[Floris’ POV]
The morning of the wedding arrives wrapped in gray light and the hollow ache that's taken up permanent residence in my chest.
Three weeks. Twenty-two days, starting today, of telling myself to accept it, to move on, to let go of something that was never really mine to begin with.
I've ignored his calls with the determination of someone training for the Olympics of Emotional Avoidance. Deleted his voicemails without listening, because hearing his voice would crack the careful numbness I've constructed around my heart like armor made of denial and aggressive positive thinking.
I refused to open the door when he came—eigtheen times, according to the doorman who started giving me pitying looks around visit number twelve.
I told myself it was the right thing. The only thing. Clean breaks heal faster than jagged ones, and there's nothing clean about letting someone explain why they broke you while you're still holding the pieces.
Today Maverick marries Priscilla. It's over.
Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling that's become intimately familiar over these sleepless weeks, something nags at me. A persistent thought I keep shoving down, only to have it resurface like a stubborn pool toy that refuses to stay submerged.
Twenty-seven voicemails. I deleted them all unheard.
What if—no. I can't do this to myself. Can't torture myself with possibilities that don't exist, with words that won't change anything. He's getting married today. In a few hours, he'll promise forever to someone else, and whatever he said in those messages will become as irrelevant as last year's weather forecast.
Except my hand is already reaching for my phone on the nightstand. My fingers are already scrolling through the deleted folder, finding the latest voicemail, the one that came yesterday evening. My thumb hovers over the play button like it's developed a mind of its own and that mind has terrible decision-making skills.
I press it.
His voice fills my room, and it's nothing like the controlled man I know.
"Floris." Raw. Cracked. Like something inside him has shattered and he's speaking through the wreckage. "I know you're not going to answer. I know you've probably deleted every message I've left without listening, and honestly, I don't blame you. I deserve that. I deserve worse than that."
There's a long pause, and I hear him exhale—the sound of someone gathering courage for a confession they're not sure they'll survive.
"The heir clause. I should have told you from the beginning, and I didn't because I was a coward. I told myself I was protecting you, that knowing would only hurt you, but that's bullshit. I was protecting myself.” For some reason, I can’t even be angry at that.
“Protecting the possibility of you, of us, because I knew the moment you understood the full picture, you'd see what I was too afraid to admit—that I was asking you to wait for something I couldn't guarantee."
My throat tightens. Tears are already building behind my eyes, but I can't stop listening.
"I've been in love with you since the chess game," he continues, and his voice breaks on the word love in a way that makes my chest physically ache.
"That night in the hotel lobby, watching you lose spectacularly and demand rematches you had no chance of winning. You were so determined, so ridiculously optimistic despite having zero strategy and even less patience.”
I can’t suppress a wet laugh that bubbles out of me. “And I thought—this woman. This impossible, infuriating, beautiful woman who argues with chess pieces and talks to pigeons and refuses to let the world make her bitter."
A sob escapes me. I press my hand over my mouth to contain it, as if he might somehow hear.
"When I saw you laughing with that stranger at the bar, something clicked into place. I realized I'd rather lose the company—than lose you. The inheritance, the board seat, the legacy I've spent my entire life building... none of it matters if you're not there. None of it means anything without you."
His breath shudders through the speaker.
"I'm sorry, Floris. Not for loving you—I'll never be sorry for that. But for making you feel like a secret when you deserve to be the only thing I talk about. For hiding you in shadows when you should be standing in sunlight.” His breath hitches.
“For every moment I made you question whether you were enough, when the truth is you're everything. You're the first woman I've ever truly loved. The only one."
I'm crying now. Properly crying, tears streaming down my face, phone pressed against my ear like a lifeline.
"I understand if you never take me back. I understand if you've already moved on, if you've decided I'm not worth the risk. But I needed you to know—I needed you to hear it at least once—what you mean to me. What you'll always mean to me, regardless of what happens tomorrow or any day after.”
I really should turn it off before I break completely. But I don’t.
“You changed me, Floris. You made me want to be someone worthy of your sunshine, and even if I failed spectacularly at that, I'm grateful. For every chess game and dumpling disaster and moment you looked at me like I was worth seeing. I love you. I—"
The voicemail cuts off mid-sentence. Maximum recording length reached, probably, or maybe he ran out of words. Maybe some confessions are too big for technology to contain.
I sit frozen in my bed, phone clutched in trembling hands, heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
He loves me. He actually loves me.
And he's about to marry someone else in—I check the time—two hours.
I'm out of bed before I've made a conscious decision. Dressed in minutes, hands trembling so badly I button my shirt wrong twice before giving up and grabbing a sweater instead. Keys snatched from the counter, shoes shoved on without socks, hair pulled back in whatever configuration requires the least amount of coordination.
My car is old, unreliable, the kind of vehicle that makes concerning noises on cold mornings and has opinions about highway speeds. But it'll get me there. It has to get me there.
The drive feels endless. Every traffic light turns red as I approach like the universe is personally invested in my romantic failure. Slow drivers materialize from nowhere, content to cruise at speeds that would make turtles impatient.
The city stretches indifferent around me, going about its ordinary morning while I race toward something extraordinary.
I rehearse what I'll say, his words playing on loop in my head. I love you too. I forgive you. Don't marry her. Choose me. Choose us. The sentences tangle together until they're meaningless sounds, emotions too big for language.
I don't know if I'll make it in time. The ceremony starts at eleven, and it's already past nine, and there's still so much distance between here and there. I take a shortcut through a side street, accelerate through a yellow light that's definitely more red than yellow, and tell myself that traffic laws are suggestions when love is on the line.
My phone buzzes on the passenger seat. Maybe him. Maybe not. Maybe it doesn't matter because I'm going to get there either way, going to burst through those church doors like something out of a movie and tell him—
I glance down for just a second.