Emily and River meet in Miami, where they have the time of their lives, but it isn't meant to be: the next morning, Emily leaves for San Francisco, leaving both their hearts broken. They don't think they'll ever see each other again.
Emily goes back...
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She'd dried her tears while being amazed by River's endless positivity again, but his hope for a happy end was contagious and had led her here, standing before Jason's door. He had a room in the other tower of the castle and, tiptoeing there, she sneaked in.
"Jason," she whispered.
He came walking out of the bathroom. "Emily?" he asked in his normal volume. "What are you doing here?" His eyes widened when he saw she had her wedding dress on. "And you have your wedding dress on!" he exclaimed.
Emily sighed. "Yes, I know, bad luck." She rolled her eyes. "I've got more important things on my mind now than superstitious beliefs."
"Is something wrong?" he asked her.
Emily closed the door behind her and sat down on his bed. There was no use in denying it. "Yes," she said, "something's wrong."
Hearing this made Jason stop worrying about tying this navy blue tie. Instead, he sat down on a chair opposite her. "Tell me," he said, and he looked genuinely worried with wrinkles on his forehead and his mouth in a straight line.
"I haven't told you everything," she began slowly, and she found it hard to find the right words on telling him the truth. Wasn't this cheating in a weird sense, being in love with someone else while at the moment of walking down the aisle?
"Everything about what?" he inquired. He folded his hands together and rested his elbows on his knees, listening to every word she said—and she loved it. He cared about her and her well-being and was curious to know more about her, and if something was wrong, he wanted to fix it. Jason was nice, but she never learned to appreciate it until now.
And yet, here she was to tell him they wouldn't work out.
"I..." she said, and her mind began filling up with doubts again. Was she really about to give up a marriage for River, a guy she hardly knew? She didn't have any plans of marrying him! And yet she was about to give everything up for him and something that may be. "I don't want to... marry—you."
She'd let the words out slowly, letting every one of them sink in. At the same time, she didn't want to be too forward; what if she hurt him?
With that came another worry: what if she'd interpreted everything wrong? Yes, the idea of the wedding had been their parents', but he'd never said no. Maybe he did want to marry her and she'd missed all the signs leading up to this point somehow.
He narrowed his eyes. "What?"
She repeated it. "I don't want to marry you." Saying it for the second time came a lot easier.
He chuckled. "You're a bit late for that, don't you think?" he said. He leaned back in his chair and he almost seemed relieved, as if he didn't take her seriously.
"This is not a joke!" she said. "The thing is, I..." The words had escaped her mouth before she even realized she was about to tell Jason she was in love with someone else, but now that they had, there was no way out. "I love someone else."
