Page 36 of His Captive

The organist clears her throat and cracks her fingers, before the wedding march fills the building, the same tune Millie would hum to herself as she walked up her imaginary aisle toward me when we were kids.

The congregation stand, and I shake from my head, the vision of an eight-year-old Millie in an oversized dress gliding toward me, as I raise to my feet.

The doors at the back opens, rays of sunlight bursting into the room and reflecting beautiful colors from the stain glass windows on to the altar floor.

The pretty flower girls came first, rose petals falling to the ground at their ballerina shoed feet. I close my eyes, swallow down the lump that threatens to choke me, and force myself to turn around…

Millie stands between the chapel doors, her arm arched inside her fathers.

And my erratically beating heart doesn’t just slow. It stops completely.

She stands a little taller than usual, her blonde hair softly tousled, and pinned up loosely at the sides. She hardly wears any makeup, but she’s never needed to, her smile lights up her face more efficiently than any beauty product ever could.

Her blue eyes shine so brightly, a sapphire gaze that fixes on me and seems to reboot my heart immediately back into action.

Slowly, she begins to move up the aisle, closer to me, resembling a floating angel.

It doesn’t matter how many times we rehearsed this moment as kids, she’d steal the breath from me every time, just like she’s stealing it now.

The dress she wears sits elegantly off her shoulders, clinging all the way down her slender body. It shimmers with crystals and is complemented by white lace.

I’ve never seen her look so beautiful.

So...Perfect!

When her eyes pull off mine and she focuses on the altar I look down to her chest, watch how it rises high and draws in long breaths, then how her lips pucker together as she nervously lets it back out.

I hear the whispers as they come from behind me, comments on how beautiful she looks. I blank them out, I don’t need them to confirm what I’ve known for the past twelve years.

Millie has been the girl I’ve wanted to marry since I was eight years old, when the prettiest girl in town, decided to make friends with a nobody like me. She’d given me hope back then, and now with her walking toward me, I’m still holding on to it.

She steps to the front of the altar, her head turning to look at me. Blue eyes drowning in a sadness that tears right through my soul.

I’ve never once, since I was eight doubted that I love Millie Montgomery, but in that moment I realize how much.

Because when the organ plays its last cord I do nothing to stop what’s about to happen right in front of me. I sit down with the rest of the congregation, and I stare forward, forcing myself to watch helplessly as the only thing I’ve ever truly wanted slips away from me.

Ivan Sorrento steps to her side and takes her hand inside his. Pain floods my chest when her eyes pull away from mine, so they could fix on his.

Hope is destroyed, dreams are shattered…and hate is born.

She’d shown.

I sit and watch them, feeling all the warmth drain from my blood, the beautiful colors that surround me fade to greys, as with each word she speaks I lose her more and more.

She makes her vows to him, while I make vows to myself.

I vow to never care about another being so long as I live.

I vow I’ll never love ever again.

Then watching as he slips the platinum ring over her finger, Sorrento’s promises to love her forever spewing from his lips and injecting into my bloodstream like poison.

I promise myself that this will be the last time Ivan Sorrento ever takes from me again.

It’s the perfect day…

Except Millie Montgomery is marrying the wrong man. And the final look she glances over her shoulder at me, before the man I detest kisses her on her glitter glossed lips, tells me that she damn well knows it ….

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