8. Paige
— ? —
Paige
Wes drives for an hour without asking where I want to go.
I’m grateful for that - for the silence, for the dark, for the way he doesn’t try to fill the space with apologies or explanations or any of the words that people offer when they don’t know what else to do.
He just drives, both hands on the wheel, his jaw set like he’s clenching it against his own thoughts.
I watch the mile markers tick by. Somewhere around marker sixty-three, I realize I’m still wearing my wedding dress.
The bodice is beaded - tiny crystals that catch the light from passing cars and throw fractured rainbows across the dashboard.
The skirt is layers of tulle that I spent twenty minutes arranging before I walked down the aisle.
The train is probably dragging on Wes’s truck floor, gathering dust and gravel and whatever else lives in the footwell of a construction worker’s vehicle.
I don’t care.
When Wes finally pulls off the highway, it’s at a motel that looks like it hasn’t been updated since the Reagan administration.
The sign out front advertises FREE HBO and VACANCY in flickering neon, and the parking lot is half-empty, populated only by a semi-truck and a sedan that’s seen better decades.
“My house is the first place Cole will look,” Wes says, breaking the silence for the first time in forty miles. “We need one night where no one can find you.”
We. The word lands strange in my chest.
He gets out of the truck before I can respond, crossing to the office with the kind of purposeful stride that suggests he’s done this before - not this exact thing, maybe, but crisis management. Problem-solving. Taking control when everything else is falling apart.
I should get out. I should follow him, or at least open my own door, or do something other than sit here in my four-thousand-dollar dress watching through the window like a character in a movie.
But I can’t seem to make my body cooperate.
The door opens. Wes is holding a key - an actual metal key, not a card - and his expression is carefully neutral.
“Room twelve. Ground floor, around the back. No view of the parking lot.”
I nod, and the motion seems to unlock the rest of me. I manage to get out of the truck, manage to gather the ridiculous skirt of my ridiculous dress, manage to follow him around the building to a door with a brass number 12 that’s missing one of its screws.
Wes sets my overnight bag on the closer bed, and I realize he’s already thought through the logistics - he grabbed my things from Cole’s car, which means I have pajamas and toiletries and a change of clothes, and I don’t have to spend tonight in a wedding dress that represents everything that just collapsed.
“Thank you.” My voice comes out rusty.
“Don’t thank me yet.”
He sits on the far bed, forearms braced on his knees, and waits.
I lower myself to the edge of my own bed, the mattress creaking under the weight of all that tulle.
The beading on my bodice digs into my ribs - I hadn’t noticed it during the ceremony, too focused on Cole’s tears and Tara’s confession and the way my whole life was detonating in front of everyone I know.
I notice it now.
“How long have you known?” I ask again.
Wes doesn’t flinch from the question this time. “I already told you. Suspected three years. Confirmed six months.”
“Tell me how.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. His hands hang between his knees, and I can see his knuckles in the dim light - swollen now, darkening at the edges where they connected with Cole’s face.
“Three years ago, I noticed him texting someone at Dad’s birthday party,” he says. “He was in the corner of the deck, and his face had this expression - like he was arguing with someone he loved. I asked him about it later. He said it was work.”
“And you believed him?”
“I wanted to.” He meets my eyes. “I wanted to believe my little brother wasn’t the kind of man who’d do that to you.”
The “to you” lands somewhere deep. Not “do that to his wife,” not “do that to the woman he married.” To you. Like I’m a specific person to him, not just a category.
“What changed six months ago?”
“Family barbecue at my parents’ house. You were inside helping Mom with the salad, and Cole left his phone on the patio table when he went to get another beer.
” Wes’s jaw tightens. “It buzzed. A text from Tara. I didn’t mean to look, but - it was right there.
On the screen. She’d sent a heart emoji and the words ‘can’t wait for Friday. ’”
I try to remember six months ago. What was happening on Fridays. Cole working late, probably. Cole telling me he had client dinners, industry events, the kind of obligations that ate into our evenings and left us both too tired to connect.
“I confronted him that night,” Wes continues. “After everyone left. He broke down. Cried. Told me it started again eighteen months ago, that he’d tried to stop, that he was in love with both of you and didn’t know how to choose.”
Started again. Eighteen months. Even confessing to his own brother, my husband kept a thumb on the scale.
“In love with both of us.” The words taste like ash in my mouth.
“That’s what he said. He swore he was going to end it. He swore he was going to confess to you, ask for your forgiveness, do whatever it took to save your marriage.” Wes’s hands clench. “He begged me to give him time. Said if I told you, it would destroy you, and he wanted to be the one to-”
“To what? Control the narrative?”
“To take responsibility. For once in his life.” Wes exhales hard.
“I gave him a month. Then three. He kept promising, kept stalling, kept finding reasons to delay. And then he announced the vow renewal, and I told him that was the deadline. Confess before the ceremony, or I would stand up and do it myself. I thought-”
“You thought the ultimatum would force him to be honest.”
“I thought if he knew I would tell you myself at the altar, he’d confess first. I thought he loved you enough to do the right thing when it mattered.” Wes’s voice goes rough. “I was wrong. He doesn’t love anyone but himself.”
The heater in the corner rattles to life, filling the room with a hum that almost passes for white noise. Outside, a truck idles in the parking lot, its engine a low rumble that vibrates through the thin walls.
I should hate him. Wes, sitting across from me with his bloody knuckles and his careful explanations.
He kept this from me. He watched me for six months - at Christmas, at his parents’ anniversary party, at the dozens of small family gatherings that punctuate our lives - and said nothing while I smiled at my husband without knowing what he was doing when I wasn’t there.
I should hate him, but I can’t seem to find the energy.
“You should have told me,” I say.
“I know.”
“I would have believed you. If you’d come to me with proof, if you’d shown me that text - I would have believed you over him.”
Something cracks in Wes’s expression. Just slightly. Just enough to see that there’s pain underneath all that control.
“I know that too,” he says quietly. “That’s why I didn’t.”
“What?”
“Because once you believed me, your whole life would collapse. Everything you thought you knew. Your marriage, your best friend, your plans for the future - all of it.” He stops.
Starts over. “I didn’t want to be the one who destroyed your world, Paige.
I wanted Cole to take responsibility for once in his goddamn life. ”
“And I sat across from you at Sunday dinner with a notebook full of receipts, protecting you right back.” The laugh that comes out of me has no floor under it. “Eight weeks, Wes. You watched their doors, I watched their doors, and we each sat there certain we were the only one carrying it.”
“You never once looked like a woman who knew.” His eyes come to mine in the dim light. “Every dinner. The porch. If I couldn’t see it, nobody alive could.”
“That’s not a compliment.”
“No,” he agrees quietly. “It isn’t. But it’s worth remembering, you and me - we know exactly what the other one looks like, lying. We’re the only two people on earth who can’t get away with it anymore.”
The admission hangs between us. Outside, the truck finally moves on, its headlights sweeping across the curtained window.
I watch him in the dim light - the shape of him on the other bed, the way his chest rises and falls, the strong line of his jaw.
He’s still in his suit pants and button-down, looking nothing like the polished groomsmen at the vineyard and everything like a man who’d drive an hour into the mountains to hide a woman from her own husband.
I shouldn’t be noticing the breadth of his shoulders.
I shouldn’t be wondering what his hands would feel like if they weren’t so carefully kept at his sides.
I shouldn’t be thinking about the way he said I wanted to - past tense, like it’s something he’s already buried, when I can see in the tension of his body that it’s anything but past.
Stop it, I tell myself. Your marriage ended three hours ago. You’re not allowed to notice your brother-in-law’s hands.
But the beading on my bodice is digging into my ribs, and I can’t breathe, and suddenly I need to be out of this dress more than I need to be appropriate.
“Can you unzip me?”
The question comes out before I’ve fully decided to ask it. My voice is flat, exhausted, and I’m already turning to offer him my back.
“I can’t wear this dress for one more second,” I explain. “And I can’t reach the zipper.”
Silence. Then the creak of bedsprings as Wes stands. I feel him cross the room, feel him stop behind me, feel the weight of his presence at my back.
His fingers find the zipper at the small of my back, then the little buttons climbing my spine.
The sound of it sliding down is the loudest thing in the room. Louder than the heater, louder than my heartbeat, louder than the truck that’s now gone. Inch by inch, the dress loosens around my ribs, and I can finally breathe without the beading cutting into my skin.
His breath touches the back of my neck, and every nerve I own leans toward it, and this is wrong, my husband’s brother’s hands at my spine on the night of my own funeral. Wanting more of it is the most honest thing I’ve felt all day, and that scares me worse than the wanting.
His knuckles brush my spine. Just once. Light enough to be accidental.
It doesn’t feel accidental.
“I’ve never touched you,” Wes says quietly. His voice is rough, close. “Not once in twelve years. Not when I wanted to. I need you to know that.”
The words settle into the space between us. I process them slowly, like a message in a foreign language: I wanted to. I never did.
I turn my head just enough to see his profile. He’s looking at the wall, not at me. His jaw is tight. His hands have dropped to his sides.
“And now?” I ask.
He steps back like I’ve burned him.
“Now you’re still wearing his ring.” His voice is controlled, but barely. “And I won’t be another man who takes what isn’t offered.”
I look down at my hand. The diamond catches the light from the bedside lamp - three carats, custom setting, the upgrade Cole insisted on for our tenth anniversary because “you deserve something that reflects how much you mean to me.”
I wonder if Tara helped him pick it out.
I pull it off. Set it on the nightstand. The indentation it leaves on my finger is red and deep, like a scar that hasn’t had time to heal.
“I’m not offering anything,” I say. “I just needed to stop carrying it.”
Wes nods. He’s still by the far bed, keeping the whole room between us, and something about that distance feels like proof. That he’s different. That he means what he said about not taking what isn’t offered.
I gather my pajamas from the overnight bag and disappear into the bathroom. The door doesn’t close all the way, but it doesn’t matter - I’m too exhausted for modesty to feel important.
When I come out in sweatpants and a T-shirt, my wedding dress abandoned in a heap on the bathroom floor, Wes is sitting on the edge of his bed with his shoes off and his phone in his hand.
“I texted my mom,” he says. “She said your mom is stable. Stress-induced episode. They’re keeping her overnight for observation, but she’s going to be fine.”
Relief floods through me, so intense it almost brings me to my knees. “Thank you.”
“She also said Cole called seventeen times in the last hour.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“I know. I told her that.”
He sets his phone on the nightstand and lies back against the pillows, still fully dressed except for his shoes. I realize he’s planning to sleep like that - in his suit pants and button-down, like he’s ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
I climb into my own bed. The sheets are scratchy, the mattress lumpy, and the pillow smells faintly of industrial detergent. It’s the most comfortable I’ve been in months.
I stare at the ceiling. The room is dark now, Wes having turned off the lamp, but I can still make out his outline on the far bed, and the quiet sound of him breathing.
“Why did you punch him?”
“Because he deserved it.”
“That’s not the whole reason.”
Wes is quiet for so long I think he’s not going to answer. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.
“Because I’ve spent twelve years watching you give everything to a man who didn’t deserve any of it.
Every family dinner. Every holiday. Every random Tuesday when you’d text asking if I wanted to grab coffee while Cole was ‘working late,’ and I’d invent a jobsite emergency, because an hour alone with you was the one thing I couldn’t survive. ”
My breath catches.
“Punching him wasn’t about justice,” Wes continues. “It was about not being able to stand one more second of pretending.”
The words settle over me like a blanket. Heavy and warm and terrifying.
“Goodnight, Wes,” I say.
“Goodnight, Paige.”
I close my eyes. And somehow, impossibly, I sleep.
Sometime before dawn, a phone buzzes across the room. Not mine.
Wes doesn’t answer it. But in the dark, I hear him breathe out through his nose, slow and controlled, and I know without asking whose name is on that screen.