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“Do you think you can?” Ms. Sterling retorted with a tired smile.
I groaned. Of course, I could. But I was also a forlorn dreamer with a lousy reputation of a person who insisted on seeing the good in almost everyone.
My father called it naiveté.
I called it hope.
“Yes,” I admitted. “My heart has room for him. He just needs to claim it.”
My honesty rattled me. I didn’t know why I opened up to Ms. Sterling like this. Maybe because she did the same to me, offering me a clandestine peek into her own life.
“Then, my dear girl”—she cupped my cheeks with her cold, veiny hands—“to answer your question, Wolfe is capable of feeling whatever you feel toward him but much, much stronger. More resilient and more powerful. For everything he does, he does thoroughly and brilliantly. Most of all, love.”
I’d asked Ms. Sterling to tell Wolfe not to come to my bed that night, and he hadn’t. Since it was the night before the wedding, he chalked the fact that I stayed in my room for dinner up to nerves.
He did insist that Ms. Sterling bring me my dinner upstairs and made sure that I ate it.
There were waffles drowning in maple syrup and peanut butter straight from the diner down the road. He obviously did not care for a swooning bride tomorrow morning.
I didn’t sleep a wink.
At five in the morning, Ms. Sterling walked into my room, bristling and singing with a herd of stylists at her heels.
Clara, Mama, and Andrea also came along, whisking me off the bed like Cinderella waking up with the help of tiny furry creatures and canaries.
I decided to push aside the fact that my father was a bastard and my fiancé was a heartless man, determined to enjoy the day. As far as I could tell, I only had one wedding to celebrate in this lifetime.
Might as well make the best out of it.
I wore a rose-gold Vera Wang wedding dress with floral lace appliqués and a pleated tulle skirt. My hair flowed down in luscious waves all the way to the small of my back, complete with a Swarovski tiara. My bouquet was simple and contained only white roses.
When I arrived at the Little Italy church where we were to get married—honoring my family’s tradition—the place was already swarming with media vans and dozens of local journalists.
My heart accelerated. I didn’t even talk to my husband the night before our wedding. Didn’t have the chance to confront him about the horrid things he once again said about me to my father.
According to him, he was going to toss me away when I got old. The reality of my situation sank in at that moment.
We hadn’t gone on one date (the diner was an apology, not a date, and the entire time I shoveled food into my mouth, he worked on his phone).
We hadn’t texted regularly. We never slept in each other’s bed. We never talked for the sake of talking.
No matter how I tried to spin it, my relationship with Wolfe Keaton was doomed.
I walked down the aisle to find my seamlessly dressed, clean-shaven fiancé waiting for me by the priest with a solemn look on his face. Next to him stood Preston Bishop and Bryan Hatch.
It did not escape me that Wolfe Keaton had no real friends. Only work friends he could benefit from.
I didn’t have any real friends, either.
Clara and Ms. Sterling were triple my age.
Andrea, my cousin, was twenty-four, but she was mostly there for me out of pity. She worked in a salon and dated Made Men regularly, though she always said she wouldn’t let them touch her, not even a kiss.
My mother was twice my age.
This left both Wolfe and me in vulnerable positions. We were both lonely and guarded. Wounded and distrusting.
The ceremony went off without a hitch, and once we were pronounced husband and wife, Wolfe offered me a chaste peck on the lips.
