TimeBound (Time Tells #1) (COMPLETED)

Chapter Two

Who says your life ends only when your heart stops. It ends even when there's a celebration around you.

Family and strangers standing and wishing you well. Familiar music filling the room. Your father's hand crushing yours.

Or perhaps they were right. Because my heart had certainly stopped. I was a corpse walking the aisle. My parents knew about my dreams. I was too young, too overwhelmed to keep it to myself. But perhaps it would have done them well if I had remained quiet. Now they knew I believed there was someone for me, someone I had been in love with for six years and lifetimes before that...someone I may never have the chance to meet now.

My gaze is lowered, and my visions begins to blur. My whole mind fills with the sounds of all my hidden emotions rattling their cages, desperate to escape.

Don't cry, Alanna.

It was easier said than done. I was a crier. I cried if I was happy, sad, angry. I cried if I saw a sad movie, a happy movie, someone cutting down a tree, a beggar on the streets.

And today, when my life lay before me in shambles that crushed under my feet with every step I took, I was forcing myself not to shed any tears. I drag a deep breath in and blink them away.

The music feels foreboding.

I hadn't picked out my dress.

I hadn't planned my wedding.

My father had barely paid for it. We were that broke.

He did everything.  The man I was to ...

I swallow. I can't even think it.

My heart begins to beat faster, my breath starts to heave out of me.
I couldn't even think it. How would I live it? How could I live with anyone that wasn't him? Living beside him. Sleeping beside him. My stomach roils. My thoughts spiral and drag me down deeper.

"Alanna."

I snap out of my thoughts and look at my father. Panic flurries through me.

No. No.

It was the end of the aisle. This was where my father would leave me. I look up at him and I can't control the look in my eyes. Help me.

I have my mask on before anyone could see, but my father had. His face crumbled and he leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead.

"God bless you, Alanna. May you only find happiness all your life." He says and with that, he takes my hand from his and gives it...

He gives it away.

My hand falls into the grip of my... into his...

He takes my hand in his and leads me to the altar. I hadn't even looked at him. I had never laid eyes on this man. And suddenly, my life was in his hands. My gaze remains on the floor as I walk. When we reach the altar, someone turns me to face the groo—

My stomach spasms in pain and nausea at the word.

My gaze lifts and snags on the boutonnière on the lapel of the suit of the man I stood opposite. My brows furrows. It was a single lavender rose. I hear words begin to be spoken, but all my thoughts narrow to that one rose.

A memory wiggles free from my otherwise firmly closed drawer of dreams.

He was holding out a flower to me. I look at him funnily, but I'm taking it from him.

"I'm not really a flowers kind of girl." I'm telling him, but I caress the lavender petals of the rose reverently. He had given me a lavender rose.