I laughed and rested my head against his shoulder.
“Your condition saved my life.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You saved your life by agreeing.”
I thought about the girl I had been then.
The woman staring at a laptop in the dark.
The abandoned bride.
The terminal patient.
The daughter trying not to break her parents.
The desperate stranger asking an actor to stand beside her so she would not look unloved at the end of her life.
I wished I could go back and sit beside her.
Not to tell her everything would be easy.
It wouldn’t.
Not to promise she would live.
Nobody could promise that.
I would only take her hand and say:
He left.
You didn’t.
That is where your story begins again.
Owen’s voice brought me back.
“What are you thinking?”
I looked at the flowers.
The lights.
The man I had not meant to love.
“The wedding didn’t have to be canceled,” I said softly.
He smiled.
“You only needed another groom?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
I looked up at him.
“I only needed one person to tell me I wasn’t already gone.”
His eyes softened.
read more in next page
