The scariest thing about falling apart is how easy it is to crack down, how fragile he really is, how flimsy his excuses have been. All it takes is remembering Mark Sloan's words and seeing that damn butterfly fluttering out of that box. And still it's not until he sees her floating down that aisle that he's suddenly aware how thin the ice is, how his denial hasn't saved him, but pounded down on the growing rift and brought him ever closer to must what never happen - her belonging to someone else.
On the surface, he's doing exactly what he accused her of doing all those months ago. So denial almost claims him again but when he sits down the urgency he feels cannot compel him to remain in the pew. It's finally dawning him that he cannot run away again. He can't wrap himself up tightly and move on from this, not when his chances are running out and he's dizzyingly close to really losing her.
He cannot ignore it any longer.
'And I think that you love me too.'
He always loved her. It all comes crashing down on him and he finally opens up, for the first time in ages, perhaps not since their last kiss. Because she was burdened with guilt and she kept pushing him away only to pull her back in. Finally he can see that it was all new to her but still it was April. Insecure, sometimes-really-really-annoying but always wonderful April. And he loves her and when she'd wanted him he'd shut her down because he'd forgotten, conveniently, for a moment, who she really was.
He loves her and if actions do speak louder than words then she loves him too.
Walking up the aisle, her heart swells with joy seeing Matthew up there, the man she's going to marry. A kind, considerate man who has saved himself for marriage. A man who is willing to accept and love her, faults and guilt and history and all. That man she used to have indistinct daydreams of as she stubbornly refused to stop working harder than anyone, refused to give into the mountains of self-doubt incurred by the constant dismissals of anyone who ever found her annoying (which sadly included most people she ever met) and refused to ever give up. That man she was meant to end up with, have babies with and grow old with. That man she always hoped for but never thought she'd meet.
But then Jackson stands up and sits down again and she wants to brush it off, it's her wedding day, she's happy after all. But suddenly his voice resounds through the hall. The shock mingles with annoyance and fury until -
'I love everything about you. Even the things I don't like, I love.'
And it melts away. All her reasons for choosing Matthew, all her denial, all her insistence on making her old dreams come true – they melt away.
It shouldn't be enough. But that's the heart of it all. When Jackson had shot her down because he just thought she was freaking out, would not give credit to her reasons for acting like that, it had made her feel like that ugly duckling again. So when she had a choice, she chose the man who hadn't known her for eight years, who hadn't had the chance to see who she truly was yet. And along it had seemed like it was the right choice, because she could love him, she could tell him and she could marry him.
Only it wasn't the right choice.
Because apparently eight years of her crazy had not been too much.