"I stopped trying to earn his approval." He said it simply, though I knew it couldn't have been. "I build what I build because I believe in it. Because it matters to me. His opinion doesn't change that."
I let out a breath. Felt something loosen in my chest.
"I don't know how to do that," I admitted. "Stop caring what he would have thought."
"You don't have to stop caring. You just have to stop letting it define you." He turned to face me fully. "You are more than his doubts,Bella.What you've built—your boutiques, your designs, the dress that woman is going to wear tomorrow—that's yours. You did that. No one else."
My eyes were stinging again. But this time, it didn't feel like grief. It felt different. It felt like something was breaking open. Something healing.
"Thank you," I whispered.
"For what?"
"For understanding. For not trying to fix it."
He smiled. That soft, private smile I'd come to know so well.
"Some things don't need fixing. They just need witnessing."
We stood there for a moment longer, the ocean stretching endlessly before us, the sounds of the party drifting from inside. I wanted to reach for him. To close the distance between us, to tell him everything I'd been too afraid to say.
But before I could move, he straightened.
"I should let you get back," he said quietly. "Your family will be wondering where you are."
"Matteo—"
"Goodnight,Bella." He held my gaze for a moment—something tender and resigned in his eyes. "I hope tomorrow is everything you want it to be."
He turned and walked away. I watched him go, his silhouette disappearing through the doorway, back into the light and noise of the party.
And standing there, alone on the balcony with the stars emerging overhead, I finally understood.
I loved him.
Not maybe. Not almost. Not someday, if I figured things out.
I loved Matteo Rossi. Completely. Irrevocably. With a certainty that felt like coming home after being lost for years.
He knew me. Saw me. Understood the broken parts and loved them, anyway. He didn't try to fix me or manage me or mold me into something easier to hold. He just... witnessed. And in his witnessing, he made me feel whole.
Femi had never done that. For all his charm, all his effort, all his grand gestures—he had never once made me feel seen the way Matteo did with a single conversation on a balcony.
I had to tell him.
I had to end things with Femi, properly and finally, and then I had to find Matteo and tell him the truth. That I loved him. That I'd been too scared to admit it before, too tangled up in old feelings and old wounds, but I wasn't scared anymore.
I knew what I wanted.
I just had to be brave enough to reach for it.
19ISABELLE
The morningof the wedding arrived wrapped in golden light.
I woke up early, too restless to sleep, and stood at my window watching the sun rise over the endless ocean. The sky shifted from pale pink to orange to a blue so bright it hurt to look at.
Today.
