Page 23 of Savage Love

My life is going to be altogether different from what it was once supposed to be, and from what I had hoped it might become.

I’m glad for the veil over my face that gives me a moment to gather myself as I reach the altar. Isabella takes my bouquet and steps to one side as I walk up to Levin and take his hand. We agreed that no one would give me away, as Isabella patently refused to formally hand me over to Levin, and nothing else felt quite right.

I chose to give myself to Levin on that beach. I’ll choose to give myself to him today, as well.

The choice might not be exactly the one I wanted, but it will at least be mine.

Levin’s hand wraps around mine, broad and warm and strong, and I want to lean into that strength, as I have on so many other occasions. I want to trust him with all of me, with my future—mine and our child’s.

But I can’t stop thinking of how he cautioned me not to. How I have to guard my heart so much more carefully now, because I have a lifetime ahead of me of facing, day after day, that the man I’m going to share that life with doesn’t feel the same way about me that I do about him.

I hear Father Callahan speaking, as we turn towards the altar. I heardearly belovedandjoin this man and this woman together,andif anyone has any reason why they should not be, and a part of me wonders dizzily if someone will stand up, if my sister will speak up, if Levin himself will say something.

I can’t marry this woman because I don’t love her. Because I can’t ever love her.

No one says a word. The church is silent, and Father Callahan waits a few seconds longer before he continues, his voice filling the cavernous space.

“Do you, Levin Josif Volkov, take this woman—”

I see Levin’s lips moving, repeating the words. I search his face, trying to understand what he’s feeling, what he’s thinking—if he’s here with me, or if he’s remembering another wedding day to another woman, a marriage just as quick and unexpected as this one, but one that hewanted. If he feels guilty or angry or upset or anything at all—but I can’t read him. His face is carefully closed off, and that feels worse, because he’s about to be my husband—and I’ve never felt further away from him than I do in this moment. I know he’s keeping his feelings hidden to spare me, but it doesn’t spare me anything. It fills me with hurt and confusion and dread, and my mind goes to the worst possible scenario, that he’s wishing he were anywhere but here, with someone who isn’t me.

“I do.” The words, when they come out of his mouth, sound sure and certain, as if he’s never questioned them in his life. I should take comfort in it, but I can’t even do that, because I know Levin is a man who, once he’s made up his mind to do something, finishes it. His certainty isn’t because he wants me or this, but because he’s set his mind to it. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no going back, and so there’s no wavering.

“Do you, Elena Guadalupe Santiago, take this man—”

I see a flicker of something over Levin’s face, a glimmer of interest, and I realize he’s never heard my middle name before. I open my mouth to tell him that it’s my mother’s name, and then I remember that I’m meant to be listening to the priest, and I stammer when I say my vow.

“I–I do.”

The curiosity in Levin’s face turns to worry, quickly smoothed away, and my chest aches.He’s going to think now that I faltered. That I wasn’t sure. That for a second, I thought of refusing him here at the altar.

“Have you brought rings to exchange?” Father Callahan asks, and Isabella steps forward with Niall, each of them handing us the ring for each other. Two gold bands, one thicker and one thinner, and Levin and I face each other again, my heart hammering in my chest. I don’t know why, but this feels like the part that solidifies it the most. Like that ring, combined with these vows, means more than all the rest.

Suddenly, a memory flashes into my head of Levin on that hotel bed after he’d been stabbed, of my hands frantically holding a bloody towel against him as I begged him to stay with me, to hold on.Do you take him in sickness and in health,Father Callahan had asked, and what I should have said isI already have.

For richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.We’ve already been through all of that. And what I want to say, what I want toshoutat Levin as he starts to say the words that go along with the thin gold band in his fingertips, is that I was the one who wanted to stay, even after all of it. Who wantedhimto stay.

He was the one who left.

“Elena Guadalupe Santiago—” Levin begins, one hand holding mine as the other holds the ring poised at my fingertip. “Take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity—”

I have to swallow back the emotion that wells up in my throat. I hadn’t realized how much it would hurt to hear him saylove, when he so clearly doesn’t mean it. When he’s said to me, in private, that he can’t love me. That he doesn’t believe I love him. I want to shout at him that he can’t stand here, in front of a priest, and lie. That he can’t saylovewhen what he means iscare, that word that I would gladly never hear him say again.

The ring slips onto my finger, cool against my skin, settling at the base of it. Levin gives my hand one small, light squeeze, and then it’s my turn.

I can hear how strangled my own voice sounds when I start to speak.

“Levin Josif Volkov, take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity—”

I mean it. I can’tnotmean it. He might think how I feel is built on a fantasy, but I know better. Iknowwhat I felt in that hotel room when I kept him from bleeding out, when I went in search of what I needed for even a chance of saving his life, when I killed men for those things. I know what I felt every minute of every day that I spent with him. I know how it grew and changed, from the curious desire that I’d felt when I first saw him in my father’s office to what bloomed between us in the darkest and most desperate parts of those nights in Rio.

I’m not too young or too innocent or too naive to know how I feel. And I mean what I say when I slip that ring onto his finger.

Levin’s gaze catches mine, and I wonder what he sees in my face. I wonder what he thinks of it. I wonder, and I miss what else Father Callahan says, until Levin reaches for my veil, and I realize that we’ve gotten to theyou may kiss the bridepart of the ceremony.

He lifts the veil over my head, tossing it back, and draws me closer. His hands are around mine as he leans in, and I crave his touch, this kiss, more than I ever knew possible. I want his hand against my cheek, his lips pressed against mine, the heat of his tongue in my mouth, and the depths of the disappointment I feel when he chastely brushes his lips over mine feel unfathomable. So much so that I have to blink back tears, fighting the flood of emotion that threatens to overwhelm me at the slight kiss.

I think he knows how I feel. But he doesn’t let on. We turn towards the guests as Father Callahan announces us as man and wife, and as we start to walk down the aisle hand in hand, I know that the hardest part of the night is yet to come.

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