“Like I told her,” I interrupted, more firmly than I intended. “It is not her choice or her decision to make. It’smine.”
The room went silent again.
I stood up and walked over to Liam.
Placing my hand on his shoulder, I looked him in the eye. “It’s going to be okay,” I said, even though I knew how hollowthose words sounded. “I have accepted it… and I want you to accept it too.”
At first, he just glared at me.
Then he stood and pulled me into a tight embrace.
I wrapped my arms around him instinctively. I could feel the tension in his body, the way he held on as if letting go would make this real in a way he couldn’t bear. He had always looked up to me. Always seen me as the one who held things together. And now I could feel how scared he was.
But what he didn’t know… was that I was scared for him too.
Losing our parents had nearly broken him, and now he was facing that loss all over again.
“It’s not fair,” he said, his voice breaking as he pressed his face into my shoulder. “First mum… then dad… and now you.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, holding him a little tighter.
“I know,” I said softly, patting his back in a way that felt painfully familiar. “I’m sorry.”
And for the first time since saying the words out loud… I truly felt the weight of what I was leaving behind.
After everyone left that night,I got into bed and pulled Jiya close, wrapping my arm around her as if I could somehow hold everything together just by keeping her near me. Her body fit against mine so naturally, like it had always belonged there, and I let myself pretend that nothing had changed.
But my thoughts would not rest.
It kept circling back to the same thing.
Her.
Us.
The wedding.
I had been turning it over in my head all evening, even while I smiled, even while I reassured everyone else. I had debated with myself again and again, trying to figure out what the right thing to do was.
And every time, I came to the same conclusion.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair to ask her to marry me, knowing what I know now.
When she drifted off to sleep, I got up quietly and walked over to her work table. The plans for our new house were spread out neatly, her handwriting marking little notes along the edges. Beside it sat the framed photo from the night I proposed—her smile bright, her eyes shining in a way that had made my chest ache even then.
I picked it up, my thumb brushing over the glass.
And then my gaze shifted to the calendar.
Dates circled.
Appointments written in.
Meetings with vendors.
All the tiny pieces of a future she was building with me.
