16. Jillian
— ? —
Jillian
The thing about Chloe Williams was that she’d always known exactly where to aim.
I spotted her the moment I stepped into the ceremony space, a sun-drenched terrace overlooking the ocean, white chairs arranged in perfect rows, gardenias perfuming the salt breeze.
She was standing near the middle aisle, wrapped in a dress the color of champagne, laughing at a joke one of Daniel’s cousins had made.
Her eyes found mine across the crowd. And she smiled.
Not a polite smile. Not even a triumphant one. Worse than that, pitying.
I kept walking, steady, toward the seats Harper had saved us near the front. Trevor was already there, rising slightly when he saw me approach, his expression careful and searching.
“You okay?” he murmured as I sat down.
“Fine.”
“Jillian…”
“I said I’m fine.”
But Chloe was already drifting closer, and I watched her trajectory the way you watch a storm system on radar. She paused two rows behind us, positioning herself in a cluster of guests I vaguely recognized from other society events. Close enough that I could hear every word.
“Well, I think it’s so brave of her,” Chloe said, her voice pitched at that perfect volume, loud enough to carry, soft enough to seem private. “Showing up alone when everyone knows Trevor already has one foot back where he belongs.”
She paused. Waited.
The words landed like a slap.
“I mean, Margot told me herself that it’s only a matter of time. Some marriages just weren’t meant to…” Another artful pause. “Well. We shouldn’t gossip.”
I didn’t turn around. Didn’t flinch. But my hands had gone cold in my lap, and I could feel Chloe’s eyes on the back of my neck, searching for the crack.
Trevor went very still beside me.
“Don’t,” I breathed.
“She’s…”
“Not here. Not now. This is Priya’s day.”
His jaw worked, but he stayed seated. His hand found mine, squeezed once, hard. I let him hold it for exactly three seconds before pulling away.
The ceremony started.
***
Priya was radiant. Daniel cried when he saw her walking down the aisle, and Priya laughed through her own tears as she reached him, and for a few minutes I forgot everything except how beautiful it was, two people who loved each other, choosing each other, in front of everyone who mattered.
The officiant spoke about partnership. About showing up. About the daily choice to keep choosing.
I didn’t look at Trevor.
He didn’t look at me.
But I felt him there, solid and warm, and I thought about all the times he’d sat beside me at events like this, his attention elsewhere, his mind already on the next obligation. And I thought about the gala, watching him spin Chloe across the floor while I stood alone.
And I thought about last night. The kiss that had burned through me. The way he’d stopped it. The promise in his voice.
The next time I kiss you, it’ll be because you’ve decided to forgive me.
The ceremony ended. Priya and Daniel walked back up the aisle hand in hand, beaming, and the crowd rose around us in a swell of applause.
I caught Chloe’s eye across the chaos.
She was still smiling.
***
The reception was gorgeous, fairy lights strung through olive trees, long tables draped in white linen, the ocean turning gold and pink as the sun began its descent. I found our table, found Harper already halfway through her first drink, and tried to breathe.
“I saw her,” Harper said without preamble. “I also saw you not react. Very impressive. Very emotionally mature. I would’ve thrown a shrimp at her face.”
“There wasn’t shrimp at the ceremony.”
“I would’ve found one.”
I laughed despite myself. “She’s trying to get a reaction.”
“Obviously. And you’re not going to give her one.”
“Obviously.”
But my eyes kept drifting to the windows, the tall glass doors that opened onto a stone terrace, where guests were milling with cocktails, silhouettes against the sunset.
Trevor was out there. I’d seen him excuse himself ten minutes ago, heading for the terrace with his shoulders tight and his expression unreadable.
And now Chloe was drifting toward those same doors.
“Harper.”
“I see her.” Harper’s voice had gone hard. “Do you want me to…”
“No.”
I stood.
The old Jillian would have looked away. The old Jillian would have trusted him to handle it, would have stayed in her seat and made polite conversation and tried not to think about what was happening outside those windows.
But the old Jillian had trusted. And trusted. And trusted.
And she’d ended up standing alone at a gala while her husband danced with another woman to their wedding song.
I walked toward the terrace.
***
The doors were open, letting in the salt breeze and the sound of waves crashing far below. I stepped through and immediately spotted them, Trevor near the stone balustrade, his back to the party, and Chloe positioned close. Too close. Her hand on his arm.
“…never understand you the way I do,” Chloe was saying, her voice honeyed and certain. “We were supposed to be together, Trevor. Your mother knew it. My parents knew it. Everyone knew it except you, and even now…”
“Chloe.” His voice was flat. Cold in a way I’d never heard from him before. “I need you to hear this very clearly, because apparently I’ve been too polite about it for too long.”
He stepped back, breaking her grip on his arm.
“There is no version of my life that includes you,” he said. “There never was.”
I stopped walking. Stayed in the dim of the doorway. Watching.
Chloe’s face changed, surprise, then a harder thing beneath it. “You don’t mean that. You’re just confused right now because she’s…”
“My mother doesn’t get to choose who I love.”
The words rang out across the terrace, clear and certain. A few guests nearby turned, drawn by the intensity in his voice.
“I chose three and a half years ago,” Trevor continued. “At a gala, across a crowded room, the moment I saw her. And I’ve spent every day since proving I wasn’t worthy of her.” His voice cracked, just slightly. “That ends now.”
Chloe’s composure finally slipped. “You can’t be serious. After everything, after all the years…”
“What years?” Trevor demanded. “The years where you showed up uninvited to events? The years where you whispered in my mother’s ear about everything Jillian did wrong? The years where you waited for my marriage to fail so you could…”
“I helped it fail!”
The words exploded out of Chloe before she could stop them.
Silence.
Behind me, the rustle of guests pressing closer to the windows, drawn by the raised voices. Phones were appearing in hands, that particular gleam of screens tilting, capturing.
And then a familiar figure stepped through the terrace doors.
Margot Anderson stood framed against the fairy lights, her silver gown catching the last of the sunset, her face perfectly composed as she surveyed the scene.
Her eyes moved from Chloe, whose chest was heaving, whose mask had finally cracked, to Trevor, who stood like a man finally done hiding, to me.
I hadn’t moved from the doorway. But she saw me anyway.
I watched her take in the phones already half-raised. The whispers spreading through the gathered crowd. Chloe’s voice still ringing in everyone’s ears: I helped it fail.
And I watched her do the math.
Not about what was right. Not about who deserved what. About which name was worth protecting. About what would play better in the society pages, supporting the scorned wife who’d held herself with dignity, or backing the woman who’d just confessed to sabotaging her son’s marriage.
The calculation was almost beautiful in its coldness.
“Chloe,” Margot said, her voice carrying. “I believe you’ve said quite enough.”
Chloe’s head whipped toward her. “Margot, you told me…”
“I think you should leave.”
“You can’t be serious!” Chloe’s voice pitched higher, more shrill. “After everything I did, everything we planned…”
“I have no idea what you’re referring to.” Margot’s tone could have frozen the ocean. “But I will not have this wedding disrupted by hysterics.”
Trevor stepped forward. “No.”
Margot’s composure wavered. “Trevor…”
“You don’t get to rewrite this.” His voice was loud now, carrying across the terrace to the gathered crowd, and his hands were trembling at his sides.
“Chloe manipulated her way into my life and my marriage. She did it with your help. With your blessing. You chose her over my wife at every turn, and I let you, because I was too much of a coward to…”
He stopped. Breathed.
Then he turned to face his mother directly.
“You have a choice right now,” he said. “Jillian or Chloe. You don’t get both.”
The terrace had gone silent. Even the waves seemed to quiet, as if the whole world was holding its breath.
Margot’s gaze flicked to me again. Held.
I lifted my chin and looked right back.
Choose, I thought. Just once in your life, choose the right thing.
The pause stretched. Calculated. Cool.
“Chloe,” Margot said finally, each word precise as a scalpel, “I think you should leave. Now.”
The last thread of whatever fantasy she’d been spinning all these years, breaking clean.
She turned. Walked toward the doors. Walked toward me.
I didn’t move.
She stopped, close enough that I could smell her perfume, and her voice dropped to a hiss meant only for me.
“This isn’t over.”
I said nothing. Let her see nothing on my face but calm.
She pushed past me and disappeared into the reception, and the murmur of the crowd parted for her, the click of her heels fading toward the exit.
The music had shifted inside. A slow, familiar tune drifting through the open doors.
I knew the song before I recognized the melody. Knew it in my bones, in my blood, in the way my heart seized in my chest.
Trevor turned toward me. His eyes were bright, and his hand was trembling as he extended it.
“Dance with me?” His voice cracked on the words. “They’re playing our song.”
The terrace had gone soft around us, fairy lights and salt air and that melody weaving through everything, the same melody that had played at our wedding, the same melody Chloe had stolen.
My hand trembled as I reached for his.