2. Cami
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Cami
The church was beautiful.
That was the only thought I could hold onto as I walked down the aisle. White roses and peonies dripping from every pew. Candles flickering in the afternoon light streaming through stained glass windows. A sea of faces turned toward me, smiling, expectant, waiting for the bride to reach her groom.
My father’s arm was steady under my hand.
My steps were measured. One, two, three, four.
Match the music. Don’t trip on the train.
Keep your chin up and your shoulders back and your smile perfect because everyone is watching and everyone is judging and you only get one chance to walk down this aisle.
See who your husband really is.
The thought cut through everything else. Sharp and unwelcome and impossible to shake.
I tried to focus on Logan instead. On the way he was standing at the altar in his perfectly tailored suit, watching me approach with that smile on his face. The smile that had made me fall for him four years ago. The smile that said I was the only woman in the world.
So why did it suddenly feel like he was looking through me instead of at me?
Stop. Stop it. I was being paranoid. I was letting some anonymous email get inside my head on the most important day of my life. Logan loved me. He’d asked me to marry him. He’d planned this wedding with me, picked out the flowers and the music and the cake. He wanted this.
He wanted me.
I reached the altar. My father stopped, turned to face me, and for a moment his eyes went soft and wet.
“I love you, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Be happy.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
He kissed my cheek. Lifted my hand from his arm and placed it in Logan’s. His palm was sweating. I could feel the dampness through my gloves, the slight tremor in his fingers.
Nervous. He was just nervous. That was normal.
“You look beautiful,” Logan whispered, his eyes scanning my face.
“Thank you.” I tried to find the warmth I usually felt when he looked at me. The flutter in my chest. The certainty that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
It wasn’t there. The certainty was gone, and a wrongness I couldn’t name had crept in to fill it, and that made it worse.
We turned to face Father Matthews. He stood behind the altar with his worn Bible in his hands, the same Bible he’d used to marry couples in this church for thirty years. His smile was kind. Reassuring. The smile of a man who had seen a thousand nervous brides and knew exactly how to calm them.
“Dearly beloved.” His voice filled the church, warm and resonant, bouncing off the stained glass windows and the vaulted ceilings. “We are gathered here today in the presence of God and these witnesses to join together Logan Alexander Caldwell and Camellia Marie Brennan in holy matrimony.”
Holy matrimony. The words settled over me, a weight pressing down on my chest. This was it. This was really happening. In a few minutes I would be Mrs. Caldwell. I would belong to this man standing next to me. For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer.
Till death do us part.
I thought about the texts I’d found on Logan’s phone three months ago. The ones I’d talked myself out of. Can’t wait to see you and miss you already and last night was incredible. Sent to a number I didn’t recognize at two in the morning when Logan was supposed to be at a conference in Chicago.
He’d said it was a wrong number. He’d said someone must have spoofed his phone. He’d said I was being paranoid and I needed to trust him and did I really want to start our marriage by accusing him of things he didn’t do?
I’d apologized. I’d felt guilty for doubting him. I’d buried those texts in a corner of my mind and told myself I was being crazy.
But standing here now, with that email burning in my pocket, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d made a terrible mistake.
“Marriage is a sacred covenant,” Father Matthews continued. “A bond not to be entered into lightly or unadvisedly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God.”
I glanced at Logan out of the corner of my eye. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on some point over Father Matthews’ shoulder. He looked... tense. More than nervous. Almost like he was bracing himself for something.
Or maybe I was projecting. Maybe I was so deep in my own paranoid spiral that I was seeing things that weren’t there. Logan was fine. Everything was fine. I needed to stop.
“Into this holy union, Logan and Camellia now come to be joined. If any person can show just cause why they may not be lawfully joined together, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”
Silence. The church held its collective breath. I held mine.
In the movies, this is when someone would stand up. When the other woman would burst through the doors. When the secret would come spilling out in front of everyone.
But this wasn’t a movie. This was my life. And in my life, things didn’t work that way. In my life, secrets stayed buried. People smiled through their pain. Brides walked down aisles and married men they loved and everything was fine.
Everything was fine.
No one spoke.
Father Matthews nodded, satisfied, and turned toward Logan. “Logan, please face your bride.”
Logan turned to face me. His hands found mine, clammy and trembling. His eyes met mine and for just a second I saw something flicker there. Something that looked almost like guilt.
No. I was imagining it. I had to be imagining it.
“Repeat after me,” Father Matthews said. “I, Logan Alexander Caldwell.”
“I, Logan Alexander Caldwell.” His voice was steady. Strong. The voice of a man who knew exactly what he wanted.
“Take you, Camellia Marie Brennan.”
“Take you, Rosalie...”
The name landed. A physical blow, sharp and real.
I stopped breathing. The church stopped breathing. The entire world narrowed down to that single word hanging in the air between us.
Rosalie.
He’d said Rosalie.
But Logan didn’t stop. He didn’t pause. He didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong at all. He just kept going, reciting the vows like he was reading from a script, his eyes fixed on my face but seeing something else entirely.
“...to be my lawfully wedded wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. To love and to cherish, until death do us part.”
He finished. He smiled at me. He squeezed my hands like he was expecting me to start my own vows now.
He didn’t even know.
He didn’t even realize what he’d said.
Behind me, I could hear the gasps. The whispers starting to ripple through the crowd, building and swelling. Every soul in that church had just heard my fiancé call me by my sister’s name, and he stood there smiling, oblivious that anything had happened at all.
“What?” The word came out of me as a whisper. Broken. Desperate. Not my voice at all.
Logan’s brow furrowed. “What’s wrong, babe? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“What name did you just say?”
“What?” He laughed. A small, nervous laugh. The laugh of a man who doesn’t understand why everyone is staring at him. “I said your name. I said Cami. What are you talking about?”
“You said Rosalie.”
“No I didn’t.” His smile was starting to falter now, confusion creeping into his eyes. “Babe, come on. We’re in the middle of the ceremony. I didn’t say... I would never...”
“You said Rosalie, Logan.”
“I said your name. I said...” He stopped. Swallowed hard. Tried again. “Come on, Rosalie, you’re being...”
He stopped.
All the color drained out of his face.
He’d done it again. He’d called me Rosalie. Again. Right in the middle of telling me he hadn’t called me Rosalie.
The whispers exploded into full-blown murmurs.
I could hear my mother’s voice somewhere behind me, high and panicked, trying to calm people down.
I could hear Logan’s mother Greta snapping at someone to be quiet.
I could hear a whole church losing its mind and I couldn’t process any of it because my brain was stuck on one single, devastating realization.
He hadn’t made a mistake.
His mouth had said what his heart was thinking.
And suddenly, horribly, everything clicked into place.
The late nights at the office that I’d never questioned.
The business trips that seemed to happen more and more often.
The way Logan went still whenever Rosalie walked into a room.
The way his eyes followed her. The way he always seemed to know where she was, what she was doing, who she was talking to.
The texts. God, the texts. Can’t wait to see you. Miss you already. Last night was incredible.
I’d assumed it was some random woman. Some stranger. Some faceless other woman I could hate without complicating my entire life.
But it wasn’t a stranger.
It was my sister.
The pregnancy test. The father Rosalie wouldn’t name. The fear in her eyes that had looked too practiced, too perfect.
A man Rosalie mentioned once, years ago, before Logan and I ever started dating. A man who had asked her out first, back when we both worked at the same company. She’d turned him down. Called him a bore. Laughed about it at a family dinner while I sat there, clueless, already falling for him.
But she’d mentioned it. She’d made sure I knew. That he’d noticed her first.
I couldn’t breathe. The church was spinning around me and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t think and I couldn’t do anything except stand there in my white dress while my entire life collapsed, card by card by card.
I turned around.
The bridesmaids were frozen in a line behind me, their faces masks of shock and horror and something that looked almost like pity. And at the end of the line, standing in her pale pink dress with her hand pressed to her mouth...
Rosalie.
My sister.
My baby sister who I had held in my arms an hour ago and promised that everything would be okay.
She was smiling.
Just for a second. Just a flicker. A small, satisfied smile hiding behind her fingers, her eyes bright with something that looked almost like triumph.
Then she saw me looking. And her face changed. Snapped into concern, into shock, into the perfect picture of a sister who couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
But it was too late.
I’d seen it.
I’d seen the smile and the triumph and the satisfaction, and I would never unsee it. Not if I lived to be a hundred years old.
“Rosalie.”
My voice came out calm. Steady. So steady it scared me. Like I was standing outside my own body, watching myself speak, watching myself do something I couldn’t stop.
The church went quiet. Dead quiet. Even the whispers stopped. A church full of people holding their breath, watching, waiting.
“Tell me who the father of your baby is.”
Rosalie’s face went white.
“Cami...” Her voice was small. Scared. The perfect trembling little sister voice she’d been using her whole life to get out of trouble. “Cami, please. This isn’t the time. This isn’t the place. We can talk about this later, after...”
“Tell me.”
I didn’t recognize myself. I didn’t recognize this cold, hard thing that had taken over my body and was staring down my sister like she was a stranger. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t back down. I needed to hear her say it. I needed to hear the words come out of her mouth.
Beside me, Logan made a sound. A choked, strangled noise that made me turn my head.
He wasn’t looking at me anymore.
He was looking at Rosalie.
And his face... God, his face. The confusion had melted away. The panic was gone. He was staring at my sister with his lips parted and his eyes wide and something that looked horrifyingly like hope blooming across his features.
“You’re pregnant?” His voice cracked on the words. “Rosalie, you’re... you’re pregnant?”
Rosalie’s hand dropped from her mouth. Her eyes found Logan’s across the church, and a look passed between them, quick and private, heavy with everything they’d been hiding from me.
And then Logan smiled.
He looked at my sister, standing at the end of my bridesmaids in her pale pink dress, and he smiled like she’d just given him the best gift of his entire life.
Like the pregnancy test I’d bought her an hour ago was meant for him.
Like the baby growing inside her was something they’d been waiting for.
Something they’d been planning.
Together.
The church erupted.
My mother was on her feet, pushing past people, trying to get to the altar. My father was up too, gray-faced, half climbing over the pew before the crowd closed around him and swallowed him whole. The guests were all talking at once, a roar of voices that crashed over me and dragged me under.
But I couldn’t hear any of it.
All I could hear was my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
All I could see was Logan’s smile.
And all I could feel was the exact moment my entire world shattered into a million pieces.