The Stand-In Wife and His Only Obsession novel · Chapter 32 of 32
Chapter 32: Our Names
I wore a dress I bought myself.
Ivory silk, plain, with sleeves, from a shop on Steinway Street in Astoria.
It fit in the shoulders.
I gave up the apartment on the first of October and carried my own boxes up to Park Avenue.
Lucas carried the rest.
There were twelve.
He was thrilled.
【TWELVE BOXES. He finally got to carry more than one.】
On the morning of October eighth, St. Thomas was full again.
Not four hundred.
About a hundred and twenty, and I knew every one of them.
My whole squad, in suits they'd clearly borrowed from each other.
My old guard in his too-tight tuxedo, with a western in his inside pocket.
Gran in the front pew, in pearls and a new fleece vest, lavender, for the occasion.
My parents sat in the fourth pew.
They'd been invited.
They'd come.
My mother had sent a note the week before, handwritten, saying she was sorry about the table.
It was two lines long.
It was the longest thing she'd ever written me.
Kitty sat in the very last pew, alone, by the door.
She'd asked to sit there.
She said some things you watch from the back.
I stood in the vestibule with a program in my hand.
Heavy cream stock. The Thackeray crest.
THE MARRIAGE OF JULIET HALSEY AND LUCAS THACKERAY.
I read my own name four times.
Marge stood beside me in a navy dress with her rumpled blazer over it, holding a coffee she'd smuggled past the rector.
"You ready, Halsey?"
"No."
"Good. Nobody's ready." She finished the coffee and handed the cup to an usher. "Give me your arm."
My father didn't walk me up the aisle.
My sergeant did.
【MARGE IS WALKING HER. I'm gone. I'm completely gone.】
【The woman who told her "you can come out now, kid." Walking her up the aisle.】
Lucas waited at the front in a charcoal suit.
He watched me the whole way up.
Same as last time.
Not the dress. Me.
But last time his face had been shut.
This time he was crying, a little, and not hiding it.
Marge put my hand in his.
"Don't make me arrest you, Thackeray," she said.
"Never, Sergeant."
We wrote our own vows.
His were short.
"I'll always know where you are," he said. "And you'll always know where I am. And I'll never again let anyone make me afraid of the people I love."
Mine were shorter.
"I'll always ask why," I said. "And I'll always wait for the answer."
The rector asked if anybody objected.
Gran turned around in her pew and glared at the whole church.
Nobody did.
"You may kiss the bride."
He didn't put his hand on my jaw this time.
He didn't ask.
He already knew.
He pulled me in by the waist and kissed me in front of a hundred and twenty people.
I kissed him back with both fists in his lapels.
He made the same sound he'd made at the altar a year ago, low, into my mouth.
My knees went exactly the same way.
I didn't bite his lip this time.
He bit mine.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of The Stand-In Wife and His Only Obsession are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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