The Wedding Rehearsal Game Broke Me Completely Chapter 11

The Wedding Rehearsal Game Broke Me Completely Chapter 11

A year later, my flower studio opened its third location.

On opening day, Julian stood by the door holding a bouquet of baby’s breath, telling everyone who walked in

that he was the owner’s other half.

Once the customers had cleared out, he wrapped his arms around me from behind.

“Boss Lucy’s business is really taking off. Think it’s about time you consider promoting me?”

I played dumb on purpose.

“Promoting you to what?”

Julian let go, pulled a ring from his pocket, and dropped to one knee, surrounded by the smell of flowers.

“From boyfriend to legal partner.”

This time, it was just him. The only one waiting, truly, for my answer.

I held out my hand and nodded, eyes wet.

Before the wedding, a letter came from Sienna.

Five pages, front and back.

She wrote that the two years she’d spent alone, far from home, had worn away her stubbornness and her

selfishness, and finally shown her what she’d really been clinging to.

She admitted that as a kid, she’d invented the Ghost Game out of jealousy.

She’d been afraid Grayson would care about me more and more, afraid of being pushed out of what the three

of us had, so she’d used the game, again and again, to shove me to the farthest edge of it.

The letter ended with an apology that had come far too late.

I read it calmly, all the way through, and put it away in a drawer.

Everyone carries something they can’t let go of.

I could understand her fear. That didn’t mean I owed her forgiveness for the damage it caused.

These past two years, Grayson never once showed up in my life again.

Not a single word.

Until I happened to hear that he’d been quietly funding the children’s home that had once taken me in, all of it under my name.

The director asked if that bothered me.

I shook my head.

“That’s his choice. It has nothing to do with me.”

On the day of the wedding, Mom walked me down an aisle lined with flowers, my hand in hers.

Julian stood at the end of it, eyes following me the whole way.

The officiant asked if I did.

This time, I didn’t hesitate.

“I do.”

As the applause rose, the past felt like it belonged to some other lifetime.

The person I used to be had been trapped inside a story built for three, chasing and waiting, always alone.

Like a star nobody ever looked at, spinning by itself in the dark.

Now, I’d finally stopped spinning.

And someone had finally walked up beside me, ready to spend the rest of this life at my side.