Elliot stepped inside with the quiet heaviness of someone who had just finished a long hospital shift. His jacket carried the cold damp smell of outside air, and something faintly clinical clung to him in a way I had learned to associate with his job without ever fully understanding it.
He took one look at my face.
“What happened?” he asked.
I handed him my phone without a word.
He listened once, expression unreadable, then handed it back.
“We can call it,” he said calmly. “We go to City Hall on Monday. Just us. No audience for this.”
For a moment, I wanted that more than anything.
Not because I doubted him, but because I was exhausted from bleeding in front of people who treated it like entertainment.
But then something inside me straightened.
“No,” I said. “I want the wedding.”
He leaned against the counter and watched me carefully, giving me space the way he always did.
“I want them to know what they chose,” I added.
He nodded once. “Then we do it your way.”
By then, I already knew none of them were coming.