Chapter 24%
Troy. He stood in the entryway, breathless, eyes wild, desperation carved into every inch of his face. He pushed through the crowd as if gravity itself no longer mattered.
“Thalia–please, he rasped. “Please… don’t.”
Xander stepped forward, blocking him. “You don’t belong here. Stop stealing my bride!”
Troy didn’t answer him. He just fell to his knees in front of me, hands trembling as he looked up.X
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “For everything. For not seeing you. For not loving you right. For choosing silence over you. I was wrong. And I know… I know I’ve lost you. But I had to try, Just once. Look, I made you letters and then everything in here.. please.
I stared at him, frozen X
The past flashed like broken glass across my mind. The nights I begged him to hold me. The mornings I woke up alone. The sound of my own voice crying in the bathroom where he shut me out. The laughter he reserved for Bianca. The kisses I never got.!
“You shouldn’t have come,” I said, quietly, “Didn’t you go back home already? I thought you weren’t coming back!”
Troy’s shoulders sank. “Thalia, no! I couldn’t“|
“I told you before,” I continued, voice firmer now,
He closed his eyes. And I turned–toward Xander
“I will n never love you again.“X
I took his hand and let him slide the ring onto my finger. Troy remained on the floor, his eyes glossy with tears, as we kissed–soft, sure, etemal.
And the applause swallowed him.
Later that night, I heard Troy left the party and drove around the city for hours. No direction. No purpose, Just a man with nothing left to chase.
If the
stared at
Some said he sat across the street from the venue, watching from his car as the lights dimmed and music faded. That he s ballroom balcony, where I stood laughing with my husband–to–be, glowing in the arms of someone who loved me properly. Then, sometime past midnight… he started the engine
The next moming, I received the call.
There’d been an accident.X
Troy’s car had collided with the side of an overpass. There were no drugs. No alcohol. No speeding. Just.. silence.
A loss of control.
He was in a coma. In his dreams, we were happy.
I was waiting for him in a garden, barefoot, holding daisies. He kissed my hair. We laughed about nothing. We danced without music. He cooked breakfast and burned the eggs, and I laughed like I used to, back when I still believed he’d someday love me back.
In his dream, I wore his shirts. We made love. We made promises. We made forever.
But dreams are cruel. Because even in the deepest corners of his subconscious, he remembered the truth.
I always waited. And he never came. In his dream, I sat in the kitchen, clutching cold plates and cold hands, I stood outside in the rain, calling his name, falling in puddles made of my own heartbreak. He closed the door. Again and again.
And when he finally opened it.. I was no longer there.
He whispered my name. Again and again. Thalia. Thalia_”
But I was gone.
When he woke up, sweating and disoriented, I was not beside him. He looked around, heart hammering, as if expecting to find me waiting at his bedside.
But there was no Thalia. No daisy in a vas
in a vase. No familiar perfume.
Only silence. He asked the nurse if I had come.!!
She shook her head gently. “Sir… you’ve been asleep for weeks. She’s getting married now. To Mr. Shepherd.”
Married. That word hit him harder than any crash ever could.
Troy tried to stand but collapsed back into the mattress.8
He cried. For the first time in his life, he cried like a man who had truly lost something.
Meanwhile, I wore white. Not the dress I imagined wearing when I first married Troy. That dress had sleeves like regret and a veil that fogged my vision.
This one was different. Lighter Brighter Real X
Xander held my hand as I walked down the aisle. The sunlight kissed my skin. I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt.
We said our vows. I promised to never run after someone who couldn’t choose me.
He promised to never stop choosing me. And that was enough.
Later that day. I heard Troy had been discharged. That he passed by the chapel, dressed in black, limping slightly from the accident He didn’t come inside. He just stood outside the gates
