Chapter 7 Lily #2
I’ve only seen--I’ve only known the echo of him—his choices, his fingerprints on every detail I thought no one else remembered.
How long has he been paying attention? How long has he been quietly collecting the pieces of me I never thought anyone would care enough to keep?
The colors, the bakery, the dress—none of it is random.
These aren’t just nice ideas or convenient decisions.
They are fragments of the life I always wanted with my mother, delicate and deeply personal, the kinds of things I assumed were too small, too sentimental, too quietly buried for anyone—let alone Aleksandr—to notice.
And the worst part is, all this time, I believed I wasn’t enough for him.
I told myself he wouldn’t want the sweet girl.
Not someone soft. Not someone who still believes in things like vampires, Final Girls and such a large book collection that my apartment is more book than furniture, and fairy tales buried in the spine of an old wedding binder.
I thought he wanted someone sharper, someone louder.
A woman with fangs and fire in her blood.
Someone who could take up space in his world without flinching.
Someone who could match the weight of the Petrov name without folding beneath it.
But he sees me.
Not just the version I show everyone else—but me. The girl who likes tulle and horror books and delicate details. The girl who still keeps a binder full of her mother’s last wedding, full of colors and lace and dreams she never got to finish.
The tailor crouches behind me, pinning the back, fussing over the fall of the skirt so it lays just right over the curve of my ass, which, in this gown, is impossible to ignore. I can feel the heat climbing my cheeks with every tiny adjustment.
From the side mirror, I catch my own reflection—the contrast of delicate lace and the suggestive slit of silk makes me look like someone else. Someone sexier than I am used to being.
“Also the shoes are Louboutin, coming in this afternoon,” she says, flipping to the next page like that’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Don’t worry, they’ve been in the freezer since the morning and you can take them off at the end of the aisle, but the heels of the shoe have both your and Aleksandr’s initials on them. ”
“That’s a nice touch,” I smile.
“An Aleksandr touch,” Gwen winks, and I almost choke on my spit because how did he do this in less than 24 hours. I mean I know they're rich, but Aleksandr isn’t magic! All this takes time, and notice.
“Jewelry is still being finalized, but that choker is one and I think a jeweler will be here in an hour with some earrings Alek got restored for you. Oh, and I’m thinking hair up in those medium wand curls?”
“Turn,” the tailor murmurs, and I do, the train whispering across the floor behind me as the room falls briefly quiet. Even Nadia, for once, seems to run out of words.
Nadia finally looks up from her memo pad, eyes sweeping over me from head to toe. For a second, she goes quiet. “Shit, I owe Aleksandr my fucking Ducati,” she says finally, a small, smug smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“You bet your motorcycle on this?” Gwen shrieks.
“I thought she would hate it and love my princess dress,” Nadia crosses her arms and looks at me with narrowed eyes. “I didn’t expect she’d be this hot. I thought I was her best friend.”
“Yeah, but he’s been yearning from a distance for years, meaning like you know Lily, but Alek like knows Lily,” Gwen says, standing and pulling Toni onto her hip.
“Fair,” Nadia huffs, just as her phone rings.
“Alright, I am going to put Toni and myself down for a nap so we’re not fussy during the ceremony,” Gwen yawns and starts walking to the door.
“Kenny,” Nadia snaps, and the tailor looks up at her. “Finish up, and see me before you leave to sign the NDA. Leave before signing it and I am going to have to make sure you’re permanently silent, okay?”
“Jeez, Nadi, no need to scare Kenny,” Gwen says, pushing Nadia to the door as she answers her phone in Russian. “Make up and hair will be here in thirty, Lils. Try not to get anything on the dress!”
The door clicks shut behind them, leaving me alone with Kenny the tailor.
My heart is still hammering, because all I can think of is Aleksandr. All I can think about is the fact that I need to see him.
I need to know how long. I need to see him look me in the eye and tell me that he’s wanted me for just as long as I wanted him.
I need to make sense of all this kind of stalker-like, overly romantic gesture of planning the perfect wedding for me, because this is not normal.
I mean this is amazing, but this is not how normal people show that they like normal people. I just…I can’t breathe.
“Hold still, miss,” Kenny says softly, fingers deft as they tug the last loops of the corset tight.
“Sorry,” I whisper, forcing me to stand up straight.
“No worries,” he smiles. The fabric molds even closer to me, forcing me to stand straighter. Then with a practiced motion, Kenny ties the long silk cord into a neat bow at the small of my back. “All done.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding, staring at myself in the mirror. “Yeah,” I whisper, the word rough in my throat. “I just… I have to let the groom know just how much I know.”
Kenny’s reflection tilts his head at me, a knowing smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. He gives a soft laugh, light as the whisper of the train behind me. “You know it’s bad luck for the groom to see the wedding dress before the wedding, right?”
“Well, the groom normally doesn’t plan every single detail of the wedding.”
“You got me there. You’re a very lucky bride,” Kenny smiles, stepping back with a final glance at his work. “You look amazing.”
“Thank you,” I say, still unable to pull my eyes away from the woman in the mirror. My pulse is everywhere—in my hands, in my chest, in my throat. It’s reckless. It’s completely unlike me. But I don’t care. “Can I go?”
“Yeah, go get your man, girl!” Kenny claps, and I manage a breathless smile.
I gather up the train in both hands, the soft weight of the fabric sliding across my arms, and I run.
Out of the room, down the hall, my bare feet silent against the floors as I search for Aleksandr, the sound of my own heart drowning out everything else.
The silk brushes my legs with every step, the corset keeping me upright even as adrenaline tries to make me float away.
Then I hear him.
His voice rolls out from the end of the hall, low and edged with steel. “Either the shoes are here in an hour or I will go down there myself—and trust me, you don’t want to see me.”
That voice stops me for only a heartbeat. Then something in me—whatever wild thing has been pushing me all day—snaps into focus. My grip on the train tightens and I walk, then stride, then nearly run toward the door it came from.
I don’t knock. I just push the door open, stepping into the office like I belong there, like I wasn’t just standing in a room staring at myself in shock.
“Aleksandr?” My voice is softer than I want, breathless, but it stops him in his tracks.
He turns half an inch at the sound of my voice, but I blurt, “Don’t look!”
He stills completely, one hand braced on the desk, the other curled around his phone. His head tilts, confused and wary, but he doesn’t turn.
“I’m in my wedding dress,” I say, trying to sound firm, trying to sound like I didn’t just sprint across the house barefoot to find him.
There’s a pause—a stretch of silence that seems to swallow the whole room.
“What’s wrong, Lily?” Aleksandr rasps out, his tone low and rough. I watch him slowly remove the phone from his ear, setting it down on the desk.
He hasn’t turned around yet.
From behind, he’s devastating. The black suit molds to his broad shoulders perfectly, tapering down his back, the fabric stretched over muscle in a way that makes my mouth go dry.
His dark hair is swept back but not perfect—like he ran his hand through it in frustration.
Even the way he stands, braced over the desk with one hand on the polished wood, looks like a warning and a promise.
My fingers tighten around the fabric of my skirt. “So… Nadia told me some things…”
“And?” His voice carries across the room, steady but quieter now, like he already knows where this is going.
“Well, like… not really normal things?”
“Normal things,” he murmurs, “like how a groom may get something blue for his bride—”
“You have sapphires in my choker,” I interrupt, tripping over the words.
“Or like something old,” he continues, unhurried.
“Your mother’s earrings are being restored,” he says, cutting me off gently. “They should be here in an hour—”
“Oh, um, that’s amazing, but like—”
“Everything else you’re wearing is new, but Nadia has the garter,” he says, his tone unbothered.
“Aleksandr!” I snap, my eyes fixed on the ruby-red carpet between us because looking at his back is already doing enough damage.
“You picked the perfect color palette for my wedding, and the perfect dress, and the right location. You know things about me like you have been watching me our entire lives, which doesn’t make sense—”
“Lily—”
“You told me to run! You told me no, and you are obviously like in love with me.” My voice rises with every word as I cross the room in quick, uneven steps, clutching the skirts of the dress in my fists so I don’t trip.
My pulse is so loud it’s dizzying, and I can’t stop moving because if I stay still, I’ll explode.
“That’s putting it lightly—”
“How did you know about my mother’s earrings, or the wedding she planned that I wanted to be for me?” I stop behind him, close enough that the heat radiating off his back seeps through the suit jacket. My fists clench, knuckles aching.
“You told us about it. Lily, can I—”
“No!” I groan, smacking the heel of my hand against my forehead and spinning away from him. The silk hem of my dress whispers against the carpet as I pace in a tight circle. “When, Aleksandr? When did I bring it up?”
“After your father died. Nadia and I found you looking at her binders and you told us.”
“Nadia didn’t remember—”
“Nadia has shit memory. I am going to—”
“Don’t you dare turn around! It’s bad luck!”
“Can you not yell at me when my back is turned?” His voice sharpens slightly, but I can see, even with his back to me, the way his shoulders bunch and flex beneath the suit. His hands grip the edge of the desk so tightly his knuckles pale, muscles tense all the way up his forearms.
“No, because you’re going to do that thing!”
“What thing!”
“The thing with your eyes, and you get close, and you touch me and then I can’t think, and I need to think right now,” I blurt, spinning around again and resuming my pacing.
My hands twist together in front of me, untwist, then press flat against the bodice of my dress because I can’t stop moving.
Every time I pass behind him my gaze drags over the perfect line of his shoulders, the way his jacket pulls tight across his back, and the hard set of his arms as he braces himself like he’s holding back everything.
“Tell me the truth,” I say finally, my voice dropping as I slow my steps, planting myself just a few feet behind him. “Tell me why you have been watching me so closely after telling me not to be with you. Tell me how this isn’t insane.”
“I can’t tell you this isn’t insane.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you what I feel about you isn’t completely fucking consuming,” he says, his voice steady, but lower now, like a breath he has been painfully holding in for years.
I see his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, then flex as if the words themselves tighten every muscle in his body.
“I can’t tell you that this isn’t obsession, Lily, because it is. It always has been.”
As he speaks, he slowly straightens, pushing away from the desk. His hands uncurl from the wood, the veins in his forearms standing out as he flexes his fingers like it takes everything in him not to reach for me, not to turn around and look at me like I know he wants to.
“From the second I learned what the word love meant, it’s been you. You think I just love you? No. I need you. I don’t breathe right without you. I don’t function without you. My entire life has been moving toward this moment.”
He pushes back from the desk and stands tall. His hands flex at his sides, once, twice, before curling into fists like he’s fighting himself.
“Don’t,” I warn, but it comes out thin, breathless.
He turns anyway.
The second his eyes hit me, everything I was about to say burns out of my head. I take a stumbling step backward, holding the train of the dress up like a shield, but it’s useless.
“Lily,” he says, and my name doesn’t sound like a name at all. It sounds like a vow.
I try to hide, but he closes the distance between us in three strides. His hand catches the silk and pulls it out of my grip, the other settling firmly at the curve of my waist, and I forget how to breathe.
“Stop,” I whisper, even as my body leans into him. “This is insane. This is bad luck. This is—”
His fingers slide up my arm, to my shoulder, to the side of my neck, tilting my chin just enough that there’s no way out. His eyes search mine, holding me there in that charged, impossible moment.
And then he kisses me.
The second kiss of my life with him, and it hits like a freefall.
It’s nothing like the first. It’s deeper, slower, full of everything he just said—everything he’s been holding back for years.
My back hits the edge of the desk, his body closing in, the heat of him bleeding through the fabric of my dress.
His mouth moves against mine like he has all the time in the world, like this is the start of everything, not just a kiss.
When he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against mine, and his voice is rough and sure.
“This is the beginning of our entire lives, Lily. Because I have been obsessed with you, fucking in love with you, since I knew what love was. And it’s not enough to say I love you. I need you. I will always need you.”
I’m breathless, my hands fisted in the front of his suit jacket, staring up at him wide-eyed and completely undone.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” I whisper.