1. Solenn #2
Not white but close enough. The message is clear. I see you. I know what you are. You don’t belong here.
My hands start to shake and the flowers give me away, trembling against the satin.
This is a mistake, all of it. Here I stand in front of witnesses, promising myself to a man who proposed out of duty, while his mother watches me the way you watch a stain she can’t wait to scrub off the family silver.
Liam’s hand finds mine and squeezes.
“Still with me?”
I breathe and I say the vows.
***
The reception is all about champagne and strangers and obligatory smiles.
Melanie finds me in the receiving line, and her air kiss lands near my cheek without touching it, affection performed at maximum safe distance.
“Congratulations, dear.” Her smile has been professionally installed. “A beautiful ceremony. Quite the whirlwind, though. A month from proposal to altar. People count months, you know.” She tilts her head and lets it settle. “I always do.”
Whatever I open my mouth to say goes nowhere, because she’s already gliding off to greet someone worthier of her attention.
She counts. Everyone in this family knows about the baby, and she has clearly spent the weeks since looking at the calendar anyway. Conception dates, wedding timelines, the precise volume of scandal she’ll be expected to manage once the rest of the world starts counting too.
Her words are still sitting on me when Angelina appears.
Angelina Harper. Everyone here knows who she is. She runs marketing at Sharpe Industries, and before that she ran Liam. His bed, his calendar, his life. They ended before I came into the picture, and yet she’s still on the payroll and still watching him.
The hug she gives him goes on too long, her fingers trailing down his back as she pulls away. Then she turns to me with a smile that has teeth in it.
“Solenn, isn’t it? Love the dress. So brave.”
Brave. She says it like she means to say unfortunate.
“Thank you.”
“Liam and I were just catching up. God, do you remember that gala in Zurich?” She turns back to him, laughing at a joke I wasn’t invited to understand. “The one where the ambassador’s wife thought you were trying to steal her husband? I almost died.”
Liam laughs. A real one over a private joke that has nothing to do with the woman he married three hours ago.
I tell myself it’s fine. Exes can be friends, and staying civil with a person you used to date is the mature thing to do. I’m not the jealous type. There’s no reason to build this into more than it is.
I’m lying.
The alternative is admitting that I just married a man who might still be carrying feelings for someone else. A man who proposed because I’m pregnant, not because he’s in love.
Angelina’s hand lingers on Liam’s arm while she says her goodbyes, her fingers moving in a pattern I recognize because I’ve used it myself. Hers, once.
“Congratulations,” she says to both of us. “Really. I’m so happy for you.”
She doesn’t mean a word of it.
***
The party winds down and the guests trickle out while the staff clear tables, fold linens, and sweep away the evidence of the happiest day of my life.
Happiness is the assignment. Bride is the role. What I’ve got instead is the sensation of wearing another woman’s ring inside another woman’s story, waiting for the room to catch on that I don’t belong in it.
Liam finds me by the windows, staring at nothing.
“Hey.” His hand settles on my lower back. “You okay?”
“Fine.” The word comes out flat. “Just tired.”
“We can leave whenever you want. My mother’s been hinting that we should give the staff time to clean up anyway.”
His mother, of course. Even at my own wedding, Melanie Sharpe is the one calling the shots.
“Let’s go,” I say.
He nods and steers me toward the exit, stopping to shake hands and collect congratulations from the last few guests. My face hurts from smiling. The small talk leaves my head as fast as it arrives. Playing the happy bride is what tonight requires, so I play it.
In the car, finally alone, I lean my head against the window and close my eyes.
“You sure you’re okay?” Liam asks.
“Just a lot to process.”
“Yeah.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Yeah, it is.”
The city slides past in lights and shadows, my old life shrinking in the side mirror. Mrs. Sharpe now. Carrying the next Sharpe heir. Grateful, apparently, is the correct response.
Melanie’s voice loops in my head, tangled up with Angelina’s fingers on Liam’s arm, with the way he laughed at her joke while I stood right there, with the ivory dress in the front row that said everything his mother will never say out loud.
My hand presses flat against my stomach, over the tiny life that started all of this. The one that made him propose. The one that might be the only reason he’s sitting beside me now.
He married me out of duty.
I knew that going in. I just didn’t expect it to hurt this much.
The penthouse is quiet when we arrive. He helps me with my dress, unzipping the back with gentle hands, pressing a kiss to my shoulder that reads more like habit than desire. I change into an old shirt, climb into bed, and wait for him.
He does come, pulling me close, and he’s asleep inside of five minutes.
Hours pass with my eyes open on the ceiling and Melanie’s words running on a loop.
Somewhere between the ceremony and the champagne, I worked out exactly what kind of family I’ve married into.
The kind that keeps score.