Chapter 19
RHETT
My foot taps against the floor, knee bouncing to the beat of my racing pulse. Every part of my body vibrates with anticipation and unease, making it fucking impossible to sit still.
The decision to come to Noah’s wedding is suffocating me, and there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do to soothe the regret burning through my lungs.
Never should have come. Should stand up, walk out the door, and never look back. But I can’t. I need to see it for myself.
The only girl I ever loved is marrying someone else and witnessing it with my own eyes is the only way my hope might finally die.
Scanning the arriving guests, the realization hits—sitting here is like pouring acid on an open wound. Fuck. Turns out I’m a masochist because no matter how much this hurts, I’m not going anywhere.
Bringing a hand to my Adam’s apple, my fingers slip beneath the collar of my dress shirt before finding my tie.
The scrap of knotted silk feels like a noose, cutting off my air.
I tug it side to side, loosening it a fraction, but it does sweet fuck all to help.
Grief sits heavy and patient right under my sternum, waiting to crack me wide open. Have I lost her for good?
Hell comes in many forms, and as fate would have it, an over-the-top wedding venue is mine.
A voice in my head screams, It’s not too late to bolt! but I ignore it. I’ve spent days staring at the invitation, bouncing back and forth on my decision.
Then Kade called—right before I was set to drop Grandma Jo at the airport.
A brief exchange. A few words that locked this choice into place.
Words that ricocheted around my skull the entire flight here.
Something about this Bradley guy rubs me the wrong way.
Can’t put my finger on it, Rhett. But my instincts are never far wrong.
Kade is a lot of things, but I’d trust him with my life. If he thinks something is off, I’d be willing to bet he’s spot fucking on with his assessment.
Beside me, Grandma Jo shifts in her seat. The pearls at her throat catch the light as she turns just enough to study my face. “You keep clenchin’ your jaw like that, you’re gonna split a molar.”
“I’m fine.” My retort comes out automatically, polished by years of use.
Her mouth tightens. “That’s bullshit.”
My teeth grind once more before I force them apart. She always had an uncanny way of reading me like a book.
“Are you regretting your decision?” She questions it without looking at me, like she already knows the answer.
“No.” My voice comes out lower than expected.
That earns her full attention. She turns then, eyes sharp and unyielding, the same look she’s always used when she’s about to strip a situation down to its bones. “You here to start somethin’?”
“No.”
“To save someone, then?”
Something in my chest tightens hard enough to make my breath hitch. My hand curls against my thigh, fingers digging into muscle like I can anchor myself there. I don’t look at her. If I do, I’ll say too much. “No.”
She watches me for a beat longer, then exhales through her nose. “You sittin’ there thinkin’ this ends with a miracle and a goddamn end-of-the-movie soundtrack?”
I shake my head once.
“Then why are you here?”
Pressure builds behind my ribs like something inside me is being pried apart one inch at a time. “To let her go. If I don’t,” I grit through my resolve, voice rough and stripped bare, “she’ll own me forever. I’ll rot wonderin’ if she gave us up without knowing she has another choice.”
Grandma Jo studies me in silence. Then she nods once, sharp and final, as if I’ve just confirmed something she already knew. “Wonderin’ will eat you alive. But knowin’ … that hurts worse and heals straight.”
A breath scrapes out of me. “You always make things sound so damn practical.”
Her mouth curves. “Pain is practical. It teaches fast.” Her hand closes around my forearm. An anchor that doesn’t allow collapse. “You don’t do a goddamn thing today. You don’t interfere. You sit there, and you take it.” My jaw locks. A muscle jumps beneath her grip. “You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“You walk outta here wrecked if that’s the price,” she continues. Her fingers tighten once. “But you walk out knowing that you showed up. What she does with that is on her. I won’t have you turnin’ into a man who haunts himself.”
The room shifts around us. Conversations thin. Heads start turning toward the back doors. Grandma Jo straightens, smoothing her skirt, already braced. Her ironclad grip lingers on my arm. “Are you ready, kid?”
My heart slams hard enough to tilt the room, and I draw in a breath that doesn’t feel like it belongs to me.
And then, everyone stands. The music begins softly, almost cautiously, as if it understands the kind of moment it’s being asked to carry. The sound spreads through the room, and everything tightens around it. The doors at the back open, and light spills in.
For a moment, my mind refuses to settle on her. I register white before Noah appears—motion, fabric, the shape of something inevitable moving toward me, whether I’m ready for it or not. If I don’t look too closely, if I keep my focus unfixed, maybe this moment won’t finish happening.
She steps forward, and whatever resistance I had left collapses. My throat clogs with the lump that forms. Beautiful is an understatement. She’s stunning, stealing my goddamn breath like she always does. But something is missing—her spark.
Noah looks composed, like she gathered herself piece by piece and bound it all together with sheer will.
The dress fits her as if it were designed around restraint.
The lace at her collarbone leaves her shoulders bare, fabric that moves with her, obedient in a way I know she never has been.
Her hair is pulled back tightly, but it’s loose at the edges, as if someone tried to tame it and failed.
She takes her first step down the aisle, her face calm, eerily so.
Continuing toward her forever, she moves like it’s rehearsed.
The room begins to fall away at the edges.
Sound dulls until it’s just the music and the heavy thud of my heartbeat, each pulse pressing harder than the last. My lungs forget their job, refusing to inflate and starving me of oxygen.
At my sides, my hands stay loose, only because I force them to.
Her eyes lift and sweep the room the way people do when they’re grounding themselves, when they’re making sure the world is still there to hold them up.
Is she looking for me? She shouldn’t be.
But her gaze drifts to mine anyway, pulled by something older than intention, something she hasn’t permitted herself to name.
The world stops moving, sound tuning to the silence of her and me, and the melody of magic only we could make.
Time doesn’t shatter. It thickens, stretches, and fractures slowly, like bone under pressure that can’t be released. Her step falters—just barely—a hitch so slight no one else would ever notice, the kind of hesitation that lives in the body before the mind has a chance to intervene.
The question is written on the furrow of her brow. What is he doing here?
My reply twists my facial features. You invited me. Her breath catches, visible in the way her chest lifts too fast, the way her shoulders draw tight as if she’s bracing against a sudden wind.
Then it clicks. My neck swivels toward the altar, eyes catching on the smug grin widening Bradley’s mouth.
Fucking dickface did this. I bring my attention back to Noah.
The moment stretches until it feels suspended, fragile, as though the room itself has stopped breathing.
And in that stillness, I say everything without uttering a word.
Don’t do this. Look at me. Tell me you’re sure.
My body doesn’t move, but every part of my soul leans toward her, my chest aching with the effort of holding myself in place, of not giving away how much this costs.
She looks back at me fully then, directly, and I see it—fear tangled with longing, grief threaded through resolve, all of it sitting just beneath the surface like a storm she’s learned how to stand inside without letting it break her.
For one breath, I let myself believe she might stop, that she might turn around.
That she might choose differently. Something passes between us—that silent exchange, heavy and intimate, every almost and every night we didn’t say the thing that mattered, every choice that led us here instead.
Her lips part, and I know I’m not going to survive what happens next. Emotions shutter closed behind her eyes, the hesitation sealing itself away like it never existed. Noah’s spine straightens, chin lifting just enough to carry the weight of breaking my heart. Our gazes stay locked.
But she lets go.
The music swells, reclaiming the room. Chairs shift. People breathe again. Reality snaps back into place like it was never mine to touch. But I stay frozen, because something in me has just fractured beyond repair.
Noah passes my row, and the fine tremor at the corner of her mouth is visible. I’m close enough to know it isn’t ease, it’s resolve. And resolve is heavier than doubt.
I don’t move. I don’t nod. I don’t give her anything to hold onto.
Because she already chose.
Watching her walk away from me—step by measured step, heart locked down, future fixed—is the cruelest kind of violence I’ve ever known.
The strangest part is everything continues, and I sit there stuck mourning my past as she creates her future.
Words begin to spill into the space between Noah and Bradley, but they reach me already softened, dulled around the edges, stripped of their shape by the distance I’ve slipped into.
I sit there and endure it. Sound reaches me in fragments, broken and uneven.
Phrases drift past without anchoring, promises about forever, about choosing, about standing steady through whatever comes.
They don’t land cleanly enough to cut. They bruise instead, heavy and repetitive, each one pressing down a little harder than the last.
My jaw aches from holding itself clenched. My shoulders burn, tight from sitting too still from forcing my body into obedience. Every instinct in me wants to move, to stand, to break the line of this moment and do something—anything—that would disrupt the clean narrative unfolding in front of us.
I don’t, though. I watch, and I break.
Bradley stands beside her, close enough now that the space between them should feel sealed.
It doesn’t. There’s a narrow distance there that shouldn’t exist between two people about to bind their lives together, subtle enough that no one else would clock it, but obvious to me because I know how Noah occupies space when she’s fully present.
This is the opposite. Her shoulders never quite relax.
Her breath stays shallow like she’s pacing herself through something difficult rather than standing inside something she wants.
When she smiles, it’s careful. When she nods, it’s precise.
Every movement feels considered, controlled, like she’s holding herself together by sheer discipline.
Bradley speaks, but what I see is his hand closing around hers—fingers tightening just a fraction too much, not enough to draw attention, but enough to register. Possession masquerading as reassurance. Claim dressed up as devotion.
Something turns slow and sour in my gut.
I tell myself it’s jealousy. That this is just what it feels like to watch the woman you love belong to someone else.
That I’m projecting meaning onto ordinary gestures because I don’t want to accept the reality in front of me.
Noah doesn’t lean into him. She doesn’t pull away either.
She just … holds. Endures. Lets it happen.
That realization lands heavier than anything that’s been said aloud.
When it’s her turn to speak, her voice carries easily through the room—clear, steady, strong enough to convince anyone listening that she believes every word she’s saying.
It’s a voice I know intimately, and that familiarity is what makes it hurt.
I know what she sounds like when she’s telling the truth.
But I also know what she sounds like when she’s surviving.
My chest tightens until it’s hard to tell whether I’m breathing or just remembering how. I sit there and take it, just like Grandma Jo told me to, and let the ceremony happen to me piece by piece.
The ring slides onto her finger.
Gold catches the light, and something in my chest caves inward so fast it makes my head swim. That ring is louder than any vow, louder than the murmured approval rippling through the crowd. It announces permanence in a way words never could … final, unquestionable, done.
That’s when reality settles. Not all at once. Not like a blow. It’s relentless, like snow piling up until the structure beneath it finally gives way.
Applause breaks out around me, relief and celebration woven together so tightly they’re indistinguishable. The tension Noah felt is resolved now, wrapped up neatly with a kiss and a promise and a future the guests can applaud.
But from me, there’s no clap.
No smile.
No happy ever after.
I watch Noah turn toward Bradley and let him pull her in, let him kiss her while the room approves. Deep in my bones, whatever passed between us in that aisle is gone now.
Not erased.
Buried.
And burial is worse, because things buried don’t disappear. They decay.
The ceremony ends, but there I remain, still and contained, breaking quietly, while the room celebrates a choice that just dismantled me.