Chapter 14
Brayden followed her down the moonlit path like a man chasing the last elevator out of a burning building.
“Sara. Stop. Please.”
She didn’t stop until she reached the curve of the walkway beyond the terrace, where the music had faded and the ocean sounded louder than the guests. Lanterns hung from palm trees overhead, glowing soft gold against the dark. The night smelled like salt, flowers, and spilled champagne.
She turned. Brayden was breathing hard. His face looked different away from the terrace lights.
Less polished. Less certain. The boyish charm had cracked, leaving something frightened and resentful underneath.
His dinner jacket was wrinkled, his collar sat crooked, and when he reached toward her, his hand shook before he pulled it back.
“Please,” he said again.
Sara crossed her arms. “You have five minutes.”
Relief moved across his face so quickly it insulted her.
“Thank you. Baby, thank you.” He reached for her hand again, more carefully this time.
She stepped back.
His hand dropped.
“I know how this looks,” he said.
Sara laughed once. “Do you?”
“I messed up.”
“You brought your mistress to our wedding.”
His mouth tightened at the word mistress. “It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that.”
“No, it got complicated.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “Brooklyn and I were working together. Content stuff. She understood the industry. She understood pressure.”
Sara stared at him. “Did she also understand your vows?”
His eyes glistened. For a second, she saw something that looked almost real. Panic, maybe. Grief. The first faint outline of loss.
“I love you,” he said. His voice cracked on the word love, and he looked angry at himself for letting it happen. “I do. I know I hurt you, but I love you.”
The words pressed hard against the bruise on her heart, and for one weak moment, Sara hated herself because part of her still wanted the man she had married to exist. The man who had cried when she chose lemon cake because he liked it.
The man who had held her hand under the table during the rehearsal dinner.
The man who had whispered forever like it belonged to them, but the man in front of her had used her softness as cover.
“Love doesn’t humiliate me before the ink dries on the marriage certificate,” she said.
Brayden flinched. “I panicked.”
“About what?”
“Everything.” His voice rose, then broke. “Your family. The money. The wedding. Everyone looking at me like I had to deserve it. Do you know what that felt like?”
Sara’s mouth parted. Of all the things he could have said, he had chosen resentment.
“You felt judged,” she said slowly, “so you cheated.”
“I felt like I was disappearing in your world. Brooklyn made me feel like myself.”
“She made you feel important.”
His eyes flashed. “Is that so terrible?”
“No. What’s terrible is that I tried to make you feel loved, and you punished me for having a life you wanted.”
For once, he had no quick answer.
Then his face collapsed in a way that looked almost honest.
“You were the only real part,” he said, voice rough. “That’s the sick thing. The followers, the trips, the deals, the clothes, all of it was something I had to keep proving. You were real. You loved me before the rest of it looked believable.”
Sara’s fingers tightened around her own arms. There it was, the admission she had wanted and dreaded. Not enough. Never enough. But real enough to hurt.
“Then why wasn’t that enough?” she asked.
Brayden looked down. “Because I’m an idiot.”
“No. You’re greedy.”
His eyes lifted.
“You wanted the real thing and the performance. You wanted the wife and the audience and the mistress in the villa. You wanted every version of the life, even if keeping them meant breaking me.”
His mouth worked, but nothing came out.
Behind him, near the curve of the path, Dominic stood beneath a lantern, far enough away not to intrude but close enough that Sara knew he had followed. He didn’t move forward. He didn’t call her name. He simply waited.
Brayden noticed her gaze and turned.
His expression hardened. “So he’s why you’re doing this.”
Sara pitied him then. “You still can’t imagine me acting for myself.”
Brayden turned back, desperate again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? I’ll say it publicly. I’ll post whatever you want. I’ll tell people Brooklyn lied.”
Sara’s disgust rose. “Don’t you dare put this on her because she stopped being useful.”
He blinked.
“She’s responsible for what she did,” Sara said. “But you’re the one who married me.”
“I know. I know.” He stepped closer, voice shaking. “We can fix this. We can say we had a misunderstanding. Take a few weeks offline. Relaunch softer. Marriage is hard, right? People forgive love stories when they fight for each other.”
Sara stared at him. Even now, he was workshopping the caption.
“You want me to help you control the narrative,” she said.
“I want my wife back.”
“No. You want your audience back. You want my family’s access back. You want the version of me who smiled when you told her to.”
“That’s not fair.”
“What you did wasn’t fair. What I’m doing is accurate.”
He looked toward the terrace every time the voices rose, as if the room he had lost still mattered more than the woman in front of him. Then he looked at her bare finger.
His face crumpled again. “Sara,” he whispered. “Please. Don’t leave me over Brooklyn.”
That hurt less than she expected because it proved he still didn’t understand. It had never been only Brooklyn. Brooklyn was the champagne stain on the dress, bright and visible. Brayden was the rot underneath.
Sara stepped close enough that he straightened, hope sparking in his eyes.
“You didn’t just cheat,” she said quietly. “You brought her to my wedding and then took her to my honeymoon. You turned my life into a lie, Brayden.”
His face changed. This time, he looked truly wounded.
She let him be. Then she walked past him. Dominic waited by the lantern. He didn’t speak until she reached him.
“Did you hear?” she asked.
“Enough.”
Sara looked back once. Brayden remained on the path, hands at his sides, staring after her like a man who had lost something and was still trying to blame the floor for opening beneath him.
Dominic’s voice was low. “I wanted to step between you and him.”
Sara looked up at him. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because you didn’t need saving. You needed to be heard.”
The pain in her chest eased, not because it was gone, but because something warmer had reached the bruise.
Sara held out his jacket, the one she had kept folded over her arm after the garden. “I should give this back.”
Dominic looked at it, then at her. “You can. Or you can keep it until you’re warm.”
She kept it. They walked back toward the villas without touching, and somehow the space between them felt more intimate than all of Brayden’s public kisses.