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Four years ago, at a wedding just like this one, she walked away from him. 

He didn’t chase her down the aisle in a flair of romance-induced drama, didn’t plead with her to explain her change of heart. He couldn’t have, not when the sigh that escaped him was one of relief. 

She returned the ring through a mutual friend, and though he didn’t ask, that friend said that she spent weeks staring blankly at a wall. That she was so heartbroken by her own decision she couldn’t even sleep. 

A sane man would have wondered why she left him if it destroyed her in the process. A desperate man would have shown up at her door, empty promises on his lips. 

But he went to work. He slept eight hours every night. He cooked balanced meals. He socialized when invited out to a movie. 

Life went on as that chasm in him yawned wider with every day he didn’t hear her voice. 

It was four years after their almost-wedding that they were invited to the joyful union of their mutual friends. The day passed in a whirlwind of last-minute suit adjustments, missing corsages, and a tiered cake attacked by rogue doves. When dinner arrived, they sat on either side of the bride and groom, as befitted their roles, and once the string quartet began the most reused rendition of a centuries-enduring classic, their hands clasped in practiced unison to perform a waltz. 

Perhaps it was the jewels woven into her hair, or the plumerias hanging above them, but he found himself saying, “I miss you.” 

Her steps stuttered. Twirling under his arm, their chests met with a brush as she met his stare. “We can’t… We can’t talk about this right now.” 

“We can’t,” he agreed. 

They were silent as they finished their dance. He held on for a beat too long, and he felt her fingers flex around his even as she pulled away. Eyes locked, breaths mingling. 

“I can’t do this,” she said. The same words that had echoed in his mind for four years. 

This time, when she walked away, he chased her. Out into the garden, fairy lights guiding him to a secluded fountain where she stood with her arms crossed. 

“I love you.”

The words fell from his lips before he could seize them. 

She pivoted to face him, so beautiful in her sapphire gown, and she said, “I left you because I wasn’t ready.” 

“I know,” he said, the truth laid bare. Nothing else in this garden caught his gaze. Just her. Always her. “I wasn’t ready, either.” 

But I am now. 

He didn’t know which one of them took that first step, which one of them touched the other first, but that chasm within him sealed in her embrace. 

Seconds, minutes, hours later, she murmured against his chest, “Why did you follow me out here?” 

He tightened his grip around her. “I wasn’t about to let you walk away from me again.”