The CEO's Rejected Wife And Secret Heir-Chapter 171: Pre Wedding Jitters

Aria’s POV

She dissolved completely, laughing so hard she had to put her own drink down.

When we finally settled, Olivia wiped her eyes and let out a long breath.

"You know what the next 2 days mean though," she said, in the tone that meant nothing good was coming.

"Don’t."

"Lots of sex, Aria." She said it like she was delivering important news. "Lots and lots of."

"Olivia"

"I’m your doctor, actually. This is a clinical observation. You have been deprived, and marriage means."

"I will throw this glass."

"You won’t, it’s expensive." She grinned. "Bitch, you are getting married in 2 days time, I can’t stop saying that in two days."

I laughed despite myself. "Fuck you."

"No, no, no." She pointed at me, delighted. "You are saying that to the wrong person." She leaned in. "That night, you look that man in the eye and you say" she lowered her voice "fuck me, papi."

I choked on my drink. "Olivia."

"I’m just saying "

"I sanctify my ears now too." I pressed my hand to my chest. "Because of you now , every single morning."

She fell sideways on the chair, laughing and completely unrepentant, and I sat there beside her, two drinks in, marrying Damien Blackwood in less than 3 days, and honestly, I couldn’t wait.

*********

Tradition said the night before the wedding belonged to the bride alone.

I’d ignored a lot of traditions in my life — some by necessity, some by choice, and the first time around, all of them by the nature of what the marriage actually was. But this one I chose deliberately, with both eyes open, because I wanted a night to just be with myself. To sit with everything before it changed.

Damien was at a hotel across town — his idea, and I’d been surprised enough by it that I’d let him explain before objecting. You deserve a proper wedding eve, he’d said, which was such an unexpectedly gentle thing to come from him that I’d only managed to say "you’re getting better at this" before he kissed my forehead and went to pack an overnight bag.

He’d texted twice since leaving. I’d answered both. The third text came at 9 PM, while I was sitting on the rooftop in the warm evening air with a glass of wine and Noah tucked against my side under a blanket, looking at the city below. I can’t wait to marry you tomorrow, this time forever.

I read it twice. Then I showed it to Noah, because he was right there and because I couldn’t help it.

He read it with the serious attention he gave to important documents, which at four meant moving his lips slightly and frowning at the unfamiliar words, and then he looked up and said, "That’s Daddy being mushy."

"It is," I agreed.

"It’s okay," he said magnanimously. "He’s allowed." He went back to studying the city lights. "Mama?"

"Mm."

"Is it going to be different? After tomorrow?"

I looked down at him — at the profile of his small face, the question sitting in it with more weight than most four-year-olds carried. He’d been doing this lately, asking the underneath questions, the ones that took me a moment to locate the honest answer to.

"Different how?" I said.

"Like—" He paused, working it out. "Will you and Daddy be different? Or just more the same?"

I thought about that.

"More the same," I said. "We’re already a family. Tomorrow just makes it official, puts it somewhere where everyone can see it." I pulled him a little closer. "You’ll still have both of us. I’ll still be your mama exactly the way I’ve always been. Daddy will still be Daddy. The only thing that changes is that we have a party and wear nice clothes."

"And I carry the rings," he said.

"And you carry the rings."

He nodded, absorbing this. "I’ve been practicing."

"Mrs. Dora told me."

"She says I’m very responsible." He straightened slightly with pride. "She said I’m the most responsible ring bearer she’s ever seen."

"Has she seen many?"

"She’s been to a lot of weddings," he said, with the certainty of someone reporting established fact. "She said most ring bearers run, or drop things, or cry but I am not going to do any of those things."

"What are you going to do?"

"Walk slowly, look serious." He demonstrated a brief preview of the expression — solemn, focused, carrying the invisible weight of imaginary rings — and it was so perfectly him, this small person who absorbed everything and gave it back with interest, that I had to press my lips together very hard.

"Perfect," I managed.

He relaxed back into normal. "I know, mummy are you nervous?"

"A little."

"Good nervous or bad nervous?"

I considered this carefully. "Good nervous. Like the first day of something exciting, not the scared kind."

He thought about that. "The first day of preschool I was both," he said. "But it ended up good."

"Most things do," I said. "When you go in ready for them."

He leaned his head against my arm, and we sat there together, This is what I’m bringing into tomorrow, I thought. This. All of this.

The woman who had stood on a street at twenty-three with a suitcase and nothing else, who had rebuilt herself piece by piece in cities that didn’t know her name, who had brought this person into the world and loved him so fiercely it had held her upright through everything — she was still in me. She wasn’t gone. But she’d been joined by someone else, someone who’d learned that being powerful and being loved were not mutually exclusive, that trust wasn’t the same as weakness, that choosing the terrifying real thing was always better than the safe hollow one.

"Mama," Noah said, just before I was about to tell him it was time to go in.

"Yeah?"

"I’m glad you came back." He said. "To Daddy, to all of it." He looked up at me. "Things are better now."

I pulled him into me carefully, around the healing shoulder, and held on. "Yeah," I said, into his curls. "They really are."

Olivia appeared at ten with a bottle of something celebratory and the specific energy of a woman who had been waiting for this night for years and intended to honor it properly.

We sat on the rooftop long after Noah was in bed, wrapped in blankets, watching the city, saying the kinds of things you say the night before something important when you’re with the person who has seen every version of you along the way.

"Do you remember," Olivia said, refilling her glass, "the night I found you in that apartment in Brussels? You’d been awake for about thirty-six hours. Noah was four months old and not sleeping. You’d had a meeting that afternoon with the first serious investor who’d expressed interest in Monroe Global, and you came home and just—" She shook her head. "You sat on the kitchen floor and ate cereal out of the box because you didn’t have the energy to cook, and you told me you were going to build something so unshakeable that nobody could ever take anything from you again."

"I remember," I said.

"You had cereal in your hair," she added.

"I know."

"And I thought" She looked at me. "I thought: she’s going to do it. I didn’t know how. I barely believed it was possible. But I looked at you on that kitchen floor at three in the morning with cereal in your hair and an infant who wouldn’t sleep, and I believed you completely."

My throat tightened.

"You didn’t just build the company," she said. "You built yourself. From the ground up. Everything you are now, Aria — the company, the strength, Noah, this—" she gestured vaguely at the rooftop, at the city, at everything the gesture stood in for. "You made all of that. And tomorrow you get to walk toward the last piece of it with your eyes wide open, choosing it on your terms."

I looked at the city.

"I’m not scared," I said. "I keep checking, because I expect to be, and I’m just—not."

"That’s how you know it’s right." She tilted her glass toward me. "The first time around with what you told me, I am sure you were terrified from the minute you agreed to it but this time you’re not scared because there’s nothing to be scared of. You know him. He knows you. You’re not hoping it’ll work out — you’re certain."

"Certainty feels strange," I admitted. "I’ve spent so long expecting the floor to drop."

"The floor is not dropping."

"I know." I smiled. "I know it isn’t."

She reached across and clinked her glass against mine. "To second chances."

"To second chances," I agreed. "And to you, Liv. For staying through all of it."

"Obviously," she said. "Where else would I be?"

My phone buzzed one more time before I went in. Aria. Just—thank you. For trusting me with this. With all of it. See you tomorrow. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

I typed back quickly, smiling at the screen in the dark. See you at the altar, Blackwood. Don’t be late.

His response was immediate. I’ve been waiting years. I’ll be early.