The CEO's Rejected Wife And Secret Heir novel Chapter 170

Chapter 170: Chapter 170 – Planning the Wedding

Aria’s POV

Hospital discharge happened on a Tuesday, three days after we’d agreed on six weeks, with my shoulder in a sling and Noah holding my good hand with the focused concentration of someone who had appointed himself my official escort and took the role extremely seriously.

"I’m helping Mama," he informed the orderly pushing my wheelchair.

"I can see that," the orderly said.

"She has to be careful because of her shoulder." He looked up at me. "You’re being careful."

"Very careful," I confirmed.

"Good." He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. "I’ll keep watching."

Damien walked beside us with the controlled patience of a man who understood that Noah had claimed this particular duty and was not about to interfere with it. When we reached the SUV and Noah climbed in first to make sure everything was properly prepared — his words — Damien held the door, and his hand found the small of my back as I settled in, and the gesture was so practiced by now, so instinctively his, that I almost didn’t notice it.

"Home," I said, as the city moved past the window.

"Home," he agreed.

The wedding had originally been planned for eight weeks out — a quiet ceremony, a small guest list, most of it already arranged in the weeks before Marcus escaped and upended everything. The venue was booked. The officiant was confirmed, half the details were done.

Six weeks instead of eight was not, in the end, the production I’d feared it might be.

What it required was a single phone call to the wedding planner Damien had been working with, a woman named Petra who had the energy of someone who thrived on being given impossible timelines and who said, with no hesitation whatsoever, "Two weeks earlier. Absolutely. Leave it with me."

I liked her immediately. The planning had started, technically, before I was even discharged — Damien coordinating from the hospital chair, Olivia sending messages from the waiting room, Petra somewhere in the city making calls with the focused efficiency of someone who understood that the constraint was time, not budget. By the time I came home, the venue was confirmed for the new date, the caterer was adjusted, and the guest list — already small, already exactly the people who mattered — was finalized.

Twenty-three people. Olivia. Lucas. Mrs. Dora. Detective Barnes, who had looked genuinely moved when Damien called him, and said he’d be there. The legal team who had stayed late on the merger documents three months running. Damien’s assistant Maya, who had covered for him more times than either of us wanted to count. Noah’s preschool teacher who had sent him a handmade card during the lockdown and had no idea it had meant anything, and would be surprised to be invited, and would come anyway.

Twenty-three people who had, in various ways and degrees, been part of how we’d gotten here.

"The board will have opinions," Damien said, reviewing the list at the kitchen table two days after discharge, Noah at the other end eating cereal with great concentration.

"The board can have them privately," I said, not looking up from my own notes. "This is ours."

He looked at me. "Ours," he agreed.

*********

Dress shopping happened on a Thursday, a week out, in a boutique in Ravenwood’s quieter shopping district that Olivia had sourced with the focused energy of someone who had been waiting for this assignment for a very long time.

I hadn’t expected to feel anything. The first time I’d bought a wedding dress — or rather, had one selected and presented to me as part of an arrangement — it had been efficient and joyless, chosen for what it would communicate in photographs rather than what I’d feel wearing it. I’d stood in front of a mirror in something expensive and felt absolutely nothing.

I’d expected similar neutrality this time but the third dress changed that.

It was simpler than I’d have predicted choosing for myself — ivory rather than stark white, with a neckline that sat just right, I looked at myself in the mirror. Look at you. Look at where you are. Look at what you built from nothing. My eyes went bright before I could stop them.

"Oh," Olivia said softly, from behind me.

But I kept looking at my own reflection.

She’d told me once, in the early years, that the day would come when I’d let myself actually have the life I was building. I’d believed her approximately thirty percent and worked like I believed her a hundred, and somewhere in the distance between those two numbers this had happened — the ring on my finger, the dress, the face in the mirror that looked like a woman who was not afraid of her own happiness anymore.

"This one," I said.

"Yes," Olivia agreed, immediately and firmly. "Absolutely this one."

I turned away from the mirror.

"Don’t tell Damien the style," I said. "He’ll want details."

"Absolutely not." She was already making notes. "Aria." She looked up. "You’re radiant."

I looked back at the mirror once more, briefly and she was right.

"Five weeks," I said quietly.

Five weeks, and I would walk toward him in this dress, and he would see me in it for the first time, and it would be real — all of it, finally, completely real and I couldn’t wait.

********

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