The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 538

Chapter 538

Author’s POV

Six months later, the villa is transformed.

White roses climb every surface, their fragrance heavy in the warm air. Crystal chandeliers hang from the oak trees, casting prismatic light across the lawn. The chairs are white, the aisle is white, and at the altar, Cassian waits.

He stands straight despite the lingering stiffness in his

shoulder, his hands clasped in front of him, his eyes fixed on

the doors of the villa. Behind him, the sea stretches blue and

endless, the same sea that has witnessed his worst moments and now, finally, his best. Liam shifts beside him, adjusting the boutonniere that has already been adjusted six times. Cassian does not notice. He does not notice anything except the doors.

They open.

Gemma steps into the sunlight, and the world stops.

are white a simple empire–waist dress that flows hair is loose, dark against the pale silk, and in her arms she carries a small bouquet of white roses–nothing else, nothing that would compete with the simple, devastating elegance of her.

She walks alone.

The guests rise. Amanda presses a hand to her mouth. Grandfather Bernard’s eyes are bright. Christopher, seated

near the back, exhales like a man who has finally stopped

running. But Cassian sees none of them. He sees only her.

She moves toward him slowly, deliberately, and in her eyes he sees everything they have survived. The bullet. The blood. The months of silence and the years of distance. The walls they built and the walls they tore down. She is not the woman he married the first time–young, uncertain, trying to fit herself into a shape she thought he wanted. She is herself. Fully, completely, irrevocably herself. And he loves her more than he knows how to name.

When she reaches him, she smiles. It is a small thing, barely a curve of her lips, but it holds the weight of every truth they have spoken in hospital rooms, in quiet hours, in the space between waking and sleep.

He reaches for her hands, and his fingers are steady. “Hi.”

The officiant speaks, but the words are background, a river flowing beneath the stillness that exists only between them. When it is time for vows, Cassian does not look at the paper in his hands. He looks at her.

“I don’t know how to promise you a perfect life,” he says, and his voice is low, meant only for her. “I don’t know how

to promise that I won’t fail, or that the world won’t hurt us, or that I’ll always say the right thing. I don’t know how to promise any of the things I promised you the first time.”

He pauses. Behind them, the sea breathes.

“But I can promise you this. I will wake up every morning and choose you. I will hold you when you’re breaking and stand beside you when you’re strong. I will love the child you gave us, and I will love you, and I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never doubt that you are exactly what I want. Not a version of you. Not a memory of you. You.”

Gemma’s eyes shine, but she does not cry. She has done enough crying. She squeezes his hands, and when she speaks, her voice is steady.

don’t need promises,” she says. “I need you. The way you

when I didn’t ask you to. The way you took a bullet for a baby you thought wasn’t yours.”

Cassian’s breath catches. He did not know that she knew. But of course she knows. She has always known him.

“I need the man who sat beside my hospital bed for weeks,” she continues, “who learned to be quiet when I needed quiet, who learned to talk when I needed words. I need the man who loves my daughter like she is his, because she is. She always was.”

She looks down at her belly, flat now, empty, and then back at him. “I need you, Cassian. That’s all I’ve ever needed.”

The officiant clears his throat. Cassian does not hear him. He is looking at Gemma, and she is looking at him, and the rest of the world has dissolved into light.

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