HATE ME SLOWER

Chapter Ten: Vows

IVY

The morning of my wedding, I stand in front of the mirror in the same ivory dress from the fitting room, except this time, nothing about it feels like a costume.

"You look stunning," my mother says, appearing in the doorway, her composed exterior cracking just slightly at the edges the closest thing to emotion I've seen from Vivienne Monroe in years.

"Mom." I turn to face her, searching for the right words. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"The clause. The one you and Dad insisted on. Was that really about protecting me?"

Something shifts behind her carefully composed expression grief, maybe, or regret. "Your father and I built this company from nothing, Ivy. We've spent so many years speaking in contracts and quarterly reports that I think we forgot how to speak in anything else. We wanted to protect you. We simply didn't know how to say that without hiding it inside legal language."

"You could have just told me."

"I know." She crosses the room, taking my hands in hers, something uncharacteristically soft in her expression. "I'm learning. Late, perhaps. But I'm learning. I do love you, Ivy. Even when it doesn't look like it should."

Tears threaten, and I blink them back, unwilling to ruin my makeup before I've even left the room. "I know, Mom."

"Now." She steps back, composure sliding back into place like armor. "Let's get you married. Properly this time. Not as a merger. As a choice."

RYAN

I've stood in boardrooms facing down hostile takeovers without a single flicker of nerves. I've negotiated multi-billion-dollar deals with nothing but calm, measured calculation.

I have never, in my entire life, been as nervous as I am standing at the end of this aisle, waiting for Ivy Monroe to become Ivy Blackwood.

"You look like you're about to be sick," Noah says beside me, straightening my boutonniere with the fond exasperation of a man who has spent eleven years waiting for this exact moment.

"I might be."

"Don't you dare. I will never let you live it down."

Despite the nerves, I huff out a laugh. "Thank you, Noah. For pushing me toward her. For seeing what I was too much of a coward to admit."

His expression softens. "You've loved her since you were eighteen years old, Ryan. I just got tired of watching you pretend otherwise." He claps my shoulder, something fierce and protective in his eyes. "Take care of her. Or I will end you, merger or no merger."

"I intend to spend the rest of my life doing exactly that."

The string quartet shifts into something slower, more reverent, and the doors at the end of the aisle open.

Every rational thought I've ever had evaporates the moment I see her.

The dress, the veil, the soft curls framing her face none of it compares to the way she's looking at me, like I'm the only person in the entire garden, like eleven years of careful distance never happened at all.

She walks toward me on her father's arm, and when Richard places her hand in mine, he holds my gaze for one long, significant moment.

"Take care of her," he says quietly, echoing Noah's words from minutes ago. "She's the best thing either of our families ever built. Don't let contracts ever make you forget that again."

"I won't," I promise, and I mean it with everything I have.

IVY

The ceremony passes in a blur of golden afternoon light, my father's hand steady beneath mine before he places it in Ryan's, the officiant's voice a distant hum beneath the thundering of my own heartbeat.

When it comes time for vows, Ryan's hands tremble slightly around mine something I've never witnessed from him before, not once in eleven years of careful composure.

"Ivy," he begins, voice rough with emotion. "I spent eleven years convincing myself and everyone around me that I didn't want you. That distance was safer than the truth. I was wrong. I was so wrong, and I am endlessly grateful that fate and two meddling fathers with a business merger finally forced me to stop hiding."

Laughter ripples through the garden. I feel tears sliding freely down my cheeks now, unbothered by my makeup.

"I promise you," he continues, "that I will never again let fear keep me silent about how much you matter to me. I promise to choose you not because a contract demands it, but because there is no version of my life I want more than the one where you're standing beside me. I love you, Ivy Monroe. I have for longer than I ever let myself admit, and I will for every day that follows this one."

My own vows come out shakier than I'd planned, emotion thick in my throat. "Ryan, I spent eleven years hating the wrong thing. I thought I hated you. I think, really, I was just terrified of how much I already felt, even then. You taught me that love doesn't always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it waits patiently behind a cold exterior, year after year, until you're finally brave enough to let it show. I promise to be brave with you. To choose honesty over distance. To love you exactly the way you've shown me you love me fiercely, completely, without reservation."

When we kiss as husband and wife, the garden erupts into applause, and somewhere in the crowd, I hear Olive's distinct, delighted shriek, and Noah's booming laugh, and my mother's uncharacteristically audible sniffle.

For the first time since that terrible phone call months ago, the word "marriage" doesn't feel like a sentence.

It feels, entirely and completely, like coming home.

That evening, beneath string lights and the soft hum of music, Ryan pulls me onto the dance floor for our first dance as husband and wife.

"Mrs. Blackwood," he murmurs against my temple, voice warm with quiet joy.

"Mr. Blackwood," I echo, smiling against his chest. "I believe I still technically hate you. For the record."

"Hate me slower, then," he says, and I feel his smile against my hair. "That's all I'm asking."

I laugh, pulling back to look at him this man who spent eleven years building walls, now standing in front of me with every single one of them dismantled.

"Always," I whisper. "For the rest of our lives, Ryan Blackwood. I promise to hate you as slowly as humanly possible."

He kisses me again, soft and certain, as the lights glitter around us and our families watch with matching expressions of relief and joy.

Eleven years of distance.

One perfect beginning.

To be continued in Chapter Eleven...