He Jilted Me at the Altar. I Married His Enemy by Midnight. Chapter 12

He Jilted Me at the Altar. I Married His Enemy by Midnight. Chapter 12

Nine years ago, a boy sat dying on a curb in the rain and a girl refused to leave

Now the girl sat in a hospital corridor with his blood dried under her fingernails, and she refused to leave

Surgery lasted six hours. A ruptured spleen, two shattered ribs, a lacerated-I stopped listening to the list after a while, because lists are how they prepare you. I just sat Virginia flew in and held my hand and I let her, but I didn’t move from that hallway. Julian had been arrested at the scene, concussed and weeping. I felt

nothing about it. There was room for exactly one thing in me, and it was behind those doors.

At hour four, a nurse brought me tea I didn’t drink, and I found myself bargaining with a God I hadn’t spoken

to since childhood, You let him rebuild an empire on eleven words I don’t even remember saying. You don’t get

to end it like this. It’s bad writing. It’s beneath you.

At hour six, the surgeon came out and said the word stable, and my legs simply stopped, and Virginia

caught me.

They let me in at midnight.

He looked wrong in the bed-too large for it, too pale, machines doing his counting for him. I pulled the chair

close and took his hand, careful of the IV, and I did the thing I’d been saving up for six hours and nine years

I talked to him.

I remember you, I whispered.

lied before-I said I only remembered the rain. But driving here behind

your ambulance, it came back. Halloway Street. I was nineteen and I’d just failed my first organic chemistry

exam and I thought my life was over, and there was this boy on the curb who looked like his actually was And

I stayed because-J my voice broke, T-because you looked like nobody had ever once stayed for you And I

couldn’t stand it. I’ve never been able to stand it.J

I didn’t fall in love with you because you saved me from that altar, Damian. I fell in love with you on a bathroom floor at five in the morning. I fell in love with you in a chair by my window. I have been falling in love

with you this entire time and I was too scared and too broken to say it, and if you wake up I swear I’ll say it so

I often you’ll regret-J

Say it now. J

His voice was gravel and thread. His eyes were open. God knows how long they’d been open.

I laughed and sobbed in the same breath. You’re supposed to be unconscious.J

And miss this? Nine years, Aria. His hand tightened around mine-weak, but there, and his eyes were the

clearest I’d ever seen them. Nine years I loved a girl in the rain. Say it.J

“I love you. It came out whole. Easy. Like it had been waiting fully formed. I love you. Not the contract,

not the rescue, not the paper-you. The man who did the math and took his seatbelt off.J

Something moved through his face that I can only describe as a man setting down a weight he’d carried so long he’d forgotten it was heavy.

“Then we’re even, he whispered. Because I’ve loved you since before you knew I existed, which is

embarrassing, and I’d appreciate you never telling the board.J

I laughed until it hurt, and I put my head down on the bed beside his hand, and his fingers moved slowly through my hair, and for the first time in my entire life I was in exactly the right place with nowhere to run to and no one to perform for.

We stayed like that until the sky went gray at the window.

Rain ended. We were both there for the part after.

Three weeks later, he came home. Two months after that, we felt the baby kick for the first time-his palm on my belly, his face undone in a way no boardroom would have recognized.

And two weeks after that, looking for a pen in his study while he slept, I opened the wrong drawer.

Inside, in a heavy cream envelope with my name on it, dated for the last day of our contract year:

PETITION FOR DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE CROSS v. CROSS.

Signed. By him. Months ago.