Four Years Of Hair For A Wedding And He Cut It For A Scene Chapter 11

Four Years Of Hair For A Wedding And He Cut It For A Scene Chapter 11

The whole house filled with laughter.

It was the kind of warmth I hadn’t felt in years.

Julian’s parents helped me sign up for GED and night classes.

I started learning to read and write, for real, from the beginning.

It was brutal at first.

I’d write the same word dozens of times and still forget it the next day.

Some lessons went completely over my head.

But every time I wanted to quit, Julian would sit down beside me with the books.

He walked me through every problem I couldn’t solve. He sat with me while I practiced every word I couldn’t remember.

I was slow. He never once lost patience.

Three years later, I got accepted to college.

The day the acceptance letter came, I held it to my chest and cried until I couldn’t breathe.

Because I finally did it.

The girl who couldn’t write her own name at seventeen never would have dared to dream this far.

I finished my degree. Then I kept going.

I joined the university’s cultural anthropology department as a researcher and lecturer.

The first day I stood at the front of a lecture hall, I thought about all those people years ago, laughing at the girl who couldn’t write.

Over the years, Garrett tried to find me. More than once.

I never agreed to see him.

Eventually, he seemed to understand. Some things can’t be undone.

One day, a familiar face showed up outside my department building.

One of the cameramen from Garrett’s old crew.

He was holding a large box, and his expression was hard to read when he saw me.

“Elena.”

“Garrett asked me to bring you this.”

I looked inside.

It was packed full.

A turquoise bracelet. A hand-carved wooden keepsake. Little things I’d mentioned liking once, in passing, years ago.

At the very bottom, a thick notebook.

Inside, he’d written out wedding plans, four years’ worth, all in secret.

Where they’d live. What they’d name the children.

The cameraman sighed.

“Garrett spent four years putting this together.”

“He said he was going to give it to you after the documentary wrapped. All at once.”

I was quiet for a long time.

Years ago, this would have made me the happiest girl alive.

But I closed the lid and pushed the box back across the table.

“Give it back to him for me.”

He stared at me.

“You don’t want it?”

I smiled.

“I don’t need it anymore.”

The first thing Julian ever gave me was a book.

Then he gave me a way into college.

Then freedom.

Then a future.

Then the whole world.

No box could hold everything he’d given me.

The cameraman was quiet for a long time. Then he nodded.

At the door, he turned back.

“Garrett hasn’t been doing well. These past few years.”

I didn’t speak.

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Audrey pulled her funding after she left.”

“Someone leaked what happened in North Crest online.”

“He got torn apart.”

“No investor would touch him after that.”

“The documentary never got made.”

“He’s been scraping by on corporate promos and wedding videos.”

“The pay barely keeps him afloat.”

“He’s gotten quieter. Smaller, somehow.”

“I heard he never married.”

I listened to all of it. Then I smiled.

“I wish him well.”

The cameraman studied my face, finally understanding. He didn’t say anything more.

He turned and left.

I watched him go.

I felt nothing. Not a single pang of regret.

Some people had been left behind in the Snowy Peaks years ago. They never made it out.

But I did.

When I got home, Julian was in the kitchen.

He heard the door and leaned out.

“You’re back?”

I smiled.

“I’m back.”

He took my bag, and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he took my hand.

Over the years, we’d gone from polite strangers sharing a house to something real.

There were no fireworks. No grand declarations.

I couldn’t tell you when it started. But at some point, I got used to waking up and seeing his face.

Got used to him being the first person I wanted to tell when something good happened. Got used to reading beside him at night, my head against his shoulder.

One night, Julian asked me something.

“Elena.”

“Do you love me?”

I thought about it for a long time. Then I nodded.

“I love you.”

He blinked, like he hadn’t expected it. Then he smiled.

That night, I was the one who reached for him first.

The sea breeze came through the open window. The city lights burned bright across the water.

I thought about what Father Silas told me, all those years ago.

That the Lord never wanted to keep me in North Crest.

I didn’t understand it then.

Now I did.

The Lord hadn’t been trying to take me away from home. He was trying to help me find out who I really was.