look like a ghost haunting this penthouse. Like something already dead, just going through the motions.

I reach up to touch my face, and the woman in the mirror does the same. I want to ask her who she is and how she got here, how I turned into this reflection that I don't recognize as myself. But I know the answer already.

I stopped recognizing myself the night my father caught us in the garden, and Lachlan took the blame. The night I watched them drag him away and knew that the girl I'd been—the girl who believed in love and happy endings—died in that moment, replaced by this hollow thing that learned to survive by becoming whatever she needed to be.

Gio's prisoner. Matteo's mother. A cowed woman who could swallow everything dished out to her and pretend like it wasn't slowly killing her inside.

And now Lachlan's wife.

It feels like a terrible irony, a horrific twisting of all of our dreams. I'm marrying Lachlan, and nothing about it feels good or joyful in any way. And I'm doing it all while my son—ourson—is somewhere in this building, probably terrified and wondering why his mother let this happen, why she didn't fight harder and protect him the way she's always promised she would.

I'm doing this for you,I want to tell him.I'm doing this to keep you safe.

But is that true? Or am I doing this because I'm too tired to fight anymore, too worn down by ten years of fighting to have anything left? Too broken to do anything except go along with whatever Lachlan wants, because there's some small part of me that still remembers loving him and wants desperately to believe that the boy I loved is still in there somewhere?

I don't know.

The dress is still unzipped in the back. I reach behind me again, managing to work the zipper up another few inches before it catches again and I leave it there, not caring that I probably look ridiculous. The woman in the mirror certainly looks ridiculous—a bride in an ill-fitting dress with no makeup and tangled hair. But it's the best I can do right now.

I run my fingers through my hair to try to make it look decent, and turn away from the mirror before I can see more things to remind me of all the ways I've been broken and badly reassembled. All the ways I'm not the girl Lachlan remembers.

He said he's wanted me for years, but he doesn't wantme. He wants the memory of me. He wants the eighteen-year-old girl who loved him, who gave him her virginity and her heart and believed we could have something real despite our families, despite the violence, despite everything.

That girl is gone. And I don't know if he'll still want me when he realizes it.

There's a knock at the door, and sweat springs up on the back of my neck. This is the moment when I walk out of this room and down those stairs, and say words that will bind me to Lachlan legally.

"I'm ready," I say weakly. It's the first lie I think I've ever told him, because I'm not ready for this at all.

The door opens, and Lachlan is standing there. The expression on his face when he sees me makes something twist in my chest. He's not looking at me like I'm bedraggled and wearing an ill-fitting dress with a tear at the back.

He's looking at me like the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

The first thing I think is to tell him to stop, to not look at me like that. I can't be what he wants me to be. I can't be the girl he remembers.

But I don't say anything. I just step past him into the hallway, my bare feet silent on the hardwood floor, and I don't look back to see if he's following. I know he is—I can feel his presence behind me like gravity pulling me toward something I can't escape.

The penthouse is enormous. The size of it strikes me as I walk down the stairs and take in the massive first-floor space. I grew up in a mansion, so a large house is nothing new to me, but Lachlan didn't. The size and luxury all around me are a blatant visual reminder of the wealth and power that Lachlan has accumulated in the ten years since I last saw him.

He's built an empire, and now he wants me to be part of it.

The living room opens up before me, the floor-to-ceiling glass on one side giving a breathtaking view of the city beyond. Near the window is a man in priest's vestments, looking profoundly uncomfortable. His hands are clasped in front of him, and his eyes dart between Lachlan and me like he's trying to figure out how he ended up here—how he got roped into performing a wedding ceremony at—I glance at the clock on the wall—four in the morning.

"Miss Santoro." His voice is thin and uncertain. "I'm Father Brennan. I'll be officiating your ceremony today."

He says it like this is a normal wedding, happening at a normal time, in a normal way. As if I'm here by choice.

I nod, not trusting myself to speak, and move to stand in front of him. Lachlan comes to stand beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body. He's changed into dark slacks and a button-down shirt with no tie, the forearms rolled up. I can see the light copper hair on his forearms, the corded muscle that wasn't there ten years ago, and the ink that wasn't there either. He sprayed on a little cologne, too, and that makes him feel even more foreign. It's not the cheap spray he used to wear; it smells expensive.

Father Brennan clears his throat. "We are gathered here today," he begins. His voice is mechanical and rehearsed, just reciting words he's probably said a thousand times before. "To join this man and this woman in holy matrimony."

This doesn't feel holy, though. It doesn't feel anything like I imagined in my girlish daydreams about Lachlan and I being wed. I didn't even picture a priest most of the time—we were supposed to run away together, so I imagined a Vegas chapel or a justice of the peace, maybe a preacher we managed to talk into doing a religious ceremony for us. The official channels of the Catholic Church were never factored into those elopements.

The priest continues talking, something about love and commitment and the sanctity of marriage. I let the words wash over me without really hearing them. None of this is real. This is just a performance we're going through to satisfy whatever legal requirements Lachlan thinks are necessary to protect us.