Too Late To Love Me I Already Left With His Twins (Lydia and Dave) novel Chapter 323

Lydia POV

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the light filtering through the curtains.

The second was the fact that my body felt as though I’d been transported somewhere, disassembled, and put back together by someone who had only glanced at the instructions.

I reached for my phone.

3:00 p.m.

I blinked at the screen.

Then I sat up so quickly that I had to pause and gather myself.

Three o’clock?

Goodness.

I had intended to take a short nap, not enter another time zone.

I rubbed my face, staring at the time as if the numbers might rearrange themselves into something more reasonable. They didn’t.

My tiredness was beginning to alarm me. I knew I’d been under a fair amount of stress over the past few days, but sleeping that deeply in the middle of the afternoon was becoming difficult to explain away. Perhaps my body was simply demanding the rest I’d been denying it. Still, I couldn’t ignore how unusually exhausted I’d been feeling lately.

I made a mental note to pay attention to it.

Then I swung my legs out of bed and headed to the bathroom.

After rinsing my face with cool water, I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes still looked heavy, and I had that slightly disoriented feeling that came with waking up from a nap that had apparently lasted longer than my brain had authorised.

I patted my face dry and glanced at the time again.

Two hours.

I had exactly two hours before Anna’s deadline.

“God, help me,” I muttered.

My phone was waiting on the bed with several messages from her, including the vendor links she’d promised to send. I picked it up, settled against the pillows, and opened the first event decor page.

If Anna wanted decisions by five, then decisions she would get.

I started with the first vendor.

Their page opened with a photograph of a grand reception space, all gold accents, towering floral arrangements, crystal chandeliers, and tables dressed in white with gold-trimmed plates. The entire room looked expensive. Not just expensive in the ordinary sense, but the kind of expensive that made you instinctively wonder how much one flower arrangement cost and whether it required a separate insurance policy.

I scrolled through their posts.

They clearly knew what they were doing. Their installations were elaborate, their colour combinations carefully coordinated, and their attention to symmetry was impressive. There were weddings with dramatic entrance arches, enormous centrepieces, suspended floral installations, and stages that looked like they had been constructed for award ceremonies.

One wedding featured a wall of white roses behind the couple’s seats. Another had a long mirrored aisle lined with flowers, leading to a raised platform decorated with gold structures and warm lights. Everything looked polished, and the photographs were professionally taken. Even their simpler designs had a certain grandeur to them.

I could appreciate the work. It was beautiful, undeniably so.

But the more I scrolled, the more I realised I was admiring their weddings without imagining myself in any of them.

The designs were too grand for what I had in mind. Too many towering arrangements, too much gold, too many details competing for attention. I imagined walking into one of those spaces and spending the first ten minutes trying to work out where I was supposed to look.

It wasn’t that I wanted a cheap-looking wedding. I liked beautiful things. I liked elegance, thoughtful details, and spaces that made you pause for a moment because everything came together so well. But I didn’t want my wedding to feel like an exhibition of how much money had been spent.

I wanted to look around and recognise myself in the details.

I returned to their profile and checked their captions, looking for examples of outdoor weddings or intimate celebrations. There were a few, but even those seemed to lean towards elaborate setups, with heavy floral installations and dramatic structures.

I saved two pictures anyway.

Then I moved on.

The second vendor’s page loaded, and I found myself sitting up a little straighter.

Their first few posts were outdoor weddings, and something about the photographs immediately caught my attention. Instead of towering structures and heavily decorated spaces, there were gardens with natural greenery, white flowers, delicate arrangements, and tables that looked as though they belonged in the middle of a beautiful afternoon.

I opened the first picture.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify