I should say nothing. I know I should. Anything I say will only give her more to twist. But I can’t stand there and let her rewrite me into something filthy just because she’s hurt.
“I didn’t throw myself at anyone,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I want, but steady enough.
Camille gives a hard little laugh. “Oh, so it was mutual. That makes it better.”
I look at her and feel the humiliation giving way to anger. “No,” I say. “What would make it better is if you stopped trying to blame every ugly thing in your life on the nearest woman.”
Her face changes. “You think this is my fault?”
“I think Ethan is standing right there,” I say. “Try asking him why he told you he didn’t want to marry you.”
That gets her eyes off me for one second.
She turns to Ethan. “Answer her.”
He says nothing.
Of course he says nothing.
He looks pale now, less drunk than before and somehow even more pathetic because of it.
Camille laughs again, but now it sounds close to breaking. “That’s what I thought.”
Ethan is the first one to break the silence. He looks from me to Viktor and back again, and for once even he seems genuinely thrown. “You and my dad?” he says. “Seriously?”
There’s no smugness in it now. No performance. Just shock, plain and ugly and stupid in how naked it sounds in front of everyone.
I can’t even answer. What would I say?
Yes?
No?
It’s more complicated than that?
Your wedding just exploded and that’s the question you’re asking?
“He still loves you,” she says, looking at me over Viktor’s shoulder. “And apparently that wasn’t enough for you.”
I feel something cold settle inside me.
This isn’t about love. Not really.
It’s about possession. It’s about humiliation. It’s about the fact that Ethan made a coward’s confession and Camille needs someone she can actually punish.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I say.
“No,” she says. “You just keep ending up in the middle of it.”
That one hurts because there is too much truth in it.
I’m tired. Tired enough that the shame and anger and heartbreak have all started blurring into one raw, aching thing. I can still feel the fallout with Viktor from the night before. I can still feel the gun I saw in Camille’s drawer like a second pulse under my skin. I can still hear Ethan in the hallway insisting the baby was his when he knew perfectly well he was just trying to make himself important.
And now this.
I look at Camille and say, more calmly than I feel, “If you want to hate someone, hate the man who stood beside you and said he didn’t want you. Don’t look at me because I’m easier.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her face tightens. Her mouth trembles just once before she gets it under control.
