Anya nodded, because nodding was easier than speaking. If she opened her mouth, she might say something she couldn’t take back—like I don’t know if I can do this. Or worse: I’m not sure I even want to.
Not because she didn’t love Ethan Caldwell. She did. She had, anyway. In the way you love a future you’ve already started living in your head. In the way you love the shape of a life someone offers you, especially when everyone you’ve ever known has been waiting for you to take it.
Ethan was confident. Put-together. From a family that used words like tradition and expectations like they were sacred. He had proposed with a ring that made her friends squeal and her mother cry and her aunt Katarina raise an eyebrow like she was measuring the price tag against Anya’s spine.
A year of planning had followed. White lilies. A waterfront venue outside Detroit that Ethan insisted on because “my family expects it.” A band Ethan insisted on because “my family expects it.” Even the cake had been negotiated like a treaty—Anya’s preference for something simple politely overruled in favor of something tall and ornate and expensive enough to make people feel important just by looking at it.
She had told herself the compromises were normal. Marriage was two people, two families, two sets of needs learning to share space.
And today, finally, it would be over. Today she would step into the aisle and into a new life where the planning stopped and the living began.
Her phone buzzed.
It wasn’t supposed to. She had told herself she wouldn’t check it. She had promised her mother she wouldn’t check it. The bridesmaids had taken turns warning her like she was about to stick a fork in an outlet.
