City of Smoke // Brian 'Otis' Zvonecek ✔️

24 || EPILOGUE

three years later

Rory could still remember the day she and Otis finally got together, the day which had started out as nothing more than another miserable one yet turned amazing the second Otis crossed over the threshold into her apartment. It felt like yesterday to her that he was begging her to stay, confessing his love for her and promising he'd spend the rest of their life together making it up to her.

Which so far he had, he'd spent the last three years doing nothing but treating her like a queen and she felt incredibly lucky to find a guy like him, one who she never thought she'd ever get a chance to be with and yet here she was, standing in a wedding dress just minutes away from marrying him.

Rory almost couldn't believe it when Otis had proposed to her. He'd taken her to the Chicago Botanic Gardens one spring evening, after a day spent doing nothing but lounging around in bed in their apartment, aka Rory's loft apartment that Otis had moved into not long before. He had dropped no hints that he'd even been thinking about marriage for the weeks beforehand but the second the two of them reached the middle of the bridge over the pond, he got down on one knee, with the most beautiful ring she'd ever seen and asked Rory if she would make him the happiest man in the world and of course, she said yes.

How could she not when he was so perfect in every single way? Rory couldn't have asked for a better guy, one who treated her with nothing but respect and was always doing little things here and there to surprise her, like buying her tiny animal figures and plushes when he saw them as Otis always told her they reminded him of her. It was almost hard for Rory to believe she was where she was given how their relationship had started, but over the years they'd fully forgotten about that and it was like none of it had ever even happened.

Standing in front of the floor length mirror, Rory took a good long look at herself, making sure her hair and make-up were perfect and that her dress didn't have any creases or stains on it. She'd always dreamed of a fairytale wedding when she was younger, mainly thanks to her Disney princess name, but she never fully believed she'd ever get the chance to have one, not when her last engagement tanked. So as she stood there, gazing at her dream dress that covered her body, she couldn't help but think that she'd become the luckiest woman in the world as after all the heartbreak and misery, she'd finally found her prince.

"Nervous?" Sylvie's voice met Rory's ears before she stepped into view, appearing in the mirror behind the blushing bride in her bridesmaid dress.

"A little." Rory confessed, nodding her head as a wave of nausea flew over her. Her hand went straight to her stomach, feeling the soft bumps of the embroidered flowers that covered the bodice of her dress, fanning out at her hips and spreading down the length of the train. "I just hope Brian isn't as I'd really like him to be at the end of the aisle when I walk down it."

"Don't worry." Sylvie chuckled softly, stepping towards Rory and placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Your dad is in there and if there's one thing I know about Nick Madej, it's that he won't be letting Otis go anywhere."

"That's not as reassuring as you think it is." Rory huffed out nervously, taking a deep breath to try and calm herself down. She knew Sylvie was right, that her dad wouldn't be letting Otis go anywhere but she really didn't want it to get to that point, which is why she found herself in desperate need to see Otis before the ceremony, as a way to hopefully calm the both of them down as she knew he'd be on the verge of freaking out.

Rory waited until she was alone to go and seek out Otis, until her bridesmaids had left to double check everything was perfect before the ceremony as she knew they'd never let her see him, not when Sylvie was traditional in that she'd said multiple times that it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding. But Rory didn't believe in that, not when she and Otis had already had their run of bad luck in the beginning of their relationship, which is why she soon found herself outside Otis's room, praying that he was alone as there was more to her 'just checking on him' plan than she was letting on.