Into You Series: The Complete Collection

32. Saria

CHAPTER 32

SARIA

M y maroon dress looks more like I’m going to some Christmas ball than a January wedding, but it’s the only fancy dress I didn’t put in storage so it will have to do. Paired with black opaque tights and heeled Mary Janes, I guess it isn’t the worst getup.

Plus, it’s just my ex’s wedding, so what does it matter how I’m dressed?

“Toil and trouble,” Mercury parrots.

“No, we’re not watching Harry Potter right now.” I’ve been marathoning the Harry Potter movies again because what else do you do after you’re done studying and only have time to mull over your non-ex-fake-boyfriend? You watch the Hogwarts castle covered in snow and think, I should have wished harder on my eleventh birthday.

“He was their friend,” Mercury says.

“Yep,” I groan. Note to self: less of the third movie.

I run my hands down the front of my dress. I wish Harry could see me like this. I wish he were my date. I wish we could sit in the pews laughing together. Maybe he’d hold my hand, peck me on the cheek, feel up under my skirt. He always liked doing that. But that just isn’t the life I decided to choose. I chose self-improvement, and while I know that was the right call, my heart still aches.

God, do I miss him.

I jump when there’s a knock at my door. I don’t know who would be knocking. Everyone is in the wedding party, including Jessi, and they’re pretty much the only people who visit. I swear, if it’s that subletter again…

“The boy who lived,” Mercury voices.

“I said, not right now,” I say, looking through the peephole.

“The boy who?—”

“Harry.”

I unlatch the chain from the door and rip it open, staring at the vision before me.

My golden-haired wonder, dressed in a navy suit, fitted like it belongs on a catalogue model. I’ve never seen him so dapper. So handsome. So concerned and smiley all at once. I missed how his hair curls slightly to the right. I missed how his lips part slightly when he sees me, how his whole expression relaxes. I missed him .

“Hi,” I say breathily.

“Hey there, princess.” My nickname spears me, drives an arrow straight to the core of me.

His eyes scour my body, and I let him take his fill. This dress is all his. I’m his. Everything about us belongs together, whether he knows it yet or not.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to take you to a wedding,” he says.

“Are you, now?”

“Yes. If that’s what you want.” The words are breathy but assured. Confident but still with an edge to them. “Your carriage awaits downstairs.”

“Are you supposed to be my Prince Charming?” I ask.

He nods and extends a hand out to me. “If you’ll let me.”

I look from the hand and back up to him. He holds it there for a second longer before I see the hope glimmer then dull in his eyes. I blink rapidly, trying to bring myself back to the moment—still not fully convinced this isn’t a dream—and then I take his hand. His rough hands engulf mine as our fingers entwine in the air between us.

“I’m going back to school,” I blurt out.

His eyes widen as he shifts his focus from our joined hands to my eyes.

“That’s amazing. Vet school?”

“Yes.” Of course he gets me. Of course he understands. “Well, soon. I also added insulation in the van.”

He lets out a laugh. “I told you it’d be cold. Still have all ten fingers and toes?”

I tsk. “Only nine, unfortunately.”

“Bummer. I don’t wanna say I told you so, but…”

“I’m missing a toe, Harry. Too soon.”

He grins and I twist my lips to the side, trying not to share exactly how happy I am in this moment, but I can feel the glee beaming from my eyes and out my ears. Me and my mechanic. As we’re meant to be.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks.

Goose bumps run over my skin, but I press forward despite the warning.

“Because I need to be the best me I can…before we…but now you showed up looking all handsome in your suit and…well, I’m still a work in progress, but that’s what I got.”

“You don’t look like a work in progress to me,” he says. His thumb strokes the outside of my hand. It’s funny how natural it seems, like no time at all has passed between us. “You look perfect.”

I open my mouth, wanting so bad to grab him by the lapels and tell him the three words that have been like fire on my tongue for months. I meet Harry’s eyes, and they’re everything to me. It’s the accompanying kind smile, the gentle lips, and the subtle wink that follows that sends my head and heart reeling.

Harry’s hand slips into mine. I clutch it tight. He smiles, the crinkles beside his hazel eyes deepening.

“I’m looking for a fake wedding date if you’re available,” he says. “Only for one night, of course.”

“Of course,” I echo.

We both know one night has never been good enough for the two of us.

Noah’s wedding venue is everything I imagined it might be from the time I was a little girl. I knew he would go all out with the full bar and white tablecloth dinner. I knew his parents would fill the guest list with people Noah has never met and Charlotte will likely never remember after this day. I knew his wife would be a vision walking down the aisle with her arm looped through her father’s, and Charlotte looks every bit as happy as she should, cold feet be damned.

I thought that wife would be me, but being a guest instead and sitting next to the man I love is even better. Then again, without Noah, how would I have met Harry?

We dance at the reception later, hand in hand as I stare up at him. I tried to rest my cheek against his chest, but I don’t want to have one minute where I’m not looking at him, admiring him, and being every bit in his presence.

“Thanks for being my date,” he says, trailing his nose from my ear to my neck, planting a small, chaste kiss on my collarbone.

I laugh. “Thanks for being my pretend boyfriend.”

Harry stills, the silence carrying us through the slow dance together.

“What if I don’t want to pretend anymore?” he asks. The words are a whisper on my neck, sending shivers down my spine as we continue dancing on the spot. I breathe in, trying to still my racing heartbeat.

“I love you,” I say. The words aren’t hard. They’re easy. Like flowing water in a smooth river. “You must know that.”

“Good,” he says. “About time.”

I laugh as he leans down. Our lips touch, and it’s so gentle. So light. So full of meaning.

“I love you, Saria,” he says, his voice a whisper, spoken just for us and us alone. “So, will you keep being my wedding date?” he asks. “For just a little while?”

“Don’t we need another wedding?” I ask.

“I think my sister is getting married in a year. Think you can wait that long?”

“We can trial it until then, I guess,” I joke with a small shrug. He laughs.

“I’m not asking you to stop your life for me,” he says. “As long as we’re coming back to each other at the end of the day, that’s all I care about.”

“I already came back to you, and I’d do it a thousand times over.”

Harry leans forward, taking my mouth in his again, exhaling against me like he’s so caught up in it. I know the feeling.

“I promise you’ll be mine as long as you’ll have me.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“We’ll see.”