Mine

Chapter Four

It doesn't matter what I want. It doesn't matter what I need.

Boran is dumbstruck when he sees her. There is no opportunity to speak with her alone during the preparations before the ceremony. Her female relatives surround her in the bridal room, helping her get ready. She spots him when the door opens and a woman comes out carrying a child who's crying.

He's in the corridor of the large house where the ceremony is being held and time stops when Miray lifts her head after fiddling with her shoe and locks eyes with him. Dear God, he thinks. She is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. He finds her beautiful any day but today, with her hair in soft curls down her back, pinned at the sides, fastened by her veil, her sweet, small, curvy body in a white dress that looks to him to have some kind of lace on it, her blue eyes meeting his, she looks like the angel she is and he can't breathe. A thought occurs to him with a piercing agony. I'm going to love this woman until the last breath leaves my body.

Miray looks at him with a mix of horror and pain, as if she didn't actually expect him to come. He sees it all on her face before like a light switch, a beaming smile replaces it and she's rushing over to him. "Boran! Come in! Come in!" She's pulling him into the room. Her hand closes over his wrist and only he can tell its trembling.

Oh he's always known she was a talented actress but the show she's putting on now is Oscar worthy. The other women welcome him and he tries to figure out a way he can ask Miray to speak privately. There's a tray of small snacks in the corner and one of their co-stars, Pinar, asks if he wants to eat anything. He nods and asks Miray if she wants anything, hoping she'll come over and pick something and they can have at least two seconds away from the crowd.

She looks at him and something like wariness flickers in her eyes as if she knows what he's trying to do and gives him a small smile that doesn't quite light up her face like her real smiles do. "I'd better not. I don't want to get my dress dirty."

He clenches his jaw but says nothing, forcing a smile of his own. He talks with the women in the room, panic growing with each passing minute as the time for the ceremony draws closer and closer. His throat grows tighter and tighter. He wants to talk to her but has no idea what he'd even say. Everything in him is screaming at him to stop this wedding, but what exactly does he expect to happen if by some miracle she does call the wedding off? Everything he said to her was true. He can't give her what she wants. She deserves to be happy.

But not with Kubilay, damn it. Boran doesn't know if he's right about his suspicion and a small voice tells him that maybe it's his own jealousy looking for dark motives when Miray wouldn't love someone who wasn't worthy of her heart. She certainly wouldn't marry someone who she didn't want a future with and who she knew wouldn't be the husband she deserved...

"I love him and I don't want to hurt him but what I feel for you..."

She'd been willing to walk away from Kubilay. She'd come to Boran, wanting her future to be with him and he said no and now here they all were. Miray must have decided she and Kubilay could have a future after all, the life she had seen for herself, briefly detoured by one drunken night, was still within her grasp.

He tells himself there's nothing to be done. His heart races as someone knocks on the door and tells them it's time for the ceremony to start. Boran turns back to Miray and sees her face pale for an instant before her eyes meet his, wide and unreadable.

Her mother and sister and every other female in the room start squealing with the delight and hugging her in their excitement, careful not to mess her dress or her hair.