The Fiancé My Best Friend Stole

Sophia hated my penthouse the moment she settled in. By the third morning, she was wandering barefoot across the charcoal rug with a blanket around her shoulders, wrinkling her nose at the black marble, dark shelves, and gray walls.

"Elena, babe, why does your home look like a Bellandi interrogation room? Anyone would lose their mind here."

I set down my coffee. "Someone used to like it this way."

"A man likes black, so you paint your whole life black?" She shook her head. "You need something that belongs to you. My sheets are blush pink. Luca hates them, but he sleeps in them anyway."

Luca was standing by the window, fastening his cuff link. His hand stopped.

Sophia smiled at him. "He complains every time, then still crawls in like a good husband."

I remembered the pink sheets I bought years ago. Luca had stood beside the bed for half a minute, then taken his pillow to the guest room. Back then, he said, "Elena, don't dress me like the hero in your dollhouse." I had laughed and pretended not to be hurt. Later, I changed the sheets to gray.

Sophia kept talking, unaware. "So if your fiance couldn't even handle pink sheets, maybe he didn't love you enough."

The cup burned my fingers. I almost dropped it.

I tried to smile. "Maybe he didn't."

The room went quiet. Sophia looked confused, but Luca's voice turned cold before she could ask. "Or maybe he came back and found out the woman waiting for him hadn't waited at all."

My breath caught.

Sophia frowned. "Luca, what does that mean?"

"Nothing." He looked at me instead of her. "Some people like to make a shrine out of old love. It makes them look loyal. It doesn't mean they were faithful."

"You think I wasn't faithful?" I asked.

"I think five years is a long time," he said. "Long enough for grief to turn into something else."

I wanted to ask about three years ago. I wanted to ask whether he had come back, whether he had seen something, whether a single misunderstood moment had been enough for him to erase everything I had suffered. But Sophia was standing between us, pale and lost, and I couldn't drag her into a history she didn't know existed.

So I lowered my head and whispered, "Then you should have asked me."

Luca's jaw tightened. For one second he looked like he might cross the room. Instead, he turned to Sophia. "Rest. The doctor said no stress."

After they went to the guest room, I stayed in the kitchen until my coffee went cold. I had learned to be quiet with pain.

That night, I opened the drawer beside my bed and took out the engagement ring Luca had given me five years ago. I had kept wearing it on a chain under my clothes after the crash. At the wedding, I had moved it back to my finger because seeing him alive made me stupid for one last day.

The diamond looked smaller than I remembered.