Chapter 18 #2
I fold the clipboard tighter against my chest. “We should both stop doing this.”
“Doing what?”
I meet his eyes. “Pretending we don’t know what happens when we’re alone.”
A beat passes.
Then he says, very evenly, “I was not pretending.”
I keep moving because that’s the only way the morning stays in one piece.
The musicians arrive late by six minutes, which is not a disaster but feels like one because everything else is running so close to the wire already.
The florist wants final confirmation on the chapel entrance.
One of the bridesmaids can’t find her shoes.
The photographer is asking where the family portraits start, and the makeup artist is standing beside the terrace doors with a case full of brushes and the expression of someone who has already used up her patience for the day.
“Has Camille come down yet?” she asks me.
I glance at my watch.
No.
She should have been in the bridal suite half an hour ago.
I look toward the house, then back at the artist. “Not yet.”
The artist presses her lips together. “Hair will take at least an hour and makeup another forty minutes if she wants the full look we discussed.”
I nod once. “Give me ten minutes.”
I turn and find Nadine near the service table. “Camille still isn’t downstairs,” I say quietly. “Can you check on her?”
Nadine looks toward the house. “I can, but the transport company is asking for final placement on the second car.”
Before I can answer, one of the servers hurries over and says the chapel candles on the left side are burning too fast and dripping onto the runner.
I close my eyes for half a second.
“Nadine, handle the cars,” I say. “I’ll go check on Camille.”
Nadine gives me a look that says she knows that is the last thing I want to do.
She’s right.
Still, she only nods. “I’ll sort the transport.”
I head toward the house with my clipboard tucked against my side and my jaw tight enough to ache. The last thing I need this morning is to go coax Camille into becoming a bride. But if she doesn’t come downstairs soon, the whole day starts slipping.
Halfway up the corridor leading to the bridal wing, I slow.
Ethan is coming the other way.
No. Not coming. Drifting.
My stomach drops the second I see his face. He looks wrong. Shirt collar loose, tie hanging open, eyes red, movements just a little off. Not dramatically drunk. Worse than that, maybe. The kind of drunk that’s trying very hard to look normal and failing in the details.
I stop.
He sees me and gives a laugh that dies almost immediately. “There you are.”
The smell of alcohol reaches me before he does.
My first instinct is to keep walking. Let him be someone else’s problem for once. Let him ruin his own day without me in the middle of it.
I should.
But he looks bad enough that another instinct wins.
I step closer, cautious. “Ethan.”
He leans one shoulder against the wall as if he needs it there. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say my name like you’re disappointed in me.”
I ignore that. “How much have you had to drink?”
He smiles in a tired, ugly way. “Not enough.”
Wonderful.
I glance down the corridor toward the bridal suite. “You need to pull yourself together.”
“I can’t get married.”
I stare at him.
He lets his head tip back against the wall and closes his eyes for a second. “I can’t do it.”
Every part of me that used to panic for him, plan for him, soften things for him, rises by habit. I hate that it still exists at all.
“This is not the time to spiral,” I say. “If you need five minutes, take five minutes. If you need coffee, water, a shower, whatever, fine. But you do not get to implode in a hallway when the ceremony is in a few hours.”
He opens his eyes and looks at me. “You still do that too.”
My grip tightens on the clipboard. “Do what?”
“Act like if you stay calm enough, everything can still be fixed.”
It’s not the worst thing he’s ever said to me. Maybe that’s why it lands.
Because it’s true.
He laughs again, quieter this time, and pushes away from the wall just enough to stand straight. “You should hate me.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“No,” he says. “You really don’t.”
He looks at me then. Really looks. Not the ugly, cutting version from the rehearsal dinner. Not the suspicious one from last night. Something else. Tired. Off-balance. A man who has finally run out of places to put his own fear.
And then he says, “I know the baby is mine.”
Everything inside me goes cold.
For a second I think I’ve misheard him.
Then I realize I haven’t.
I stare at him. “What?”
He watches my face too closely. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Lie to me again.”
My heart is beating so hard I can hear it.
“No,” I say. “Absolutely not.”
He gives a short, humorless laugh. “We broke up eight months ago.”
“Yes,” I say. “We did.”
“And you’re pregnant.”
“Yes.”
He nods once, as if the math satisfies him. Or maybe as if he’s been doing it all night and this is the first time he’s said it out loud.
“It’s not yours,” I say.
He says nothing.
The look on his face is all wrong. Relieved under the surface, maybe, but also irritated, unconvinced, as if he doesn’t know whether to believe me or whether believing me would make him feel better.
He rubs a hand over his mouth and looks away. “Then why do I feel like it is?”
Because your ego is bigger than your judgment.
I say, “That sounds like your problem.”
His jaw tightens. “I’m serious, Sienna.”
“So am I.”
He scoffs. “I know that baby is mine and I’m going to prove it.”
“What’s going on here?”
I look up to see Alina walking toward us. Fuck. That’s the last thing I need right now.
“Nothing,” I say.
She doesn’t believe me. Her gaze settles on my face for half a second, then shifts to Ethan, and I watch the exact moment she understands the more immediate problem.
“He’s drunk,” I say.
Alina’s expression hardens at once. She steps past me and goes straight to him. “Ethan.”
He doesn’t answer.
She lowers her voice, but not enough to hide the anger in it. “You can’t be drunk. You’re getting married.”
He lets out a short laugh that sounds wrong even to me. “That’s your concern?”
“Yes,” she says. “At the moment, it is.”
He looks at her then, really looks at her, and whatever has been building in him all morning finally starts to come loose.
“I don’t want to marry Camille.”
Alina goes still.
For one second no one says anything.
Then she says, very carefully, “You’ve had too much to drink.”
“No,” he says. “I’ve had just enough to say it out loud.” His voice is steadier now, which somehow makes it worse.
I stand there holding my clipboard, feeling like I’ve stepped into the middle of a family fracture that’s been there a long time and has simply chosen this morning to crack open where I can see it.
Alina’s face changes, but only a little. She’s too controlled to let real panic show quickly. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“No,” she says. “You’re frightened, embarrassed, and drunk.”
Ethan’s mouth twists. “That doesn’t make me wrong.”
The silence after that is ugly.
I should leave. I know I should. But neither of them looks at me, and moving now would only draw attention to the fact that I’m here at all.
Alina folds her arms. “If you had doubts, this conversation should have happened months ago.”
He gives a humorless laugh. “It did happen months ago. Just not out loud.”
Her eyes narrow. “Careful.”
“With what?” he asks. “The truth?”
“With your timing.”
Something bitter flashes across his face. “You pushed me toward her.”
I almost look away. That’s how intimate the accusation feels, even standing a few feet from it.
Alina doesn’t flinch. “I encouraged you to think practically.”
“You pushed me,” he repeats. “You liked the family, the money, the connections, the way it all looked.”
He’s saying too much now, and he knows it. I can hear it in his voice. But he’s past the point where that matters.
Alina steps closer to him, her own control tightening with every word. “I advised you to choose a woman who understood the life she was marrying into.”
“I never wanted her. And the only reason you ever liked Camille was because of her family. Her connections. What marrying her could do for him.” His voice hardens. “For Dad.”
“Enough,” Alina says.
But he’s drunk enough, angry enough, and hurt enough not to listen.
“And the worst part?” he says. “It didn’t even work. He still doesn’t want you. He still doesn’t love you.”
The words land like a slap.
The corridor goes silent.
I look at Alina and see it happen. Not the loss of control, exactly. Something quieter and much worse. The kind of hurt that’s old enough to be buried well and still fresh enough to bleed when someone hits the right place.
Her face doesn’t break. She’s too proud for that.
But now I know. Whatever happened between her and Viktor is not finished, not for her. Whatever shape their marriage took in the end, whatever distance or bitterness came after, some part of her still wanted him. Maybe still does.
Ethan sees it too late. The anger drains out of him first. Then comes the regret. “Mother—”
“No,” she says. Just that.
She straightens, and when she speaks again her tone is calm enough to make the whole thing feel even crueler. “You are drunk,” she says. “And you are going to your room now before you say another word you can’t take back.”
He stares at her.
She doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
Ethan looks away first. He looks like he wants to move, but he doesn’t.
He just stands there in the middle of the corridor, breathing too hard, one hand half-lifted and then dropping uselessly back to his side.
The anger has gone out of him. What’s left is worse.
A drunken kind of misery, heavy and ugly and impossible to direct anywhere now that the words are already out.
Alina is still holding herself so tightly she looks breakable.
I glance from one of them to the other and say, because someone has to, “Maybe we should get him to his room.”