She had loved him from the very beginning—back when they were just two fresh-faced baby agents at the Bureau, green behind the ears and too nervous to meet each other’s eyes. She remembered his awkward posture, the way he rattled off statistics to fill silences, the way his hands trembled slightly when he passed her case files. He had no idea what he meant to her, not back then, not even after years passed.

She had watched it all—Lila Archer’s fleeting kiss, Maeve’s tragic love, Cat Adams’ cruel games, and even JJ’s late, strange confession. She was always just there, in the quiet, in the background, the invisible girl who knew him before the genius profiler became Spencer Reid. And somehow, every time it seemed like maybe—maybe—she could mean something more to him, life proved otherwise. So she made her peace with it. Or at least, she tried to.

When she said yes to the man who asked her to marry him, she wasn’t really saying yes to forever. She was saying yes to letting go.

And now, here she stood, in white lace and a trembling veil, in front of friends and family and the man who adored her—but not the man she adored.

Her fiancé was about to speak his vows when she heard the one voice she hadn’t expected.

“Wait,” Spencer’s voice rang out, shaky but loud enough to freeze time.

The room turned. Her heart stopped.

He stood at the back of the church, chest rising and falling with too many words built up over too many years.

“I—I’m sorry, I know this is insane. I know I should’ve said something a long time ago,” he started, eyes locked on hers. “But I love you. I’ve loved you since we were kids in the Bureau, before Lila, before Maeve, before everything. And I can’t let you marry someone else without knowing that.”

The church was silent. Her groom looked at her. So did everyone else.