“No,” she tells you. “You don’t get to apologize today.”
You stare at her.
Behind Lara, the white aisle, the flowers, the guests, the priest, all of it goes distant around the edges. Your heart is pounding so hard it feels like another person trapped inside your chest.
She squeezes your hands gently.
“I told them,” she says, her voice shaking, “that I wanted to walk into this marriage with honesty. And I can’t stand at that altar and promise to honor family if I let the most important woman in Marco’s life sit hidden in the back, feeling ashamed of a dress that holds more love than anything else in this church.”
The room changes.
You feel it.
Not all at once, but like ice cracking under sunlight. The whispers stop being sharp. Heads turn in a different way now. People begin looking not at your dress, but at your face. At Lara. At Marco, who has taken one stunned step forward from the altar and now stands motionless, one hand over his mouth.
