“You’re pale,” he says.
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
I am not fine.
I’m outside my ex-boyfriend’s rehearsal dinner with the man I slept with on a plane seven months ago, and that man is my ex-boyfriend’s father, and I’m carrying his baby under a loose coat and a dress chosen very carefully for exactly this reason.
I want to put a hand over my stomach, but I don’t. I can’t.
He must never know.
Not now. Maybe not ever. This is too ugly, too tangled, too absurd to say out loud. One wrong look from him and I feel like the whole thing might rise to the surface.
He watches me for another second. “You look like you might pass out.”
“I’m not going to pass out.” The words come out too quickly.
He doesn’t argue. He just stays there, steady, and that somehow makes it harder to keep hold of myself. Concern from him feels dangerous. Too intimate. Too easy to lean into.
I need distance from him. From this. From the way my body still reacts to his voice.
So I say, “I need to go back in.” I move before he answers.
The passage is narrower than I thought, or maybe he hasn’t stepped aside enough. Either way, I have to brush past him to get by. My shoulder catches his chest. My coat skims his leg. It’s barely anything, but my body reacts instantly. Heat, memory, want. So fast it makes me feel sick.
I keep walking.
I don’t look at him.
I don’t touch my stomach.
I don’t stop.
When I step back inside, the room feels wrong in a different way. Too bright. Too warm. Everyone pretending to have recovered.The kind of careful conversation people use after something ugly has happened and no one wants to admit they enjoyed it.
I feel someone watching me before I even look up.
Ethan’s mother. She’s seated now, posture straight, expression unreadable, but her eyes are on me. Cool, direct, unpleasant. Not curious. Not kind. Just assessing.
I look away.
A second later Ethan returns to the table, and she turns toward him at once. Her face softens. Her hand goes to his sleeve. She leans in and says something low to him, something meant only for him, and I can tell from the shape of it that she’s comforting him.
Comfortinghim.
That gets me more than it should.
I’m the one they tried to shame in front of a room full of guests, and somehow he’s the one being soothed. Of course he is.
I tighten my hold on the binder and head toward the staff near the side of the room. I need something to do. A list. A problem. A tray that needs moving. Anything that lets me keep walking and not think about the fact that Viktor is somewhere behind me now.
I can still feel him, that’s the worst part. Not just because he defended me. Because he’s real again. Not a memory. Not a dream. Not a one-night mistake I could file away under things that changed my life and left me alone with the consequences.
He’s here. And if he looks at me too closely, I don’t know how much longer I can keep this from breaking open.
I get through the rest of the evening by refusing to think. That’s the only way.
I keep moving. I answer questions before they become problems. I fix the timing on dessert service, redirect one drunk uncle away from the bride’s grandmother, make sure the candles are trimmed before the wax starts to run, and send two servers back out with fresh champagne at exactly the moment the room needs something cold and sparkling to help people forget what they just watched.
