Chapter 8 - The Second Wedding
Our second wedding was nothing like the first.
No Mafia rumors.
No hidden surveillance.
No staged photographs.
No fake relationships.
Just people we loved.
Lily cried before the ceremony even started.
My father gave me away.
Adrian's closest friends stood beside him.
Even Ethan came.
The wedding took place on a private estate outside Chicago.
The ceremony was small.
Beautiful.
Honest.
When I walked toward Adrian, he looked nervous.
I had never seen Adrian Moretti nervous before.
It made me smile.
The officiant asked him:
“Do you take Evelyn Carter?”
He looked at me.
“I do.”
Then my turn.
“Do you take Adrian Moretti?”
I looked at the man who had once lost me because he tried too hard to protect me.
The man who had waited seven years.
The man who had never married anyone else.
“I do.”
We exchanged vows.
Not the ones written seven years ago.
New ones.
Our own.
Adrian promised never to make decisions about my life without me.
I promised never to disappear without telling him where I was going.
Everyone laughed.
Then came the final promise.
“I choose you,” Adrian said.
I answered.
“I choose you too.”
When we kissed, Lily cried so loudly everyone laughed.
At the reception, Adrian danced with me beneath strings of lights.
“You're happy,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“I don't deserve you.”
“Probably not.”
He laughed.
“But I'm keeping you anyway.”
I shook my head.
“Possessive.”
“Only about dessert.”
The night was perfect.
Until a waiter approached me.
“There is a message for you.”
I opened the envelope.
One sentence.
Your mother would have been proud.
No signature.
I looked at Adrian.
He read it.
We both smiled.
Claire was gone.
But somehow, she had won.
She had protected her daughter.
She had protected Adrian.
She had brought two broken families back together.
Seven years after leaving Chicago, I finally understood something.
I had not run away from love.
I had run away from a version of love built on lies.
The man waiting for me had learned that protecting someone did not mean making choices for them.
May you like
And I had learned that leaving did not mean giving up.
Sometimes it meant demanding the truth.
