Chapter Thirteen
It really didn’t occur to him that she might not show for the wedding.
When he didn’t hear from Rosemary, he’d simply presumed she’d thought things through and decided that her declarations of love had, after all, been born of her pregnant state.
Wishful thinking. A need for connection that made no sense, given who they were.
But as he stood at the top of the family chapel, with the tiny group of family guests assembled, as well as the minister, and the clock ticked onwards, he began to realise the fatal flaw in his plan.
He’d left too much to chance. He’d demanded his own pragmatic approach to relationships.
From the very beginning, he’d taken her at her word, that she wanted to avoid the sort of emotional situation that had led to her parents’ miserable marriage and acrimonious split.
When she’d shown him all along that she was a creature of passion, no matter how much she wished she wasn’t.
The kind of passion that was contagious, and had rubbed off on him.
When they were together he felt it, too, like a livewire. A spark.
‘Did you speak to her today?’ his mother hissed audibly to Rosemary’s father.
Glen shook his head once, frowning.
‘I’ll text her.’
He pretended not to notice as his mother pulled her phone from her bag and loaded up a message to send. More time passed. His gut twisted with something like concern and then, acceptance.
She wasn’t coming.
He’d told her to think, and she’d made her decision as clear as the day outside.
And even though he’d told himself that things between them were businesslike and professional, it didn’t matter.
For the second time in his life, he felt that the rug had been pulled out from under him.
That he’d lost something he hadn’t realised he cared so much about keeping.
Not Rosemary alone, but their whole life. Their child, their family.
Except, they weren’t a family. No matter what she might say, this had all come about because of a mishap with her contraceptives. They weren’t anything more than a cluster of fateful choices.
She wasn’t coming.
The crunching of gravel sounded outside and something in his chest soared, halfway spearing him. His mother smiled as Glen stood up and strode towards the door.
‘She’s here!’ he called needlessly, the relief in his tone mirrored on everyone’s expression—even Rosemary’s mother, who glanced at her husband and smiled with relief.
Aristotle didn’t smile.
If anything, the soaring in his chest had turned into something else entirely. An oppressive weight.
A burden of responsibility—and an awareness that he was at the fork of another crossroads. Just like the one he’d found himself at with the news of her pregnancy, when he’d faced two choices, he now contemplated the same predicament.
Music began to play and a moment later, she appeared before him in the doorway of the church.
She was backlit by the afternoon sun, her father holding her arm.
She looked like an angel brought down to earth.
But it didn’t matter that there was a halo of gold surrounding her, he knew her too well to misunderstand her body language.
The lift of her shoulders, the ramrod straightness of her spine, the tilt of her chin.
With every single bone in her body, she was conveying a single message: I’m strong. Bring it on.
She was preparing herself for this wedding—their marriage.
She was braced for impact.
And he refused to let her.
He refused to let this be the case: for this to be her life.
He held fast as she walked towards him, conscious of the family members watching on—conscious of everything.
The promises they’d spun like delicate spiders’ webs as they planned for their baby’s arrival, talked about their marriage.
It would be so easy to reach up and strike his hand through those carefully crafted spools of hope—but then what?
‘Rosemary…’ he said as she approached. Up close, it was even worse. Her eyes barely glanced at his before skittering off to hide away from him.
Her father, none the wiser, smiled as though this was a wonderful dream come true.
For Rosemary, it was so clearly the opposite.
But the wheels had been set in motion. The playacting had begun.
Glen lifted Rosemary’s veil and kissed her forehead. Aristotle’s gut twisted with guilt.
The minister began to speak, and as he did so, Aristotle kept his gaze on Rosemary’s face, trying to wordlessly communicate with her. To reassure her. Or to reassure himself, perhaps, that she was okay.
But when it came to the vows, the world seemed to stop spinning. Rosemary’s voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible. He almost wished they’d stuck to an Orthodox wedding instead, in which there would be little need for speech.
‘Did you say something, dear?’ the minister quipped.
Rosemary glanced up at him, cheeks growing pink. She spoke again, this time more loudly. Clearly. She was fine. At least, she was for the first few sentences. ‘To have and to hold, from this day forward. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.’ Fine.
But then, when she reached the second part of the vows, ‘In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish,’ her voice hitched and her eyes lifted to his, her lips pulling downwards a little, as though she couldn’t quite fathom what was happening. ‘Till death do us part.’
‘This is my solemn vow,’ the minister supplied.
She glanced up at him, stricken, then nodded, turning back to Aristotle quickly. ‘This is my solemn vow.’
And he believed her.
She loved him. God, but he wished she didn’t. He wished she’d stuck to the contract they’d signed, that she was bound by the same determination as him to exist in this marriage—this life—without complications. But she wasn’t.
Her heart was open and raw, vulnerable and exposed.
‘And now, for the groom,’ the minister continued, and began to feed Aristotle his lines.
Aristotle didn’t repeat the first sentence. He just stared at Rosemary with the strangest sense that they were in the eye of a storm—that the whole world around them was a twister of some sort, but here they stood, in a weird, eerie void that had finally clarified everything for him.
He didn’t love her, but he cared for Rosemary enough to spare her pain. To save her from herself. She was marrying him because she loved him. He had to set her free for that exact same reason. She loved him, and this marriage would destroy her, if he allowed it to proceed.
‘We need a moment,’ he said, natural authority in his tone as he glanced first to the minister then to the small group of guests. ‘Please excuse us.’
Before Rosemary could say anything, he reached down and took her hand, drawing her with him towards the door of the chapel and out into the piercing sunlight. He barely registered it—his mind had its own brightness, a hyperclarity that dulled everything else.
‘What are you doing?’ Rosemary asked, looking up at him, so he only then became conscious of the way he was still holding her hand.
‘Not here.’ They were still too close to the chapel, and their families. He drew her with him to the garden at the side, and the shade of a large tree he’d used to climb, as a boy, before the world became so complicated.
‘Everyone is waiting for us.’
‘They can wait.’ He lifted a hand to her cheek as his whole world splintered and fractured for the second time in his life. ‘We need to talk.’
Rosie could hardly catch her breath. She’d been feeling like this all morning.
Mired in a pervasive sense of panic, a feeling that she was on a juggernaut from which there was no escape.
At the same time, she didn’t want to escape.
She just needed the wedding to be over, to be out on the other side, so she could pick up the threads of whatever her new life would look like.
As if to calm her, the baby kicked and she pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling that little lifeform, taking strength from their presence alone.
‘This isn’t really the time,’ she said.
‘It has to be now.’
Her heart stammered. ‘Why?’
‘Because if we keep going through the motions, we’ll be married, and that no longer seems like the right choice for us.’
Shock slammed into her like a fist, so she stumbled back infinitesimally.
‘What?’ Her voice emerged as a husky whisper.
That no longer seems like the right choice for us.
‘You’re in love with me,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘And I don’t love you. Only a sadist would hold you to our original agreement under those terms.’
Her lips parted on an anguished exhalation of air. ‘You said it was my choice.’
‘I was wrong to leave it to you.’
‘But—’
‘If you love me, as you say you do, then you were never going to put yourself first. I have to do that for you.’
She shook her head, rejecting his statement. ‘I want to do this.’
‘Because in the back of your mind, you hope that marrying me will eventually lead me to love you. It won’t.’
She felt as though she was going to be sick. ‘How do you know?’
He closed his eyes then, as if on a wave of hurt. She wished there was somewhere to sit down. Her knees felt weak.
‘Because I won’t allow it to.’
Her pulse throbbed. All morning, she’d felt as though she were walking through a nightmare, preparing for a wedding to a man she loved fiercely, who didn’t love her back.
She’d known that was the reality. But hearing him say it so baldly, while she was wearing this dress, of all things, made her feel like the same na?ve, gauche twenty-year-old she’d been the first night they’d slept together.
She was just a fool, who’d let herself dream of something so much bigger than she deserved. To want a man who could never want her.
‘I’m so stupid,’ she said, shaking her head as a tear slid down her cheek.
‘You are not stupid, agápi. Far from it.’
‘What do you call this?’ she disputed. ‘I have fallen in love with someone who has made it his life’s mission to never love. What is that, if not incredibly dim-witted?’
‘I should have protected you better.’