true!

You’re pranking me, Ivy!”

My father, Ellis, stared at the floor. He was sitting on the armchair that he always sat on when he came to my apartment. His silent pose commanded authority, but now?

Now, he just looked like a broken man.

“Darling, we were going to tell you one day…”

“When?!” my voice cracked.

“When I turned forty? Fifty? Sixty?

On my deathbed? Or when you thought I was ready?”

Nobody spoke. They barely took breaths.

And then, the final knife to the heart came from Ezra.

“We were just kids.

And you, Lena. My God. You needed attention.

You weren’t our sibling, so we kind of distanced ourselves. I’m sure you felt it. But I guess you thought it was the age thing, huh?”

I turned to look at him slowly, barely recognizing the person in front of me.

“You distanced yourselves?” my voice was eerily calm.

“You mean you decided that I wasn’t family.”

He didn’t deny it.

I let out a slow, shaky breath, gripping the back of the chair beside me. I needed something to ground me.

My entire life, I had been fighting to be part of something that was never mine in the first place.

I wasn’t their sister. I wasn’t… I was just… the kid they tolerated.

I barely remember leaving.

I just walked out of my house and into the evening air, and I kept walking. I don’t know how long I wandered, but eventually, I ended up on the curb outside Rowan’s apartment.

Four blocks away from my own apartment.

I sat there, numb, watching the traffic lights change from red to green, over and over, like my brain was stuck in a loop.

At some point, the door creaked open. Footsteps.

Then warmth.

Rowan’s hoodie draping over my shoulders as he crouched beside me.

He didn’t ask what happened. He just sat next to me, close enough that our knees touched, close enough to remind me that I wasn’t alone in this world.

For a long time, I just stared at the cracks in the pavement, trying to breathe around the ache in my chest.

Finally, I found my voice.

“I don’t think I exist,” I whispered.

“Lena…” Rowan didn’t flinch, but he held me tighter.

“I mean, I do. But not really… I don’t belong anywhere,” I continued.

“I spent my whole life trying to prove that I was part of them. But I was never their sister. I was never even an afterthought.”

Rowan exhaled slowly.

I knew that he was trying to put the puzzle pieces together. And honestly? I wasn’t giving him much.

Just bits and pieces as they came out of my mouth.

“What do you need?” he asked in the quietest voice.

“I don’t know. I thought I needed a wedding, love. A big, perfect day where they had to sit in the audience and watch me for once.

I thought that would make it even.”

I turned to look at him. His face was soft in the streetlight glow, patient as always.

“But I don’t care anymore,” I added. “I don’t want to stand at the altar thinking about them.

I don’t want them sitting there, pretending that they love me when all they ever did was tolerate me.”

Rowan’s fingers brushed against mine.

“Then don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t give them your day, Lena,” he said.

He turned, fully facing me now.

“Let them keep their fake apologies and guilty stares. Let them live with it. But you?” He tucked my hair behind my ear.

“You don’t owe them a performance, my love. You don’t need an audience to be happy.”

His words cracked something open inside me.

I had spent years trying to fit into a space that didn’t want me. Years trying to make them see me, value me, and love me the way I had loved them.

But Rowan had always seen me.

Not because he had to. But because he chose to.

The realization made my breath hitch.

“Let’s not do the wedding,” I said.

Rowan searched my face, as if making sure I really meant it.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded, heart pounding.

“We were only doing it because we thought the other wanted it. But a big wedding isn’t us.

It never was.”

He smiled.

Slow, steady, warm.

“No, it wasn’t.”

I hesitated.

“Then, what do you want to do?”

Rowan tilted his head slightly, thinking. Then, without hesitation—

“I want to wake up next to you every day for the rest of my life.”

The breath left my lungs in a sharp exhale.

He took my hands, rubbing slow circles over my knuckles.

“I don’t care where it happens, or when, or who’s watching. I just want you, Lena.

That’s it. That’s the whole dream.”

My vision blurred with tears and I twisted my engagement ring.

For years, I had been chasing the wrong people, begging them to love me.

But this man?

The one sitting beside me in the cold, the one offering me a lifetime of love without conditions… he was the only one I had ever truly needed.

I squeezed his hand back and closed my eyes. Feeling settled.

“Then, let’s elope.”

His lips curled into the softest, most real smile I had ever seen.

“Hell yes!”

And just like that, for the first time in my life, I made a choice that was only for me.

The courthouse smelled like old paper and fresh ink.

It wasn’t grand.

No towering stained-glass windows, no aisle lined with flowers, no teary-eyed audience.

It was just Rowan and me, standing before a city clerk in a quiet, sunlit office.

And yet, I had never felt so much joy.

“Are you ready?” he murmured, searching my face.

I nodded.

“More than ever.”

The officiant smiled and cleared her throat.

“We’ll keep it simple. Do you take this beautiful woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

Rowan’s lip twitched.

“Absolutely.”

A laugh bubbled up in my chest.

Then the officiant turned to me.

“And do you, Lena, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

I looked at Rowan, my heart so full it ached.

“With everything I have.”

“Then, by the power vested in me by the state of…”

I didn’t hear the rest. Because Rowan was already kissing me, deep and soft, like he had been waiting his whole life to do it.

And maybe he had.

Maybe I had, too.

“Usually, people wait until I say ‘I now pronounce you…’” the clerk coughed politely.

We signed the papers, took our rings out of Rowan’s pocket, and slid them onto each other’s fingers. Just like that, it was done.

No forced smiles. No fake congratulations.

No people in the audience pretending to love me.

Just me and the man who had never, ever made me feel like an afterthought.

As we stepped outside, the sun hit my face, warm and golden, like the universe itself was telling me something.

You made the right choice.

And it was true.

Source: amomama