Page 82 of Wait For It

“Oh my god—like, Ariana, you can talk! And Pastor James, he was sitting right here!”

She dropped onto the chair with a deep sigh. “I’ll literally never forgive myself for leaving you yesterday. When I heard the news, it was like I’d failed you. I should have seen the signs.”

“Wait—the seizure was yesterday?” I croaked.

“Yeah, you were taken to the hospital where they ran like some tests before transporting you back here last night. You’ve literally been sleeping since it happened—not that I blame you—but like it’s good to have you back.” Tiffani sucked in a rough inhale. “I just have to ask—the man who was here a few weeks ago, was that Brad?”

I gave her a brief nod, waiting for the requisite comment on his good looks or expensive clothes—the same useless drivel I’d overheard women in the church discussing for years.

No one had ever seemed to look beyond the superficial long enough to consider whether or not the man even possessed the qualities necessary for a husband.

Spoiler alert—he didn’t.

“But like, he’s got to be as old as your father,” she hissed. “Oh my god—your sisters! It’s not a coincidence that their husbands are so much older, is it?”

It wasn’t.

We’d been sold off like livestock.

Brad would bully me into submission before forcing me to bear his children like the prize-winning heifer I was. I’d fake every smile in public, knowing that behind my back, he was seducing any young girl who happened to catch his eye.

Tiffani didn’t wait for my response before dropping her face into her hands with a muffled groan. “Oh my God, it’s not! Do you even love him?”

“No,” I answered truthfully. “If you run, you could catch up and tell my father.”

She glanced toward the closed door and lowered her voice. “I won’t—like, I know I didn’t exactly grow up in the church, but this is not normal stuff. You shouldn’t have to marry him—”

“It’s out of my hands,” I calmly replied, knowing if I said anything more, I’d give myself away. Tiffani needed to think I was weak and helpless.

I reached under the blankets until I felt the comforting weight of Morgan’s teddy bear against my fingertips.

This was my only option.

Dammit.

One of Killian’s curses slipped in during yet another failed attempt at rethreading my sewing needle. With the way this day was going, it wouldn’t be my last. My sudden inability to complete even the smallest of tasks had made me miserable company.

Before the seizure, I’d been an excellent cross-stitcher.

Before Killian, I hadn’t understood why people made such a fuss over a kiss.

But in the last five days, I’d been reduced to a brittle husk of the woman I was before. I was a woman who’d mastered wallowing in her grief, but not much else.

He hadn’t come back.

Each morning I was forced out of bed and into the shower, where either Tiffani or Tsega would hold me through a light round of shoulder-shaking, uncontrollable sobs.

And things had only gotten worse from there, including a regrettable incident involving the miniature Killian figurine in Fynn’s office and a surprisingly soft wall.

“Yours is coming along nicely, Ariana,” Georgia praised. “Sadly, my eyes just aren’t what they used to be.”

I leaned in as she held hers up for inspection, only to find her stitching infinitely better than anything I was accomplishing in my current state.

“I think you must have been looking at the wrong weave cloth because this—” I shook the hoop to really drive home my point. “Is completely hopeless. I may as well rip it all out and start over.”

Georgia raised her eyebrows in question before turning back toward the small television in the corner of the room. I’d briefly registered it was on when I arrived. Since then, I’d lost myself in the tediousness of French knots and baseball players who disappeared without a trace.

At the amplified crack of gunfire, I flinched and watched in horror as a woman dropped to the beach, bleeding from her wounds. I didn’t need to see anymore—I was well aware of how that story would end.

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