Page 3 of Twisted Love

This man is physically different too. His shoulders are broader, his movements more commanding. His jaw is sharper, his gaze icy cold, the warmth I once knew swallowed whole by something dark and dangerous. There is an air of wealth about him. The suit hugs his frame like it was specially made for him, the lines crisp and unyielding.

Nobody moves. Not even Charles. Everybody is too shocked. Suddenly he’s at the altar looming over me.

I can’t breathe.

“Raven,” he says, his voice low, almost a growl. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.

He looks at me like I’m a stranger. Like I mean nothing to him.

“Charles won’t be able to keep you in the life of luxury you think he will,” he says. His words are calm, deliberate, each one slicing deeper.

I feel the blood drain from my face. My lips part, but no sound comes out.

“But I will,” he adds, his gaze locking on mine. “If you marry me.”

The entire congregation gasps, then goes utterly silent. Every breath, every sound, every shift of fabric stops as his words leave his mouth.

The bouquet slips in my hands, nearly falling to the floor as my fingers go numb.

“Is this a joke?”

My nervous gaze sweeps the crowd, faces frozen in shock, eyes darting between me and the man standing at the altar. It can’t be anything else. Who interrupts a wedding with something like this?

But Earl isn’t joking.

His expression is unreadable—cold, sharp, like the cut of a blade. He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, as if daring anyone to challenge the words that just set this room on fire. Slowly, deliberately, he climbs the few steps up to the altar.

He’s not joking.

He’s serious.

The room holds its collective breath, waiting for someone to speak, to break this unbearable tension. And then Charles, standing beside me, bursts into a strange laughter.

It’s loud, abrupt, and jarring, shattering the deathly quiet like glass. I stare at him in amazement. He doesn’t say, ‘How dare you interrupt my wedding? Get out.’ Instead, he laughs, a forced, almost guilty sound. “Oh, for a second there,” he says, still laughing. “I didn’t recognize you.”

I glance at him, confused, but he doesn’t even look my way. His focus is entirely on Earl, his smirk widening into something cruel.

“I should have known,” Charles continues, his voice dripping with mockery and carrying across the room, smooth and confident like he’s putting on a show for the audience. “Who else would pull something this ridiculous? Still trying to reach heights you don’t deserve to be at, are you?”

Earl’s eyes narrow, a flicker of something dangerous passing through them, but he doesn’t respond. Not yet.

Charles doesn’t stop. “I’ll give you this—you clean up well. Where’d you borrow the suit?”

The air feels electric, the tension thick enough to choke on. Earl doesn’t say a word, but the way he looks at Charles—sharp, cold, unrelenting—sends a chill down my spine.

Charles, oblivious or unwilling to back down, turns to the crowd, gesturing grandly. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, his voice full of false charm, “allow me to introduce Earl Jackson. The greasy mechanic from Seagate. You know, the shop down on Maple, the one that can never quite fix anything right. You’ve probably met his father—the drunk who couldn’t hold down a job no matter how much you paid him.”

A few uneasy chuckles ripple through the crowd, but most people stay silent, their eyes locked on Earl.

Charles shrugs and there is a smirk on his face, but his voice seems nervous. “And here he is. The renegade back from the dead. The one who got himself expelled from high school and disappeared off the face of the earth.”

I don’t hear the rest. Charles’s voice fades into the background, his words lost in the roaring in my ears. My eyes are on Earl.

I can’t stop looking at him.

He’s here, standing just feet from me, and it’s like time is folding in on itself. Memories crash into me— he stands on the railway tracks tilting his head up to the sky shouting to the universe, “I love her. She’s mine.” He was the boy who made me feel like the center of creation, even though the world around us was in tatters.

But this isn’t the boy I remember.

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