2. Eve
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Eve
I can’t breathe.
The church erupts around me. Voices rise in gasps and whispers, one woman near the back actually screaming. But I’m frozen. Rooted to this spot on the altar. My feet have fused with the marble. My bouquet is crushed against my chest so hard the rose thorns are biting through my gloves.
I can’t stop staring at Simon’s face as he stares at her.
Like she’s the bride he’s been waiting for.
“Simon.”
Kiara’s voice cuts through the chaos, clear and calm and certain. She walks down the aisle with a confidence I’ve never possessed, her train sweeping the rose petals my niece scattered an hour ago, erasing my footsteps with every step she takes.
She stops three feet from the altar. Three feet from me. Her eyes never leave Simon.
“I’m done waiting.” Her chin lifts. “I’m done hiding.”
No. No, no, no, no.
“Choose.”
The word hangs in the air between us.
I try to speak. Try to form words that make sense of this nightmare, try to wake up because this has to be a nightmare, this cannot actually be happening...
“Simon.” My voice comes out cracked and wrong. “Simon, what is she...”
“Oh, honey.”
Kiara finally looks at me. And her smile. God, her smile. The smile of a predator who’s been playing with her food.
“He didn’t tell you?”
Don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Please...
“We’ve been together for eight months.”
The church tilts. Or maybe I do. Eight months. Eight months. We’ve been engaged for ten.
“Your apartment,” Kiara continues, ticking off items like she’s reading a grocery list. “Your bed. Your fiancé.” She laughs, light and musical and utterly cruel. “Did you really think those late nights were about work?”
The late nights.
All those nights Simon came home at midnight, at one, at two, smelling like someone else’s perfume while I convinced myself I was imagining it. All those business trips where he was too tired to FaceTime, too busy to text back, too stressed for me to bother him with my silly concerns.
Eight months of lies.
Eight months of her in my bed.
Somewhere behind me, I hear my mother rise to her feet.
My father’s face has gone an alarming shade of purple.
My brother Tyler is shoving through the pews, murder in his eyes, but I can’t focus on any of them because my entire world is collapsing and I’m standing in the rubble in a fourteen-thousand-dollar dress watching it happen.
“You’ve been CHEATING on me?”
The words tear out of my throat, raw and broken and so loud they echo off the vaulted ceiling. I don’t recognize my own voice. I don’t recognize anything.
Simon finally looks at me. And, God, his expression.
He’s annoyed. Like I’m a toddler throwing a tantrum in public, like I’m embarrassing him in front of his guests by reacting to the fact that his mistress just crashed our wedding in a bridal gown.
“Eve.” His voice is tight with impatience. “Let’s not do this here.”
Something inside me snaps.
“NOT DO THIS...” I’m shaking so hard my veil trembles, so hard I can feel my teeth chattering, so hard I might actually vibrate out of existence and honestly that would be preferable to this. “You brought your mistress to our wedding...”
“I brought myself.”
Kiara steps closer, close enough that I can smell her perfume. Close enough that I can see the triumph written in every line of her perfect face.
“Because I’m done being your dirty little secret, Simon.” Her voice drops, intimate and accusing. “You promised me. You promised.”
Then her eyes flick to me, cold and assessing.
“Tell her.” She turns back to Simon. “Tell her who you really want.”
I’m going to throw up. I’m going to throw up all over this altar, in front of everyone we know, and my mother will never forgive me but at least it’ll give them something else to gossip about.
A rustling sound draws my attention. Hilda Valentine, my almost-mother-in-law, rising from the front pew with a practiced grace that takes decades of etiquette training.
Her Chanel suit is cream-colored, close enough to white that I’d found it passive-aggressive when I saw it this morning. Now it reads as the warning it was.
She’s going to fix this. She’s going to say something, do something, defend me. I’ve spent three years trying to earn this woman’s approval. Surely she won’t let her son humiliate me like this in front of everyone.
Hilda smooths her jacket. Surveys the chaos with a look of mild interest.
And smiles.
“Well.” Her voice is cool and crisp, almost amused. “This is certainly dramatic.”
My blood turns to ice.
She knew.
Simon runs a hand through his perfect hair.
He looks at me, really looks at me, maybe for the first time today, and I search his face desperately for something, anything, that tells me this isn’t what it looks like.
Remorse. Guilt. A sign that the man I agreed to spend my life with actually gives a damn that he’s destroying me in front of everyone we know.
Then he looks at Kiara.
And I watch his decision happen in real-time.
The way his shoulders shift toward her. The way his jaw sets with something like relief. The way his hand starts to reach for hers before he catches himself.
He’s already chosen. He chose eight months ago. I’m just the last one to find out.
“Eve...” He sighs. Actually sighs, like this is inconvenient for him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to happen like this.”
Like this. Like there’s a good way for this to happen. Like there’s a version of this story where he isn’t a lying, cheating coward who let me walk down the aisle knowing his mistress was waiting in the wings.
“But Kiara’s right.”
No.
“We can’t keep pretending.”
No.
He reaches for Kiara’s hand. She takes it, threading her fingers through his with a familiarity that makes my stomach heave.
“I choose her.”
The sound that comes out of me isn’t a word. It’s something animal and wounded, dragged from the deepest part of my chest, the part that still believed, stupidly, pathetically, that he loved me. That I was enough.
I lunge forward. I don’t even know what I’m going to do. Hit him, shake him, make him look at me and see what he’s done.
Kiara moves faster.
Her hand cracks across my face so hard my head snaps to the side. The pain blooms white-hot across my cheekbone, tears springing to my eyes, and the sound it makes.
The church goes silent.
A whole church holding its breath, witnessing my humiliation, and I’m going to fall, I’m falling...
Arms catch me. Solid and warm, wrapping around me before I hit the ground.
“I’ve got you.” Dean’s voice is low in my ear, steady despite the chaos. “I’ve got you.”
I clutch his jacket, fingers digging into expensive fabric, and I can’t stop shaking. Can’t stop the tears streaming down my face, ruining the makeup that took two hours to apply. Can’t make sense of any of this.
A scuffle breaks out somewhere to my left. Tyler has Kiara’s wrist, twisting her arm behind her back with enough force to make her yelp.
“Touch my sister again,” he snarls, “and I’ll break it.”
“Get your hands off her...” Simon starts toward them.
“She just assaulted your fiancée at the altar.” Tyler’s voice drips with disgust. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Simon doesn’t have an answer. Or maybe he doesn’t think he needs one.
That’s when my father pushes through the crowd.
I’ve never seen him like this. Dad is calm. Dad is measured. Dad makes jokes when things get tense and defuses situations with his accountant’s logic and quiet rationality.
The man walking toward Simon is none of those things. His face is white with rage, hands trembling, eyes fixed on the man who was supposed to become his son-in-law in approximately three minutes.
He walks straight up to Simon, winds back.
And punches him so hard Simon’s nose explodes in a spray of blood.
Kiara screams. Simon staggers, hands flying to his face, blood pouring through his fingers. The guests erupt again, louder this time, but Dad just shakes out his fist like it’s nothing.
“That’s for my daughter.”
Then he turns, gentle hands finding my elbow, and his voice goes deadly calm. “We’re leaving.”
Dean still hasn’t let go of me. I don’t know if I could stand without him.
“Good.” Hilda’s voice carries across the chaos, clear and cold and utterly unbothered. “She was never right for this family anyway.”
The words hit me like a second slap.
And something cold and clear cuts through the static, some small hard thing that’s been forming since the bathroom this morning. I am done being the one this happens to.
I straighten out of Dean’s arms. I find my feet. I press the back of my glove to my split lip, and I look at the three of them, Simon bleeding on his knees, Kiara gloating over him, Hilda serene in her cream Chanel.
“You’re right, Hilda.” My voice comes out level, which surprises the whole church, me most of all.
“I was never right for this family. Thank God.” My eyes go to Simon.
“Enjoy her. And when she does to you exactly what you did to me, and she will, I hope you remember I’m the one who walked out clean. ”
It won’t fix anything. But it’s the first thing I’ve chosen for myself all day, and the first crack of doubt in Kiara’s perfect face is going to keep me warm for a week.
My mother snaps something I can’t make out, and suddenly I’m surrounded. Mom, Dad, Tyler, Becca, my aunt Carol, all of them forming a protective wall between me and the altar. Between me and the man I thought I knew.
They guide me toward the door, a dozen hands supporting me, and I look back once.
Just once.
Simon is on his knees. Blood streaming down his face, dripping onto his perfect tailored suit. Kiara crouches beside him, cradling his jaw, murmuring something I can’t hear. They look like a painting. Like a tragedy.
They deserve each other.
Dean’s hand stays at my back, steady and sure, and I let it guide me through the doors. But that cold clear thing I found at the altar doesn’t leave with my dignity. It comes with me. It settles in to stay.
They have no idea what they just handed me.