Chapter Ten: I Do

Layla’s POV

“We are gathered here today to witness the marriage of Layla Thompson and Ian Lawson.”

The priest’s voice carried through the cathedral with the calm authority of someone who had done this many times and found it meaningful every single time. Around us the congregation settled into attentive silence — hundreds of people who had come to watch two people begin their life together.

If only they knew.

The speech about marriage was thorough. The priest talked about commitment and partnership and the sacred nature of the vows we were about to make. He talked about love — quite a lot about love, actually, which I found increasingly difficult to listen to without my expression doing something I would regret.

Ian stood beside me through all of it with the stillness of a man who had decided to be completely unreachable for the duration of this event. Jaw set. Eyes forward. Giving absolutely nothing away.

I stared at the altar cloth and thought about breakfast.

Then the priest reached the part I had been quietly dreading.

“If anyone here has cause to object to this union, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

I waited.

In my head — in the very specific and slightly embarrassing corner of my head where I had apparently been constructing scenarios — I had imagined this moment differently. Some long-lost lover appearing at the cathedral doors, breathless, having driven through the night from wherever long-lost lovers came from, begging me not to go through with it.

Dramatically. Publicly. In a way that would give me a genuine reason to stop.

Silence.

Complete, unbroken, deeply unhelpful silence.

I was a twenty-six year old virgin with no long-lost lovers and no dramatic rescue on the horizon. That was simply the reality of my situation and I was going to have to sit with it.

I had even, in a slightly more realistic version of the fantasy, hoped that one of Ian’s many documented companions might appear. He was New York’s most notorious playboy. Surely at least one of them had feelings strong enough to cause a scene at a cathedral on a Saturday morning.

Also silence.

The congregation waited. The priest waited. Ian stood beside me like a very expensive statue.

Nothing happened.

The priest moved on.

“Ian and Layla — have you both come here freely and wholeheartedly to give yourselves to each other in marriage?”

Absolutely not, I thought.

“I have,” we said. Together. At the same time, in the same flat tone, like two people reading from a script they had not written and did not endorse.

Ian glanced sideways at his grandfather. I stared straight ahead.

The priest, apparently sensing nothing unusual about any of this, continued.

“Ian Lawson.” He turned to face him directly. “Do you take Layla Thompson to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, in good times and in difficult times, for richer or poorer, keeping yourself only to her for as long as you both shall live?”

Ian turned to look at me.

Cold. Calm. Completely collected. Not a flicker of anything on his face — no nerves, no hesitation, no acknowledgement that what was happening was in any way significant or difficult or worth reacting to. Like he was answering a straightforward question in a business meeting.

“I do.”

The congregation made a collective sound of warmth.

Now it was my turn.

The priest repeated the same words directed at me — the same promises, the same conditions, the same lifelong commitment wrapped in formal language that had meant something real to people who had stood in this exact spot and meant every word.

I looked Ian directly in the eye.

My voice came out hard and clear and entirely firm.

“I do.”

Our eyes stayed on each other for a few seconds after — not warmly, not softly, but with the particular locked attention of two people who had just made promises they intended to keep for entirely different reasons than the ones the priest was imagining.

The ringbearer stepped forward.

Gabriel — Ian’s best friend, I had learned, the one who had pulled him back on the Manhattan sidewalk — came forward with the ring box and handed it over. He looked between us with an expression I could not fully read. Cautious, maybe. Or simply very aware of what was actually happening here.

“Ian, you may place the ring on Layla’s hand.”

Ian opened the box.

He took out the ring — a simple silver band, plain and functional, chosen with approximately the same amount of thought one might give to selecting a brand of coffee.

Actually. I reconsidered. I was fairly confident Ian had people who selected his coffee for him. This ring had received less consideration than that.

He had done it on purpose. I was certain of it.

He reached for my hand.

And that was when he saw it.

I watched his eyes do a very small, very controlled double take — the kind that most people in the congregation would have missed entirely but that I, standing close enough to count the silver flecks in his blue eyes, caught perfectly.

On my finger was already a silver ring. Hailey’s silver ring, which I had slipped on this morning before leaving the house, sitting exactly where the wedding band would go.

He looked up at me.

I looked back at him with an expression of complete and total innocence.

He said nothing. He slid the wedding band onto my finger over Hailey’s ring without comment, his jaw tight, his eyes moving away from mine immediately after.

Point to me.

“Excellent,” the priest said warmly. “And Layla — your turn.”

I reached for Ian’s hand.

Unlike him, I had actually thought about this. My ring for Ian was a silver band from Tiffany and Co — properly chosen, properly made. I had even had today's date engraved on the inside.

I could not entirely explain why I had done that. It was not in my nature to give someone a bad gift, regardless of how I felt about them. It was simply how I was built.

I slid the ring onto his finger.

He looked at it briefly. Something moved across his face — too quick to name.

“By the power vested in me,” the priest announced, his voice ringing through the cathedral with genuine warmth, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” He smiled at us both. “Congratulations. You may now kiss the bride.”

I looked at Ian.

Ian looked at the priest.

Some kind of silent communication passed between them — a nod from Ian, brief and decisive, the kind of nod that confirmed an arrangement had already been made. The priest stepped back with a small, understanding smile and moved away from us.

No kiss.

Ian let go of my hands.

He turned.

He walked down the stairs of the altar — unhurried, composed, already moving on — and left me standing there alone in front of an entire cathedral full of people who had just watched him walk away from his bride without kissing her.

I stood very still.

The congregation began to clap anyway — the polite, slightly confused applause of people who were not entirely sure what they had just witnessed but were committed to celebrating it.

I arranged my face into something that resembled a smile.

The audacity, I thought. The complete and total audacity of this man.

He had bribed the priest. Or spoken to him beforehand. Or done whatever Ian Lawson would have done when he wanted to arrange an outcome without discussing it with the person most directly affected.

And now I was standing at the altar alone while my new husband descended the stairs without me, and the only thing keeping me from saying something extremely inappropriate in a house of God was the knowledge that the media had not been invited to the church portion of today’s events.

Small mercies.

Ian Lawson had just given me approximately hundred new reasons to hate him.

I picked up my skirt.

I walked down the stairs after him.

And I promised myself, with the quiet certainty of someone who had been never been underestimated their entire life and had learned exactly what to do with that — that every single one of those hundred reasons would be addressed. In time. On my terms.

He had no idea who he had married.

*******

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— Ruthie ❤️