That was what hurt the most.
“You’re still going,” I said.
“It’s my brother.”
“And I’m your wife.”
After that, neither of us spoke. The silence between us felt like a final judgment.
The morning he left, I smiled. Not because I was okay—but because I was done asking for respect. While he loaded his tux into the car, I sat at the kitchen counter and booked myself a week in Rome. Business class. A five-star hotel near the Spanish Steps. Private food tours, museum passes, and a leather shopping budget so reckless it almost made me laugh. By the time he came back in for his charger, I was already scrolling through confirmation emails.
“You booked a trip?”
I sipped my coffee. “Rome.”
“Seriously?”
“You’re attending a luxury wedding without your wife. I’m answering with luxury of my own.”
“That’s childish.”
“No,” I said calmly. “Childish was your family excluding me and expecting me to stay home quietly.”
He stared at me, stunned—but he still left.
For two days, I posted only glimpses—champagne on the flight, sunset over terracotta rooftops, my hand holding espresso in a sunlit piazza. Ethan texted less and less. Then, on the night of the reception, as I was halfway through truffle pasta on a rooftop terrace, my phone lit up with his name.
I answered to noise—voices raised, glass clinking, music abruptly cut.
“Claire,” he whispered, panic tightening his voice. “You need to help me.”
I leaned back in my chair, looking out over Rome glowing beneath me.
“What happened?” I asked.
And through the chaos behind him, he said the last thing I expected.
“They can’t pay for the reception.”
At first, I thought he was joking. Connor and Vivian had spent six months turning their wedding into a luxury spectacle—drone footage at the rehearsal dinner, monogrammed champagne walls, custom perfume favors flown in from Paris. Their florist alone probably cost more than my first car. So when Ethan said they couldn’t pay, I thought he’d lost his mind.
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