9. Jillian
— ? —
Jillian
The first three notes dissolved a part of me.
I knew the song before the melody fully formed, before the vocalist’s smoky voice curled around words I’d heard a thousand times, before my champagne flute began trembling in my fingers. I knew it the way you know your own heartbeat, your own breath, your own name spoken by someone who loves you.
“The Very Thought of You.”
Our song.
The song Trevor had requested at our wedding because he said no other song had ever captured what I did to his brain, his focus, his entire sense of gravity.
The song we danced to every anniversary in our living room, barefoot, his hand spread wide across my lower back like he was trying to memorize the architecture of my spine.
The song he’d hummed against my hair in hospital waiting rooms and airport terminals and the kitchen at three in the morning when neither of us could sleep.
And he was dancing to it with Chloe Williams.
Her champagne silk dress caught the light as they swayed, her hand resting on his shoulder with practiced ease, her blonde hair swept up to expose the elegant line of her neck.
They moved together in the center of the ballroom, two golden people opening the floor the way both families expected, the way tradition demanded, the way Margot had probably orchestrated down to the specific song selection.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe.
The room continued around me, conversations, laughter, the clink of glasses, but I existed suddenly outside of time, watching my husband hold another woman while our song played and my chest caved in on itself.
“Isn’t that their wedding song?”
The whisper came from somewhere at my table, female, curious, carrying the particular frequency of gossip disguised as concern. I didn’t turn to see who’d spoken. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Trevor’s face, from the way his expression remained neutral, pleasant, appropriate for the occasion.
He didn’t know.
He hadn’t realized yet.
My fingers tightened around my champagne flute until I felt the delicate stem threatening to crack. I set it down carefully, deliberately, before I shattered it against the white tablecloth and gave everyone a juicier reason to whisper about me.
“Oh my God,” someone else murmured. “That’s definitely their song. I was at the wedding.”
The violinist swelled into the bridge. Chloe’s hand slid slightly higher on Trevor’s shoulder. And I watched the exact moment recognition landed on my husband’s face.
His steps faltered almost imperceptibly. His jaw tightened. A shadow moved through his eyes, confusion first, then realization, then a horror that bloomed slowly across his features like blood seeping through bandages.
He knew.
He finally knew.
Stop, I thought. Stop dancing. Walk off the floor. Come to me. Choose me. Please, Trevor, please…
He kept dancing.
His feet continued moving in the same practiced pattern.
His hand remained on Chloe’s waist. His face smoothed back into a presentable mask, appropriate, controlled, the kind that wouldn’t cause a scene in front of the entire ballroom and both families and his mother watching from the head table with her practiced smile.
He kept dancing.
The worst part wasn’t the song, or Chloe’s proximity, or the whispers spreading through my table like wildfire.
The worst part was watching Trevor’s face as he made the calculation.
I saw every thought cross his features, the venue, the families, the expectations, the impossibility of stopping mid-song without explanation, without drama, without becoming the story everyone told for years afterward.
I saw him weigh all of that against me.
And I saw him choose.
He chose the version of himself that didn’t cause scenes. The version that maintained composure. The version that handled things privately, appropriately, later. He chose the Anderson family expectation of seamless public performance over the wife bleeding out silently across the ballroom.
Chloe caught my eye over his shoulder.
And smiled.
Not a smirk. Not a triumphant grin. Worse than that, a smile soft and sympathetic and devastatingly kind, as if she pitied me, as if she understood how hard this must be for me, as if she wasn’t the architect of my destruction but merely an innocent bystander who happened to be dancing with my husband to my wedding song while I watched.
“Jilly.”
The voice came from beside me. Familiar. Wrong. Harper shouldn’t be here, I’d insisted on coming alone, insisted I didn’t need backup, insisted I could handle one gala, one evening, one public appearance at my husband’s side.
Except Trevor wasn’t at my side. Trevor was across the room, swaying with another woman, choosing silence over me.
“Jilly, let’s go.”
I turned my head slowly. Harper stood there in an emerald dress I’d never seen before, her dark hair swept back, her face carefully neutral in that way that meant she was furious on my behalf but refusing to show it publicly.
“You came,” I said. My voice sounded strange. Distant.
“I was worried.” Her hand found my elbow, gentle but firm. “I’m parked in the east lot. We can go out the side entrance.”
“This isn’t an accident.” The words felt like glass in my throat. “None of this is an accident.”
“I know, honey.”
“He’s still dancing.”
“I know, honey.”
The song was ending. I could hear it winding down, the vocalist’s voice fading into the final notes, the strings softening toward silence.
In thirty seconds, maybe less, it would be over.
Trevor would release Chloe. The floor would fill with other couples.
And everyone would watch to see what I did next.
I stood slowly.
Every movement felt deliberate, choreographed, like I was performing a role I hadn’t auditioned for.
I smoothed my dress. I lifted my chin. I let my face settle into a serene and empty calm, the way my mother had taught me to survive garden parties and charity events and every social battlefield that required you to bleed invisibly.
“Jillian,” Harper whispered. “Side entrance. Quickly.”
“No.”
I walked forward.
The crowd seemed to part around me, or maybe I just stopped seeing obstacles. I moved through the ballroom with my head high, my shoulders back, my eyes fixed on some point beyond the windows where the night pressed dark and cool against the glass.
I passed within three feet of Trevor.
The song had ended. Chloe was stepping back, her hand lingering on his arm, her smile gracious and appropriate. People were beginning to move toward the dance floor, filling the space with motion and noise.
“Jillian.”
Trevor’s voice cracked through the ambient sound like a gunshot. I felt him turn, felt the weight of his attention swing toward me like a physical force, felt everything in him finally orient in my direction.
“Jillian, wait…”
I didn’t stop.
“Jillian, please…”
My heels clicked against the marble floor. Ahead of me, Harper was already moving toward the main entrance, abandoning the subtle side exit in favor of speed.
“I didn’t realize…” His voice grew closer. He was following. “The song, I didn’t think about… Margot chose the playlist, I never…”
I reached the entrance hall. A server stepped aside, tray balanced carefully. Someone’s voice rose in greeting from a cluster near the coat check.
“Jillian.”
His hand caught my arm.
I stopped.
Not because he’d pulled me back, but because I chose to. Because I wanted him to see my face when I turned. Because I needed him to understand exactly what he’d done and what it had cost.
“Don’t,” I said quietly.
“Please, just let me explain…”
“You made your choice.” I looked at him. At his beautiful, tortured, cowardly face. At the man I’d loved since I was twenty-three years old. “You made it on the dance floor in front of everyone. You don’t get to unmake it now.”
“I panicked. The song started and I didn’t realize until it was too late, and I couldn’t figure out how to stop without…”
“Without causing a scene?” My voice stayed low. Pleasant, even. The server couldn’t hear us. The coat check attendant couldn’t hear us. But Trevor heard every syllable. “Without embarrassing your family? Without disappointing your mother?”
“That’s not fair.”
“You danced to our wedding song with another woman while I watched.” I pulled my arm free from his grip, gently, almost tenderly. “And then you kept dancing. You looked at me, you saw me, and you kept dancing.”
“I know.” His voice broke. “I know, Jillian, I know…”
“Goodbye, Trevor.”
Harper’s hand found my back. The valet was already pulling her car around. The night air hit my face, cold and biting, and I breathed it in like a drowning woman finally breaking the surface.
Behind me, I heard Trevor say my name one more time. But the car door was open, and Harper was guiding me inside, and then we were pulling away from the lit entrance where my husband stood frozen on the steps.
I didn’t cry on the drive home.
Harper didn’t speak. She just drove, one hand occasionally reaching over to squeeze my fingers, her jaw tight and her eyes wet in the passing streetlights.
“Thank you for coming,” I said somewhere around the halfway point. “I know I said not to.”
“I had a feeling.”
“How?”
“Because I know you.” She glanced at me. “And I know him. And I know his mother. And the whole night felt wrong to me, Jilly. The whole thing felt wrong.”
The house was dark when we pulled into the driveway. Harper cut the engine but didn’t move to get out.
“I can stay,” she offered. “I’ll sleep on the couch. Or in the guest room. Whatever you need.”
“I think I need to be alone.”
“Are you sure?”
I wasn’t sure of anything. But I nodded, and I let her hug me across the center console, and I walked inside and stood in the dark kitchen where Trevor and I had slow-danced a hundred times, and I didn’t turn on any lights.
Fifteen minutes later, headlights swept across the windows.
I heard the car before I saw it, tires tearing up the driveway too fast, brakes shrieking, a door slamming with desperate force. Then footsteps. Then pounding on the door I hadn’t locked.
“Jillian. Jillian.”
I didn’t move from the kitchen.
He opened the door himself. Crossed the hallway in three strides. Found me standing by the window where the moonlight made everything silver and strange.
“I knew halfway through.” He was breathing hard.
His bow tie hung loose around his neck. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild.
“I knew halfway through and I should have walked off that floor and I didn’t.
I was a coward and I chose wrong and I knew it while I was doing it and I did it anyway and I am so sorry, Jillian, I am so… ”
“I know,” I said.
“Please.” He stepped closer. “Please, we can fix this. I can fix this. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it, anything, anything…”
I looked up at him.
My husband. My person. The man I’d built a life with, dreamed a future with, loved with every fractured piece of my heart.
“I’m done, Trevor.”