3. Eve
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Eve
The hotel lobby is all marble floors and crystal chandeliers and soft piano music playing from somewhere I can’t see. It’s beautiful. Elegant. A place where people celebrate the best moments of their lives.
I’m sitting on a velvet settee in a fourteen-thousand-dollar wedding dress with mascara running down my face like a horror movie bride, and I can’t stop shaking.
This is the hotel where the reception was supposed to be.
Where the honeymoon suite waits upstairs with champagne chilling and rose petals scattered across the bed.
Where hundreds of guests were supposed to toast to our future while I fed Simon overpriced cake and pretended I wasn’t already exhausted from smiling.
None of that is happening now.
My family surrounds me like a human shield.
Mom is pacing, her heels clicking against the marble in a rhythm that’s starting to make me nauseous.
Dad is on the phone in the corner, voice low and serious, and I catch words like lawyer and prenup and that bastard.
Tyler stands with his arms crossed, positioned between me and the rest of the lobby like he’s expecting Simon to walk through those doors any second.
Becca is crying. Which is funny, in a horrible way, because I think I’ve run out of tears. My face is wet but I don’t feel anything anymore. Just this hollow, rattling emptiness where my chest used to be.
“That woman.” My mother’s voice could cut glass. “That horrible woman. Did you see Hilda’s face? She knew. She knew and she smiled, David, she actually smiled while our daughter...”
“Mom.” Tyler puts a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “Not helping.”
She deflates a little. Sits down next to me. Reaches for my hand but stops when I flinch.
“I just...” My voice cracks. Shatters, really. “I saw the texts. This morning. I saw them and I told myself I was being paranoid, I told myself it was nothing, and I walked down that aisle knowing. Knowing something was wrong and I still...”
“You didn’t know.”
I’d almost forgotten he was there. Dean. He’s sitting on the settee across from me, forearms braced on his knees, still in his best man suit. The boutonniere that matches my bouquet is still pinned to his lapel, slightly crushed now.
“You suspected,” he continues, and his voice is quiet but steady. “That’s not the same thing. And suspecting doesn’t make any of this your fault.”
I stare at him. This man who just watched his brother choose another woman at the altar, who watched his mother smile about it, who should be anywhere but here.
“Why are you here?” The question comes out harsher than I mean it to, but I can’t find the energy to soften it. “Your brother just... your family...”
“That stopped being my family the second Simon chose her.” His jaw tightens, a muscle jumping in his cheek. “You’ve been my best friend for years, Eve. Did you think I was going to stand there and watch them destroy you?”
My chest caves in. The tears come back, harder this time, and I hate myself for crying again but I can’t stop.
Can’t stop seeing Simon’s face when Kiara walked in.
Can’t stop hearing her voice saying eight months like it was nothing, like she hadn’t been sleeping with my fiancé in my bed while I was at work, while I was planning our wedding, while I was picking out flowers and cake flavors and writing vows I actually meant.
My mother moves toward me, arms outstretched, but Tyler catches her elbow. Shakes his head slightly. Gives me space.
I don’t know if I want space. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know anything anymore.
An hour passes. Then another. Staff members walk by and give me pitying looks, their eyes sliding away when I catch them staring.
A manager in a crisp suit approaches my father, offers the use of a private room, but Dad waves him off.
I think he wants people to see me like this.
Wants them to know what the Valentine family did to his daughter.
The sun sets outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting the lobby in shades of gold and rose. It’s beautiful. I want to scream at it.
My tears dry eventually. Not because I feel better, but because there’s nothing left. And in the empty space where the grief was, something else starts to grow. Something hot and angry.
Eight months. Eight months of lies and I just took it. I saw the texts and I still walked down that aisle because I was too scared to make a scene, too worried about embarrassing everyone, too pathetic to stand up for myself.
Fuck that.
Fuck him.
I stand so fast my mother startles, nearly falling off the settee.
“Eve, honey, where are you...”
“My things.” The words come out clipped and hard. “Our room. My stuff is still up there. I’m getting my things and I’m leaving this fucking hotel.”
The curse word hangs in the air. My mother blinks. I don’t curse in front of her. I don’t curse in front of anyone, really. It’s not ladylike. It’s not appropriate.
I don’t give a shit about appropriate anymore.
“I’ll come with you.” Dean is already on his feet, shrugging off his suit jacket.
“Dean, I don’t need...”
“You’re not going up there alone.”
It’s not a question. It’s not even really a statement. It’s just a fact, delivered with a quiet certainty that doesn’t leave room for argument.
“Fine.” I don’t have the energy to fight about it.
We take the elevator in silence. My reflection stares back at me from the mirrored walls, a ghost in white with raccoon eyes and a trembling jaw. I look away.
The honeymoon suite is on the top floor. Presidential level. I booked it six months ago, paid the deposit with my own money because Simon said he’d handle the rest and then somehow never did. The champagne waiting upstairs cost four hundred dollars. The rose petals were hand-delivered this morning.
My hands shake as I slide the keycard through the lock. The light turns green. I push the door open.
And freeze.
For a second, my brain doesn’t process what I’m seeing. It can’t. It refuses.
Simon has Kiara bent over the honeymoon suite’s desk, her white wedding dress rucked up around her waist, and he’s...
He’s fucking her.
Like I’m not standing right there. Like the champagne isn’t still chilling in its bucket. Like the rose petals aren’t scattered across the bed that was supposed to be ours, that was supposed to be where we started our marriage, where we...
Kiara looks over her shoulder. Sees me. And smiles.
She keeps moaning. Louder now, performative and exaggerated. Her eyes locked on mine while Simon doesn’t even break rhythm, doesn’t even turn around, doesn’t even acknowledge that his almost-wife is standing in the doorway watching him fuck the woman he chose over her.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t...
Dean steps in front of me, blocking my view. His hands cup my face, gentle but firm, forcing me to look at him instead of the nightmare behind him.
“Hey.” His voice is steady, controlled, but his eyes are burning with a fury I’ve never seen from him. “Hey. Look at me.”
I look at him. I don’t have a choice.
“Do you still want your things?”
I nod. Something mechanical. Something that doesn’t feel connected to the rest of my body.
“Then you’re getting them. Wait here.”
He releases my face. Turns. Strides into the suite with a purpose that makes my stomach clench.
I hear a crash. Simon’s shout of protest. A scuffle, something hitting the wall, and then Dean is dragging his brother by the collar into the hallway, slamming him against the wall hard enough to rattle the paintings.
“What the fuck...” Simon scrambles for dignity, pants half-undone, face still flushed. “This is my room, Dean, you can’t just...”
“It was her room.” Dean’s voice is ice. “You don’t deserve to speak her name.”
He shoves Simon down the hall, away from me, away from the door. Simon stumbles, catches himself on the wall, and for one second he looks at me. Really looks at me.
I wait for a reaction. Guilt, shame, an apology, anything.
He looks away first.
Dean disappears back into the suite. I hear Kiara shrieking something, a door slamming, a lock clicking. When he emerges, he’s carrying my suitcase in one hand and my laptop bag in the other.
“Locked her in the bathroom,” he says, like it’s nothing. Like he didn’t just physically remove his brother from a room and imprison his mistress. “All yours, Eve. Anything else you need from that room, take it.”
I stare at him. This man I’ve known for years, Simon’s disappointing brother, the one who always seemed to fade into the background at family dinners while Simon held court.
The one who made me laugh at that first dinner.
The one who texted me memes at two in the morning when he knew I couldn’t sleep.
The one who’s standing here now, in the wreckage of my life, looking at me like I’m the only thing that matters.
“I need to leave.” It comes out a whisper. “Please. I need to leave.”
“Then we leave.”
We walk past Simon, still slumped against the wall, and I don’t look back. I can’t. If I look back I’ll fall apart, and I can’t fall apart yet, not here, not where they can see me.
The elevator doors close.
In the mirrored walls, I catch Dean’s reflection. He’s staring straight ahead, jaw tight, hands clenched around my luggage.
And the devastation on his face tells me this isn’t just about loyalty. This isn’t just about friendship.
It never was.