This Time I Choose Me

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

NORA

I made it home with eleven minutes to spare, sliding into the driveway so fast gravel sprayed against the fence, my heart still pounding from the courthouse, from Adrian's voice asking who exactly Daniel thought was dead, a question he'd refused to answer any further before I ran.

My mother met me at the door, already in her dress, her hair half done, panic written across her whole face.

"Where have you been? I called you six times. Sophia's already here, the girls are all here, we don't have time—"

"I just needed air," I said, brushing past her toward the stairs. "I'm here now. Let's get me ready."

She didn't ask again. She just grabbed my hand and pulled me up to my room, already calling out for someone to bring the curling iron, someone else to grab my shoes, and within minutes I was surrounded by hands and voices and the particular chaos of a house getting a bride ready, nobody in that room knowing I'd signed my name to another man three hours earlier, nobody knowing I was standing there already legally someone's wife before I'd even put on the dress meant for another one.

Sophia arrived in a rush of perfume and noise, throwing her arms around me the second she saw me. "There's my bride. Oh my God, look at you."

"I'm so nervous," I said, letting my voice shake just enough, playing the part I knew so well from having lived it once already.

"You have nothing to be nervous about," she said, pulling back to look at me, her eyes bright, her smile wide. "You are so lucky. Do you know how many women would kill to be marrying Daniel Whitmore today?"

I smiled at her, soft and grateful, the exact face I used to make without ever having to think about it. "I know. I really am lucky."

"He adores you," she said, reaching up to fix a piece of my hair. "Everyone can see it."

I thought about the balcony. I thought about her flat little sorry. I kept my face soft. "I can't wait to start our lives together."

Something flickered across her expression before she caught it, quick and sharp, gone almost as fast as it came, the same flash of something ugly I remembered from a thousand small moments in my first life that I'd never once let myself examine. Jealousy. Plain and simple, sitting right there under her smile for half a second before she smoothed it back into place.

Her hand, still fixing my hair, pressed a little too hard against my scalp.

"Ow," I said lightly, laughing it off. "Careful."

"Sorry," she said, easing up, her smile snapping back into place like nothing had happened at all. "Got carried away. You just look so beautiful."

The rest of the bridesmaids swept in around us after that, a blur of dresses and laughter and someone popping champagne too early, someone else crying already over nothing, the whole room humming with the particular euphoria of a wedding day. I let myself get swept up in it the way I used to, laughing at the right moments, tearing up at the right moments, playing the happiest bride any of them had ever dressed.

By the time I stood in front of the mirror in the full dress, my mother crying softly behind me, I almost understood how I'd been fooled the first time. It was easy to disappear into this feeling, easy to let the noise and the flowers and the promise of forever drown out the small warning signs that should have mattered. I understood now why I'd missed so much. I had wanted so badly to believe in it.

The wedding itself was lavish in a way I remembered clearly, more lavish than I'd told the clerk it would be when I signed papers with Adrian just hours before. Daniel's family had insisted on a real venue this time around instead of the courthouse from my memory, some misremembering on my part maybe, or some difference already rippling out from choices I hadn't even realized I'd changed. String lights threaded through the garden, a full band set up near the dance floor, more guests than I could count filling white chairs across the lawn.

I walked down the aisle on my father's arm, and I let myself feel it, actually feel it, the pride on his face, the warmth of his hand over mine, because whatever happened after this, whatever web I was building, I wasn't going to waste the chance to feel my father walk me down an aisle one more time. He'd been gone eight years in my other life. He was here now, solid and real, and that alone almost made the rest of it worth it.

Daniel stood waiting at the end, handsome the way he'd always been handsome, that easy charming smile aimed right at me like I was the only person in the garden. I smiled back the same way I used to, warm, adoring, a woman who had no idea what was coming.

We said our vows again. I said mine calm on the outside, my voice steady, my eyes on his the whole time, watching him for anything I might have missed the first time around, any flicker of dishonesty in how easily the words came to him. He said his without a single crack in his voice, promising forever, promising honesty, promising to choose me every day for the rest of our lives, and I watched him say all of it without so much as a flush in his cheeks.

He was good. I had to give him that. He was very, very good.