Please marry me

The veil was perfect on my bridal gown. White tulle, hand-stitched at the edges, falling just below my shoulders like a whisper. I stared at myself in the mirror and thought, this is it. This is the moment everything becomes real. Six years of late-night calls, of building something from nothing, of choosing Daniel over every other option that knocked on my door. Six years of believing that love was enough. That loyalty meant something. That the man who held my hand at my father's funeral was the same man who would hold it for the rest of my life. Today, I was going to marry him. "You look unreal." Clara appeared in the doorway, her silk bridesmaid dress catching the morning light. She looked stunning, she always did. My best friend since university days. The woman who talked me into texting Daniel back when I almost didn't. The woman who sat with me on my bathroom floor at two in the morning when I thought I'd lose my mind from grief. She smiled at me now, wide and warm. I smiled back. "Come zip me up?" I asked. She crossed the room and her fingers found the zipper at my back. For a moment, neither of us spoke. Just two women in a sunlit room, the kind of morning you dream about your whole life. "Are you nervous?" she asked. "A little." I laughed softly. "Is that normal?" "Completely." Her voice was smooth. "Every bride gets nervous." Her hands lingered at my back a second longer than necessary. I didn't think anything of it then. The morning had been a series of perfect moments strung together like pearls. The flowers arrived early, cream roses and eucalyptus, exactly what I'd chosen. My mother cried the moment she saw me dressed. My younger sister Tisa took seventeen pictures before I'd even done my lipstick. Everything was running on schedule. Everything was exactly as planned. Everything except Daniel. He'd texted at eight. “Running a bit late. Traffic. See you at the altar.” ”you're going to be the most beautiful woman in the room.” “I can't wait to marry you. Just—traffic.” I pushed the thought away. He was nervous. That was all. Daniel wasn't a man who expressed himself easily. I'd known that from the beginning. It was something I'd learned to hold gently, the way you hold something fragile, not too loose. But lately, the distance between us had grown into something I couldn't name. He'd been distracted for weeks. Leaving rooms when his phone rang. Sleeping with his back to me when he used to pull me close. Small things. Things a woman notices even when she doesn't want to. You're overthinking, I told myself. It's pre-wedding anxiety. It's normal. I picked up my bouquet and turned away from the mirror. The venue was a converted estate outside the city, the place that made guests feel like they'd stepped into a different world. I'd spent eight months planning every detail with the event planner. The lighting, the music, the seating arrangements, the exact shade of the napkins. I was good at building things. Always had been. Daniel used to say that was what he loved most about me. He would say, “You make beauty out of nothing, Lila.” I thought about that as the stylist touched up my hair. I thought about the first time he said it, three years in, over a dinner I'd cooked in my tiny apartment because neither of us could afford a restaurant. The candles. The wine from a discount shelf. The way he looked at me like I was the whole world. Was that man still in there somewhere? Stop it, I told myself firmly. To My phone buzzed on the square edge table. I assumed it was Tisa. Or my mother. Or one of the twenty-seven other people who had texted me that morning. I reached for it without looking. The message was from an unknown number. No name. No greeting. Just four words and a link. “Before you say yes.” I stared at the screen. My thumb hovered. Clara called from across the room, "Lila, they're ready for you in five!" and I looked up, looked at her bright smiling face, and felt something cold move through my chest. I looked back down at my phone. “Before you say yes.” Every instinct I had told me to put the phone down. To walk out that door and take my father's absence as the only grief I was allowed today. To be the bride I had planned to be. Instead, I pressed the link. A video loaded. And the world I had spent six years building cracked straight down the middle. The footage was grainy at first. A hotel room. The curtains half-drawn. Afternoon light cutting across the bed in thin golden strips. Then voices, Familiar voices. My finger pressed the volume up without my brain giving the instruction. And I watched. I watched for eleven seconds before my hand started shaking. I watched for twenty before I stopped breathing.day is not the day for doubt.By the time the video ended, the bouquet had slipped from my fingers and landed on the floor in a mess of cream roses and crushed eucalyptus. My reflection stared back at me from the mirror across the room. White dress. Perfect veil. Makeup done to flawless. A bride with nowhere left to go. I pressed play again.