Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I take the smallest of steps, hoping to prolong the agony while wanting to get it over and done with. My mom and Heather wanted to come. They couldn’t believe I was doing this. They were moved to tears because now my sister can get the treatments we’ve been trying to figure out a way to pay for, and my mom can stop working almost twenty hours a day. Neither of them wanted it to have to come to this, though.
I told them I didn’t want them to come. And I thought I meant it, but now I wish they were here.
There isn’t anyone here. The place can probably fit six thousand people in it, but there isn’t anyone around until I walk through the entrance of the church, up a set of stairs, into the real deal part of the building, and spot an old man garbed in white robes. The priest. There’s a man dressed entirely in black and dwarfing the huge wood altar he’s standing in front of. The whole front part of the church is wood. It’s ornate and carved, and there’s stained glass and also lots of pews. It’s so fancy in here, so ancient. My heartbeat echoes in my ears. It echoes louder in here, bouncing off the stone and brick and the wood. A thunderstorm can roll through here, and it will sound for days and days and days.
My heart drops out of my chest, and my stomach bottoms out along with it when the golden head turns to me, and in the light of flickering candles and whatever else is going on in here illuminating the stained glass and all the rows of wooden pews, jade eyes meet mine.
I immediately feel like an idiot when they widen, then narrow, then darken. Bradford allows the smallest of smiles, but it’s warm and genuine. My stomach settles, and my nerves ease. He’s so gorgeous, so breathtaking, and he’s going to be mine. Maybe that happy ending is already starting because he looks pleased to see me. I’m wearing another thrift store dress, this one a white and gold gauzy number that I’ve had for years. I always felt a little bit like a Greek goddess in it. Heather braided my hair in a fancy fishtail braid and wove a strand of my mom’s old pearls through it. I’m wearing the only other piece of jewelry we haven’t sold—my grandma’s gold locket—at the hollow of my throat. It’s warm on my skin, and my heartbeats seem to vibrate against it.
This is a church—well, more like a cathedral, splendid and ornate, a place for worship—and here I am, an admitted sinner. I’m about to commit a felony. Fraud. Fake marriage. I’m about to make promises I don’t mean and take literal vows. My hands shake. My left hand already feels weighed down with the weight of lies and the thought of a ring on my finger. Does that mean Bradford will own me? Why didn’t I take more time to think this through? To talk this through?
Miraculously, my feet carry me all the way up that plush, rich red carpeting to the altar of wood and stained glass angels. There are angels looking down at me from all sides of the church. It’s a nice touch.
“You came,” Bradford says, as though he doubted I would. His voice is soft and deep, thick with relief. It makes me a little bit giddy to hear him speak. When he gives me his special, wide smile—his golden smile—that has literally sealed hundreds of deals over the years, I practically melt on the spot.
“I—yes.” What choice did I really have? You had a choice. You always have a choice. Did I? Or was my choice made for me by my father and his debts, and then by Heather’s diagnosis, just when we thought we’d dug ourselves out from under everything else?
Bradford doesn’t take my hand. He doesn’t touch me, but his smile stays in place, and his eyes are warm and kind, and I tell myself that’s enough. That it will be enough for me for these next months. I’m trusting this man with my body, my soul, and my life.
His right hand moves in a small gesture, but the priest sees it and joins us. He’s all ancient and weathered in white robes that give off a slightly musty smell, but while his voice is monotonous and I can’t hear what he’s saying because I’m a wreck inside, I don’t feel like he’s a threat. He’s not unkind. The poor man is just here to marry us, that’s all.
To him, we’re just two people in love. Bradford with his two-thousand-dollar bespoke suit and his million-dollar smile and me with my swept-up hair, my grandma’s locket, my mom’s pearls, and the twenty-two-dollar dress I used to feel so pretty in. Yeah, me…with my soul bared, my heart stopped, and my life spiraling out of control.