I Saw My Tragic Future Through A Random Wedding Forum Poll Chapter 10

I Saw My Tragic Future Through A Random Wedding Forum Poll Chapter 10

For the next two years, I poured everything I had into rehabilitation.

When the hardware was finally removed from my leg, the pain afterward was so intense I bit

straight through the towel clenched between my teeth.

The first time I managed to rise on pointe again, my right ankle gave a sharp crack.

I froze, convinced I had broken it all over again, cold sweat running down my back.

My physical therapist rushed over and checked my

“It’s okay. Just the joint adjusting.”

That was all it took.

I stood there and burst into tears.

My doctor didn’t sugarcoat anything.

ankle.

My right leg would never tolerate the intensity of professional training again.

Returning as a principal dancer was impossible.

I sat alone in the Harrowmere Ballet Theatre dressing room the entire night.

The next morning, I walked into the artistic director’s office.

“I want to become a choreographer.”

He studied me for a long time.

Then he nodded.

“Okay.”

Another year passed before my first original ballet premiered.

The Shape of Flight.

It was about a bird with a broken wing learning to fly a different way.

During rehearsals, I stood in the wings and watched the dancers bring every movement I had

created to life.

Every breath.

Every pause.

Their pointe shoes landed softly against the stage, making the sound I knew better than anything in

the world.

I couldn’t dance anymore.

But those movements had still come from my body.

Through my hands, they now lived on someone else’s stage.

That was enough.

Opening night sold out.

When the lights came up for the curtain call, the theater erupted in applause.

I stood in the wings and watched the glow spilling across the stage.

Suddenly, I thought of the girl I used to be years ago.

Spinning beneath those lights in a white tulle costume, believing that was what my life would always look like.

Now I knew better.

Lights went out.

Bodies broke.

People left.

But I was still here.

After the audience cleared out, I left through the side entrance.

Cillian was waiting at the far end of the hallway, leaning against the wall with a bouquet of white

roses in his hands.

The same kind he had given me at our wedding two years ago.

He walked over and handed them to me.

“I watched three rehearsals, and tonight makes four.”

His mouth curved.

“Wanted to cry every single time.”

I smiled. “Did you?”

“Held it in. Front row’s way too exposed.”.

I took the flowers and lowered my head to smell them.

Then Cillian suddenly dropped to one knee.

He pulled a small velvet box from his pocket and opened it.

A ring caught the light inside.

“Two years ago, that wedding was me giving you a way out.”

He looked up at me, his gaze steady.

“This time, it isn’t.”

His voice softened.

“Carys Hartwell, do you want to turn that wedding into a promise for the rest of our lives?”

The hallway was quiet.

Only the last distant sounds of people leaving the theater drifted toward us.

I looked at him and thought about the years behind us-the third row, the wedding he had arranged as my way out, and all those quiet rehab days when he simply waited for me.

Not once had he made a decision for me.

He had simply stayed there, waiting for me to choose my own way toward him.

I held out my left hand and lifted my ring finger, showing him the ring I had worn for the past two

years.

“This is my answer.”

Cillian smiled.

His eyes turned red, but the smile on his face was bright.

He slipped off the old ring and slid the new one onto my finger.

It still fit perfectly..