Chapter 23: Small Wedding

In the morning he asked, and I said I was still there.

Then I told him to put on his charcoal suit on Saturday at four o'clock and come to Oakley Avenue.

"Why?" he said.

"I'm asking you something, and I want witnesses."

By Saturday the flat held fourteen people and one drafting table.

Veda had brought folding chairs from the studio, and the old man downstairs had brought a plate of cookies and opinions.

The managing partner stood by the east window with his pencil in his hair.

He had become ordained on the internet that morning, and he'd printed the certificate to prove it.

"It's real," he told Colin. "I looked it up twice."

The woman who ran the budgets sat beside the quiet partner with her ledger on her knee, in case.

The girl from the next desk had a phone, and I let her.

Colin stood in the middle of the oak floor with the scar running past his shoes.

He looked at the room and then at me, and the thumb went to his jaw and stopped.

I was wearing the green dress from the gala.

I had bought two rings that week with my own money, plain steel bands that cost less than lunch.

I held them in my fist.

"Colin Stanhope," I said.

The whole room went quiet.

"We got married two years ago, and I don't remember a minute of it. You do."

"I had a whole life with you that I can't read, and I spent last month finding out why I tried to leave it."

"I did not come back to you by accident. I want to be clear."

"I came back because you built me a table on a landing."

"You stood up in your own boardroom, so I'll be the one at the door at six."

"I want to marry the woman who came back."

"Not the one in the beige dress. This one. The loud one."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Waking Up Married To My Crush! from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.