10. Chapter 10
Cate
Present
Anotification buzzed in my pocket, and I flinched like it had touched a bruise.
Amy’s eyes flicked toward me, reading the tension in my shoulders before I even moved. “You gonna check it?”
I pulled my phone out and stared at the screen.
Trevor: Hey, babe. Can you grab the suits from the hotel tonight? Mom says they’re ready
The normal response would’ve been easy. Sure. No problem. See you soon.
My brain knew the script, my body didn’t.
I slipped the phone back into my pocket like it was too hot to hold. “Later.”
Amy didn’t comment on the way my voice cracked around the single word.
We turned down a side street where the traffic thinned. The buildings looked older here - brick and stone, crooked windows, history that hadn’t been renovated into something shiny and new.
“This is where you think,” Amy said quietly. It wasn’t a question.
I nodded once.
When I was younger, I’d walked for miles just to outpace my own head. When life got loud, movement was the only thing that turned the volume down.
But today, it wasn’t working.
Because no matter how far I walked, I couldn’t put distance between myself and the truth.
John had asked.
That was the detail that wouldn’t let go of me.
Not the kiss.
Not the bar.
Not the way my entire body had lit up like I’d been starving.
It was the fact that he’d looked at me, really looked, and still asked if he could.
Like my comfort mattered more than his need. Like I was worth waiting for.
I swallowed hard and stared straight ahead, blinking fast when my eyes burned.
Amy’s shoes scuffed the sidewalk. “What are you feeling right now?”
I almost laughed. The question was so simple. So unfair.
“I feel…” I tried and failed. “I feel stupid.”
Amy’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because I’m doing this,” I said, gesturing vaguely at myself, the street, the air. “Because I’m getting married tomorrow and I’m out here acting like a man I love… loved, a decade ago is still… in the room.”
Amy didn’t flinch at the word love.
She only nodded, like she’d known it was there waiting to be said.
“I thought time would fix it,” I admitted. “I thought it would dull. Fade. Like everything else.”
Amy’s voice softened. “But it didn’t.”
“No.” My throat tightened again. “It just… went quiet. And now…” I shook my head.
We reached the corner and paused at the crosswalk. A car passed, music thumping through open windows, the bass vibrating faintly in my bones.
John had never been loud.
That was what was killing me.
He hadn’t been a whirlwind. He hadn’t been a mistake I could dismiss as youth or tequila or bad judgment.
He’d been steady, intentional, and somehow that made losing him feel permanent in a way I still didn’t have words for.
Amy touched my elbow gently. “Cate.”
I inhaled softly and tried to find my feet again.
“I don’t want to hurt Trevor,” I said. “He’s not a bad man. He loves me, he takes care of me. He’s built this whole life around me.”
Amy’s eyes held mine. “Do you love him?”
The question landed like a stone dropped into water - quiet at first, then rippling outward, hitting everything.
I opened my mouth, and nothing came out.
My silence answered for me.
My stomach twisted hard enough I had to look away.
“Cate,” Amy said, voice barely above the wind. “You don’t have to decide everything in one day.”
“But I do,” I whispered. “Because tomorrow isn’t just another day. Tomorrow is vows and a dress and people who took time off work and his mother’s flowers and…” My voice broke. “And if I walk into that church feeling like this…”
My eyes stung. I blinked again, furious at myself for being on the verge of tears on a random sidewalk like some cliché.
Amy stepped closer. “Then what?”
Then what?
I pictured myself in the mirror, in white, smiling for photos. I pictured the reception, the toasts, the dancing…
I pictured Trevor’s face when he looked at me.
And then, uninvited, my mind gave me John, standing under a streetlight twelve years ago, watching until my taillights disappeared. Like tomorrow was real. Like I mattered.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
Amy’s hand slid into mine again, warm and sure.
“John is gone,” she said softly, careful with the words. “But he’s not nothing. And pretending he is… isn’t working.”
I swallowed hard. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
Amy took a slow breath. “You’re supposed to be honest.”
The word made my chest tighten.
Honesty meant consequences. It meant admitting that the life I’d built with Trevor wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t the whole truth.
It meant admitting that the absence I’d learned to live with wasn’t healed. It was quietly tucked away.
I squeezed Amy’s hand, my fingers cold despite the warmth of hers.
“I hate this,” I whispered.
“I know,” she said.
We stood there at the edge of the crosswalk, the light blinking red, the world rushing past like it had somewhere to be.
And somewhere deep inside me, something shifted again, quiet, and inevitable.
Because I knew, with sick clarity, that I couldn’t walk into tomorrow pretending I hadn’t remembered how it felt to be chosen.