The morning hums with quiet, like the world itself is holding its breath for you. Light pours through the lace curtains, dappled and soft, touching your wedding dress like a blessing. You're standing in front of the mirror in a silence so loud it almost hums in your ears. This is supposed to be one of the happiest moments of your life. And yet—your hands won’t stop trembling. Your heart won’t slow down.

Your dress fits perfectly. Too perfectly. As if it's holding you together when everything inside is coming loose.

You can hear your friends laughing down the hallway, voices muffled through the closed door. They’ve gone to get their faces redone, their eyeliner sharpened, lips glossed. You told them you just needed a minute. You didn’t tell them you were afraid you might fall apart.

This is the part, you think, where a mother is supposed to come in. Where she tells you how she felt on her wedding day, fixes a piece of your hair, says something soft and honest and full of grace. But your mother was never in the picture.

So it was always just the two of you. You and Sullivan.

He wasn’t a warm man. He was steel and silence, calluses and tired eyes. A former mechanic turned warehouse supervisor who believed in hard work, straight talk, and protecting the people you love—even if it meant protecting them from your own softness. You grew up with packed lunches wrapped in napkins he’d scribbled small notes on: “Proud of you.” “You’re stronger than this.” “Love you, kid.” He couldn’t say those things aloud. But he tried, in his own way.

You remember being seven, scraping your knee so bad on the driveway that blood ran down your shin like a river. You screamed and sobbed, expecting him to panic. But instead, he sat you on the porch, poured water over it with trembling hands, and said, “You're tougher than that scratch. You're mine, aren't you?”

That’s how he raised you. Not to cry. Not to crumble. To keep going.

And now, here you are—about to make vows, about to become someone’s wife—and you realize you’ve spent your whole life being strong and don’t know how to be soft. Not really.

Then—

The door opens with a slow, aching creak.

You turn fast, startled like you’ve been caught doing something private. And there he is. Your father. Sullivan. Standing in the doorway like a shadow from a dream.

He looks older today. Not in the way people age—but in the way grief ages them. His eyes are bloodshot, rimmed red. You freeze, suddenly fourteen again, wondering if he’s been drinking. But no… not today. His shoulders are too tight. His face too bare.

And then you see it.

He’s holding his ring.

That ring. The scuffed silver one he’s worn on his finger since forever. Since before you were born. It was his father's, he once told you, and he never took it off. Not when he was under a car. Not when his hand was stitched after slicing it open on barbed wire. Not when he came back from the hospital the day your grandfather died.

He walks toward you slowly, carefully, like he’s approaching something holy.

You don’t speak. You can’t. The tears are already burning behind your eyes.

He reaches out with shaking fingers and presses the ring into your palm.

“You look so beautiful, honey,” he says. Barely above a whisper.

You didn’t think he could say something like that. You didn't think he would.

His hands land on your shoulders. Rough, weathered, trembling slightly. His eyes are glassy.

“I’ve made so many mistakes,” he says, voice cracking in the middle like a fallen tree, “but you… you’re the only good thing I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t trade you for anything.”

And just like that—you’re crying.

Not the polite tears you’d imagined shedding today. These are deep, shuddering sobs that come from somewhere old and sacred inside you. A wound you didn’t even know you had.

He pulls you into his arms, and you melt against him like a child again. He’s taller than you remembered. Or maybe it’s just that today, for once, he’s letting you lean.