2. Solenn
— ? —
Solenn
The gala has swallowed my entire existence.
Two weeks since the wedding, and I’ve barely seen my husband.
He’s been drowning in “the important things,” which apparently covers everything except the wife he married out of obligation.
Half the engagement before that ran the same way, all meetings and calls and dinners with people who matter more than I do.
So I threw myself into the Sharpe Foundation Gala with everything I had.
Nobody asked me to, which is the pathetic part.
I just wanted to matter, to contribute, to prove I wasn’t the pregnant nobody taking up space in his penthouse.
Vendors needed wrangling and catering emergencies needed solving and RSVPs needed chasing down, and the seating chart got rearranged twelve times because someone’s ex-wife couldn’t sit within eyeline of someone’s current mistress.
The florist quit two days before the event.
Actually quit. She threw her hands up, said she couldn’t work with “that Sharpe woman” anymore, and walked out, which cost me six hours on the phone finding a replacement who could deliver three hundred centerpieces on forty-eight hours’ notice.
Then the caterer called at midnight in a panic about the shrimp, the string quartet’s cellist broke her wrist, and the ice sculpture melted in transit.
I handled all of it.
Invisible and efficient, running on caffeine and the stupid hope that pulling this off might get me noticed. That somebody might say thank you. That somebody might look at me and see more than a mistake that needed containing.
On the morning of the gala, standing in a closet full of clothes I didn’t pick out, the one detail I never planned turns out to be my own dress.
I arrive in a simple black H&M dress I already owned way before I met Liam.
Hair pulled back because there wasn’t time for anything else, exhausted down to the bone, and proud. Tonight is going to be flawless because I made it flawless.
Melanie finds me within five minutes.
She crosses a ballroom she may as well own, diamonds at her throat, couture poured over her frame, wearing the smile she saves for people she intends to take apart. I just know she has her own stylist.
“Darling.” The air kiss arrives without landing. “You made it.”
“I’ve been here since-”
“You look… comfortable.” Her gaze travels down the dress, the practical heels, the bare throat and wrists. “Very serviceable.”
“I was coordinating with the vendors. The florist situation-”
“Though I must say.” She tilts her head and takes her time about it. “Standing next to Liam dressed like that…” A delicate pause. “You look like a maid, dear. Not the wife.”
Heat crawls up my neck and settles behind my eyes.
“I organized this entire event.” Somehow my voice holds. “Everything you’re looking at, I made happen. The centerpieces, the catering, the-”
“Oh, I’m sure you were very busy.”
Her eyes drift across the ballroom and mine follow, over to where Angelina holds court near the bar in emerald silk. Every hair placed. Photographers orbiting her like she’s the reason anyone came.
“Some women just have a knack for these things.” Melanie pats my arm. “Others… try their best.”
She glides away before I can respond. I stand there in my serviceable dress, invisible in the room I built, and tell myself not to cry.
***
I find Liam near the stage.
He’s laughing with a group of donors, looking every inch the heir he was raised to be. Confident and polished and completely at ease in a world I’m still learning how to walk through.
I wait for a break in the conversation, then touch his arm.
“I handled so much of this.” It tumbles out before I can arrange it properly. “The planning, the coordination, all of it-”
He frowns. Not at me, exactly. At the inconvenience of the conversation.
“I hired a team of professionals for the planning, Solenn. Event coordinators. That’s what they’re paid for.”
“But the florist quit, and I-”
“You should have spent more time getting ready.” His eyes move past me, scanning the room for someone more important. “You’re representing the Sharpe family tonight. Did my assistant forget to purchase you a dress?”
My mouth is still open when Angelina materializes at his elbow.
“God, these events are exhausting, aren’t they?” Champagne in hand, smile set to charming. “But the photos always turn out amazing.”
Liam’s attention shifts to her, just like that. Like I’m just a random someone at his party.
“When I was with Liam, people used to beg to photograph us together.” She laughs. “Remember, Liam? The power couple thing.”
“I remember.”
“I suppose that’s the fun of being with someone who knows how to work a room.” Her eyes slide to me, taking inventory. “Though I’m sure you have other… qualities.”
I wait for him to say anything at all. To acknowledge that his wife is standing right here getting gutted by his ex-girlfriend at an event she killed herself to create.
He laughs at whatever Angelina says next. He lets her pull him toward a photographer.
I stand alone in a room full of people, invisible in the life I married into. Drowning in the middle of a party, and nobody is asking if I’m still with them.
Nobody says the thing I’m waiting to hear.
I need air.
Five minutes alone, somewhere I won’t fall apart in front of a few hundred people who already believe I don’t belong here.
The corridor outside the ballroom is quiet and cool. I press my back to the wall and focus on breathing.
Then the voices start.
Liam and Melanie. Coming from the study just around the corner.
“-doing well tonight, at least.” Melanie’s tone carries grudging approval. “The donors seem pleased.”
“Everything went smoothly.”
“No thanks to your wife.”
Every sensible instinct says walk away, says don’t stand here eavesdropping on a conversation that can only destroy me. I don’t move.
“Honestly, Liam, she looked like she wandered in from the catering staff. Angelina was asking if everything was all right between you two.”
“Solenn is…” He pauses. “She’s fine. She’s a good woman.”
“Good isn’t what I asked.” Melanie’s voice goes flat and cold. “Do you love her?”
The silence stretches.
My hand presses against my stomach. Eleven weeks of a secret nobody in that ballroom would celebrate, of hoping this could turn into the real thing, of telling myself duty grows into love if you try hard enough and give enough and disappear into his world completely enough.
“Yeah.” Liam’s voice, finally. “She is a good woman.”
My heart lifts, just for a second. Just enough to make the fall worse.
“But I don’t know if I’m in love.” Another pause, longer than the first. “Like I’ve been in the past. Before I married her.”
The world tilts sideways.
Here I stand in a borrowed life, carrying his child, wearing his ring, and he doesn’t know if he loves me the way he’s loved other women. Women with a knack for these things, women who looked right beside him, women who were never problems to be managed.
I walk away before I can hear more.
***
One step, then another, and my hand finds the corridor wall because my legs have stopped cooperating.
His voice keeps going, settling into all the hollow places I’ve been filling with centerpieces and seating charts and the hope that being useful could stand in for being wanted.
Some part of me always knew. He proposed because it was the right thing to do, not because he couldn’t picture his life without me, and he married me because I was pregnant, not because he was in love.
Hearing him say it out loud to his mother who hates me. That’s different. That’s a door closing somewhere I can’t reach.
My palm flattens against the cool wall while I try to remember how breathing works. On the other side of the door the party carries on without me, all music and laughter and champagne and people who were never anybody’s accident.
I don’t belong here. I never did.
My hand trembles against the plaster and my eyes burn with tears that are not getting out. Somewhere in that ballroom my husband is being photographed with a woman he actually loved, and I’m out here in a serviceable dress, learning exactly how small my place in his life is.
How long I stand there is anyone’s guess. Long enough for my breathing to steady, for the tears to retreat back to wherever they hide when I force them down, and for me to build a wall around the part of me that just cracked open.
Eventually I straighten, smooth the dress, lift my chin.
Back in there is the only direction available. Smile, shake hands, stand beside him for photographs while nothing shows. Happy wife is the role, and I’m the only one cast in it.
There’s a crack in me now that wasn’t there an hour ago, and I have no idea how to close it.
I walk toward the ballroom on legs that belong to somebody else. The noise swells as I get closer, laughter and music and the clink of glasses, all the sounds of a successful evening I made happen and will never get credit for.
My hand hesitates on the door. His voice, still going, still taking pieces out of me. I push through anyway.
***
The rest of the night passes in fragments.
Smiling on cue. Nodding at conversations I can’t follow. Standing in photographs beside a man who doesn’t love me the way he’s loved other women. The performance leaves my jaw aching.
Angelina floats past at some point, trailing perfume and satisfaction. “You should check your lipstick, sweetie. It’s doing something weird.”
I don’t respond. I don’t trust my voice.
Later, a donor’s wife tells me the centerpieces are stunning, and I thank her hard enough that she looks confused, as though gratitude was the last thing on offer tonight.
Near the end of it, Liam turns up at my shoulder.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t ask if I’m okay, doesn’t notice that spite and stubbornness are the only two things holding me upright. His hand settles at my back and guides me out past the people who matter, collecting goodnights on the way.
The car is dark, and I let my head fall against the window.
“Tired?”
“Yes.”
“Event went well.”
“Did it?”
He’s quiet after that. His eyes keep flicking over, trying to read the silence, and he doesn’t push. Doesn’t ask or do a single thing a man in love does when his wife goes quiet on him.
Why would he? I’m a good woman. That’s all.
Out the window the buildings blur into streaks, and somewhere in all of it is the life I thought I was building, coming apart while I sit here in my serviceable dress and pretend his voice isn’t still in my head.
My hand settles low on my stomach. Our secret, and the reason he proposed. The only reason.
The penthouse is dark when the elevator lets us out. Liam loosens his tie, mentions meetings in the morning, kisses my forehead the way you complete a task.
I go to bed without speaking. He doesn’t ask why.
Sleep doesn’t come. The ceiling gets most of my attention, and one sentence goes on cutting a groove into me with every breath.
Like I’ve been in the past.
***
The next morning, he’s gone before I wake up.
6 a.m. meeting. There’s always a meeting more important than whatever I am.
I lie there in the silence of his penthouse with one hand curved over the life we made, and I start to plan.