Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
“Stop reading my mind.”
“I can’t help it. You remain transparent to me. Now. Are you ready?”
“You know I’m not.”
He smiles coldly. “You are.”
He offers me his arm and I put my hand into it. I am very nervous all of a sudden. On some level, I don’t think I ever thought this would really happen. Me, married? Me, a wife? No. That’s the sort of thing other people do.
We approach the aisle, music swells from the band, and I am swept up in the moonlit ambiance.
At the altar, Vlad is Alexei’s best man, and Elena is my maid of honor. Their eyes are red, and their skin is pale, and they are changed in personality in some small fractal way, the same way things seem to change when an optometrist flicks between two similar lenses and asks which is better. They seem simply different.
Seeing them all here, I feel a sense of family in a way I never have before. All these disparate, broken, improper parts coming together and rubbing against one another.
This is what it means to belong.
To be shattered in a thousand ways and yet to be accepted anyway. Enemies are becoming friends, when bitterness ends, as Shakespeare once said in his very good movie.
Then my eyes settle on Alexei, and suddenly nothing else, nobody else matters. He is smiling with a genuine joy, an expression I have rarely seen on his face. He is so handsome, so utterly perfectly masculine, and so mine.
I have no idea how I could have doubted this. One look at my mate in his suit and I am absolutely flooded with excitement, anticipation, and the kind of love that transcends all tragedy. I love him with all I am, with every instinct, every thought, every deed.
Dom slides his arm away from me in a gentle motion designed not to break my concentration. I step up to the podium, Alexei takes my hand, and the rest of my life begins…
The End