Page 29 of The Almost Bride

Luna stepped out of the house as soon as it wasn’t technically dark anymore. The sky was painted in soft pastels, blues and pinks that melted into the horizon and promised yet another hot day. It should have been beautiful, peaceful even, but Luna felt none of it.

The town was mostly still asleep, the tourists just about to start stirring for another hot day of walking. And the streets were quiet, save for the occasional bird crying overhead and the soft stir of the breeze. It was all a stark contrast to the whirling tornado of emotions that she was feeling inside.

She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her shorts, her strides long and aimless as she walked toward town. She had nowhere to be, no destination in mind, she just knew that she couldn’t lie on her bed and look at the ceiling anymore. She couldn’t just keeping thinking about Mia. It wasn’t… good. It wasn’t healthy.

She had left first, hadn’t she? She’d walked away, seen Mia and Mikey and run, just like always. So why did it feel like Mia had left her? Luna had turned and left, assuming the worst, shutting the door before anyone could slam it in her face. That was how she protected herself, it always had been. Leaving was the easiest option. Always.

Mia wanted a safe and predictable life. That was never going to be Luna. She had no right to ask Mia to stay, no right to hope for something that had never been hers to begin with. They’d had an arrangement, and somehow in this whole mess of feelings, Luna had managed to forget that. Now she was paying the price.

And yet it felt like she was losing something irreplaceable. It felt like there was a gaping hole inside her.

She reached the main street, the shops still mostly shuttered as she walked along, not looking but also hoping to see Mia at every turn, on every corner.

She sighed in frustration, kicking at an innocent pebble on the road. This was stupid and yet she couldn’t stop herself thinking…

There was the sound of an awning rattling out and she looked up to see Helen already in her apron. She needed coffee. Caffeine would help.

Helen turned and went back into the shop and Luna followed her into the warm space, the smell of pastries and brewing espresso comforting in its own way. The place was empty at this time of day, Helen probably wasn’t even open yet and Luna said as much.

“As long as the door’s unlocked, I’m open for you,”

Helen said with a wink. Then her expression changed to one more sympathetic. “And you look like you haven’t had a wink of sleep. Been thinking too hard, I’d wager.”

She pulled a cup from a stack and busied herself with the coffee machine. “Trouble in paradise?”

Luna snorted and stepped closer to the counter, leaning her elbows on it. “More like paradise doesn’t exist.”

Helen arched a brow and began to make Luna’s usual. “It can’t be that bad, love.”

With a sigh, Luna shook her head. She was going to have to tell people sooner or later, so she might as well start here and now. “Mia and I… it’s over.”

She almost choked on the words.

Helen didn’t react immediately. She finished steaming the milk before looking over at Luna. “Did she tell you that?”

Luna hesitated. “I saw them together. Her and her ex. I saw enough.”

Helen slid the cup across the counter. “You know what they say, love. If you love someone, sometimes you have to let them go. If they don’t come back, well, they were never yours to begin with.”

Luna flinched. She forced a scoff, shaking her head. “Love? That’s not what this was.”

“What was it then?”

asked Helen.

Luna shrugged. “Just… something. I don’t know. Love is… Love is hearts and flowers and diamonds and Paris and big. Love is big. This was… small.”

Her eyes were starting to burn like she might be about to cry, so she stopped speaking.

“If you say so,”

Helen said, looking at her skeptically.

And Luna couldn’t talk about this anymore. She grabbed her coffee and left, but Helen’s words followed her out of the door.

LUNA SAT IN her bedroom, the familiar cracks in the walls, the familiar smell of it, the familiar feel of it. For years, she’d sat here and thought about how to escape. And now she had all her old travel books out, maps and guidebooks strewn across her bed.

It was, she’d decided, time to plan a new adventure. Something juicy. Something to take her mind off everything.

She picked up a book and turned it to look at the cover. South America could be a good choice. She knew a guy in Buenos Aires that would give her a couch to sleep on for a few nights while she sorted out something else.

She shifted the pile of papers until she found something else. Asia was always good, cheap too, for the most part. She could fly to Bangkok and get started from there, maybe take a train down to some of the islands, sleep on the beach for a while.

Or what about the Greek islands? They’d been on her list for a while. Not the big ones, but the smaller, lesser known ones. Tinos, Naxos, Samos perhaps. She wouldn’t even have to spring for a plane ticket, she could take the train up to London and then go from there. The weather would stay good for at least another two to three months.

She sighed and dropped the map she was holding. It just didn’t feel right. There was none of the burning energy inside her that she was used to, none of the curiosity when looking at new places.

None of it excited her.

The idea of freedom, of travel, once so thrilling, now felt nothing but hollow. For the very first time in her life, the thought of disappearing didn’t feel like an adventure at all. It felt like running away.

She slumped back against her pillows with a frustrated sigh. The walls of the house felt too tight around her, pressing her in, suffocating her, like she needed air. But the thought of going away didn’t make her feel any better.

What she needed was someone to tell her that she hadn’t completely ruined everything. But Mia wasn’t here, and Luna had no one to blame for that but herself. She’d let herself get too close, feel too much, even if it wasn’t love. And now… And now everything felt wrong.

She needed to leave, like it or not. And to leave, she needed money. And there was only one way to get money.

“No time like the present,”

she said, getting up from her bed. She might as well deal with this now. She was done with her grandmother’s manipulations, done with being toyed with. No more games. She was an adult, whatever her grandmother thought, and this needed to end now.

She stomped down the stairs, finding her grandmother in the drawing room, eyes focused on the book in her lap. Evelyn barely acknowledged Luna’s entrance, only flicking her gaze upward briefly before returning to her page.

But Luna wasn’t in the mood for playing around.

“This is ridiculous,”

she said, striding over to her grandmother and crossing her arms.

Her grandmother looked up. “And what would that be?”

“You,”

she snapped. “You holding my inheritance hostage when I’m a grown adult. You just don’t happen to like the kind of adult I’ve become.”

Evelyn looked back down at her book. “Mmm,”

was all she said.

Luna growled. “And why? That’s what I don’t get. Why are you doing this? You’re forcing me to stick around here, and that makes no sense. You don’t even like me!”

Evelyn turned a page calmly, unbothered. “You think that’s true?”

With a roll of her eyes, Luna started to pace back and forth. “Of course it’s true. You’ve never even wanted me here. You only care about how things look, and I’ve always ruined appearances. Why in hell would you want me to stay?”

Silence stretched between them for a long minute. Luna could hear herself breathing. And when Evelyn finally spoke, her voice was quieter than Luna had expected.

“Because I love you.”

Luna froze.

Those words didn’t belong in Evelyn’s mouth. Not in the cold, calculated way she ran her life. Not in the way she had always kept Luna at arm’s length. Not in the way Luna had never seen her shed a tear, not even at her own daughter’s funeral. And yet, she’d said it.

Evelyn looked up, meeting her shocked gaze, something unreadable in her expression. “You may not believe it, but that’s by the by. It happens to be true.”

And Luna didn’t know what to say.

So she didn’t say anything at all.

THE NIGHT SKY stretched wide above Luna, endless and dark and sprinkled with stars. She sat on the window ledge of her room, staring up into the depths of the darkness, thinking long and hard.

She thought about her grandmother’s words. About how they might mean that they weren’t so different after all, that Evelyn had to protect herself just as Luna did. How perhaps not showing her emotions was her grandmother’s version of running away to India, pretending reality didn’t exist.

And she thought about love. About how it might not look the way she thought it did.

Mia had snuck up on her. Had slipped into the cracks of her life so effortlessly, so completely, that Luna had barely noticed she was there until she was gone.

And now everything felt smaller without her.

Because perhaps love wasn’t big, perhaps it was small.

And perhaps, just perhaps, she loved Mia.

The thought terrified her. But it also felt warm and round and fitting, like the truth.

She leaned her head against the wall, closing her eyes.

Love didn’t always look the way you expected it to. And maybe that was okay. But she had no idea what to do with her new-found knowledge.