Chapter 178 Something Worth Becoming

Chapter 178 Something Worth Becoming
Gen's POV

"Gen!" Piper's knuckles hit the fitting room door in three sharp, impatient raps. "Come out and let me see you. Right now."

I took one last look at myself in the narrow mirror on the back of the door, then pushed it open.

The boutique's main mirror was floor-to-ceiling, and the light fell across it softly — the kind of light that doesn't flatter so much as it simply reveals. The white A-line settled at my feet with a quiet rustle, the lace at my shoulders catching the warm glow. I stepped onto the small platform and stood there, and for a moment neither Piper nor I said anything at all.

Then Piper's hand came up and covered her mouth. "My God, Gen." Her eyes went bright immediately. "You're stunning."

I looked at the woman in the mirror and found I didn't quite recognize her — and that, I realized, was not a bad thing. The last time I had stood in front of a mirror in white, I had been twenty and moving through my own wedding with the hollowed-out numbness of someone performing a role she hadn't written.

I remembered Dominic's eyes sliding past me to check his watch, Constance's smile that never touched anything real, the absence of my mother in the front pew that I had spent the entire ceremony carefully not thinking about.

This felt nothing like that.

"I can't believe it," I said quietly. "The desperate woman who jumped off that cliff — she's standing here again in a wedding dress."

Piper crossed the floor and came to stand behind me, her reflection appearing over my shoulder. "You deserve all of this," she said. "Every single bit of it."

I turned and put my arms around her. She held me back the way she always had — without ceremony, without asking anything in return. "If it weren't for you," I said, "I think I would have given up a long time ago."

Behind us, the boutique attendant made a soft, strangled sound. Piper pulled back, pressed the heels of her hands beneath her eyes, and pointed at the woman with absolute authority.

"No crying. You'll ruin your makeup. We all will."

I laughed, unsteady but real. I turned back to the mirror. The dress had a simplicity I hadn't expected to matter so much — no cathedral train, no excess, just clean lines and lace and a bodice that fit as though it had been made for someone who had finally stopped trying to make herself smaller.

"This one," I said.

"You're certain?"

"It's not flashy, but it has details if you look for them." I held my own gaze in the mirror for a moment. "It's very much what I'm trying to become."

---

The apartment was dark when I unlocked the door that evening, and then it was not, because every lamp had been left on. Flowers were everywhere — roses and lilies and baby's breath arranged along the windowsill and across the counter, catching the warm lamplight in a way that made the whole space feel like the end of a very good summer.

Ryker came out of the kitchen wearing my apron and carrying a wooden spoon. He looked at me looking at the flowers, and the corner of his mouth moved.

"Welcome home," he said. "Future Mrs. Sterling."

"When did you — "

"This afternoon." He crossed to me and pressed his lips to my forehead, one hand settling at the side of my jaw. "Did you find one?"

"I did." I looked at the flowers again, at the deliberate care behind all of it. "It's beautiful."

He looked at me, not at the flowers. "Not as beautiful as you."

I laughed and pushed lightly at his chest. "You're shameless."

"Consistently." He took my hand. "Come eat."

He had made pasta and a steak that was better than it had any right to be. We ate by candlelight, and I watched him across the rim of my glass and thought that there was something almost disorienting about happiness when you had spent a long time believing it wasn't yours to want.

"To the wedding," Ryker said, raising his glass.

I touched mine to his. "To the wedding."

He reached across the table and took my hand. "You went quiet."

"Ryker — thank you." I said it plainly. "For making me believe I was worth this. I stood in front of a mirror today in a wedding dress and I didn't want to disappear. I think that's because of you."

His thumb stilled on my hand. "You were worth it before I showed up," he said. "I just refused to let you keep arguing against it. You did the rest yourself."

I looked at him for a long moment in the candlelight. Then I turned my hand over and held his.

---

He carried me to bed on the logic that rehearsals were non-negotiable, and I stopped arguing. The night moved through its own hours and resolved into the quiet of well past midnight. I was nearly asleep when his hand moved against my side with unmistakable intent.

I opened one eye. "Ryker."

"I'm awake," he said, as though this were information I had requested.

"I have work tomorrow."

He drew me closer. "Then don't go."

"That's not how employment works."

"I'm the employer."

"You're my employer, which is already complicated enough." I pushed at his shoulder. He didn't move. "Ryker."

"You're too beautiful," he said simply, and that was the end of the argument.

Some time later I lay in the dark with every muscle announcing its existence, staring at the ceiling while his breathing slowed beside me.

"I'm going to work tomorrow," I said.

"Mm."

"I mean it." I turned onto my side. The room was warm, the mate bond humming with the quiet resonance that meant neither of us was carrying anything urgent. "I should go. It matters to me."

He opened his eyes and looked at me properly, the amusement leaving his expression. "Why?"

"Because I need to know I'm not just attached to you. That I have something that's mine." I held his gaze. "I need to prove it. Not to you. To myself."

Ryker was quiet for a moment, watching me in the low light with the focus he brought to things he found genuinely important. Then he shifted onto his elbow and said, "Gen — have you ever thought about starting your own company?"