When My Groom’s Mistress Wore a Wedding Dress

The café across from Christina's building had good coffee and a window seat that faced the street. I sat there with my laptop open like I was working. I wasn't working. I was watching the entrance.

My phone sat face-up on the table. At seven-forty, it lit up. Not a call. Not a text. Just the sudden absence of one. Jace had read my last message—*Finishing up some wedding stuff. Don't wait up*—and hadn't replied.

I waited.

At seven-fifty-two, his car pulled up to the curb. Black. Familiar. The same one I'd ridden in a thousand times. He got out fast. Jacket unbuttoned. Hair a little messy like he'd been running his hand through it.

He didn't look up. Didn't check his phone. He walked straight into the building like he'd done it before. Like he knew exactly where he was going.

Twelve minutes. That's how long it had taken him to get here after she called.

I sat back in my chair. My coffee had gone cold. I didn't drink it.

There had been a part of me—small, stubborn, stupid—that had wanted to be wrong. That had wanted the parking ticket to be a mistake. The recording to be out of context. The late nights to have some explanation I hadn't thought of yet.

That part died right there in the window seat. Quiet. Clean. Like a candle going out in an empty room.

I closed my laptop. Left a twenty on the table. Walked out into the cold.

***

Two nights before the wedding, I let myself into Jace's penthouse one last time.

He was out. Dinner with a client, he'd said. I didn't ask which one. I didn't care anymore.

I moved through the rooms like a stranger cataloging someone else's life. The couch where I used to read while he worked. The kitchen where I'd made breakfast on Sundays. The bedroom where I'd slept beside him for five years and never once suspected I was sharing him.

I had three boxes left to pack. Books, mostly. A few framed photos I wanted to keep. Things that were mine before they were ours.

In his study, I pulled the last stack of books from the shelf. That's when I saw it. A drawer in the lower cabinet. Brass handle. Small keyhole.

I'd never noticed it before. Or maybe I had and it hadn't mattered.

I knelt down. Tried the handle. Locked.

I should have left it. I should have finished packing and walked out and never looked back.

I used a letter opener from his desk. The lock was old. It gave on the third try.

Inside was a leather-bound album. Dark blue. Expensive. The kind of thing you buy when you want to keep something forever.

I opened it.

College. Christina. Page after page of them. At a football game. On a beach somewhere warm. In someone's dorm room with red cups and string lights. Her head on his shoulder. His arm around her waist. Both of them young and happy and whole.

But it wasn't just the photos. It was the annotations. Jace's handwriting in the margins. Dates. Inside jokes I would never understand. *First snow. She made me hot chocolate.* *Her birthday. I got it right this time.* *The night I knew.*

I turned to the last page.

A single pressed flower. White. Dried and fragile. And beneath it, in his careful script:

*What I lost.*

I stared at it for a long time. Long enough for my knees to ache against the hardwood. Long enough for the room to go dark around me.

Then I closed the album. Put it back exactly where I'd found it. Locked the drawer. Stood up.

I didn't cry. I was past crying. Crying was for things you still wanted to save.

I finished packing. Carried the boxes to my car. Locked the penthouse door behind me and left the key on the kitchen counter where he'd find it.

I drove home with the windows down even though it was cold. I wanted the air to hurt.

***

The rehearsal dinner was at the Sullivan estate. Marble floors. Crystal chandeliers. A table long enough to seat thirty.

Mrs. Sullivan placed me at the far end. Surrounded by Sullivan cousins and business associates who talked about legacy like it was currency. Who asked polite questions about my family and smiled thinly when I answered. Who looked past me when someone more important walked by.

Jace sat at the other end. His mother beside him. Laughing. Toasting. Playing the role she'd perfected over decades.

I ate my salmon. Drank my wine. Smiled when someone said something they thought was funny.

Near the end of the evening, Mrs. Sullivan found me by the terrace doors.

"Sapphire." She touched my arm lightly. Her smile was warm. Perfect. "Tomorrow you officially become a Sullivan. I hope you understand what that means."

I looked at her. At the woman who had known about Christina. Who had decided it was manageable. Who had pressured me to be smaller and quieter and more convenient for five years.

"I understand perfectly," I said.

Her smile didn't falter. She squeezed my arm once and walked away.

It was the last sentence I would ever speak to her.

I stayed on the terrace until the dinner ended. Until the guests filtered out. Until Jace came looking for me with his jacket over his arm and his tie loosened.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Perfect," I said.

He kissed my forehead. "Big day tomorrow."

"Big day tomorrow," I echoed.

He didn't hear the difference in my voice. He never did.

I watched him walk back inside. Watched the lights go out one by one.

Then I got in my car and drove home.

One more day.