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Engaged to Me, Married to My Best Friend
Novelix
Completed
I took a catering job at my best friend's wedding to surprise her. Then I saw the groom: my fiancé. While I was waiting for us to finally live in the same city, he'd been building a family with her. They expect me to keep quiet. But the wedding isn't the only secret they've been keeping, and I'm done paying for their happiness.
Chapters (2)
第1章
My best friend used to joke that she was always looking for a dad for her son. Just never a permanent one.
Life was too short to wait for a man, Brooke said. She couldn't imagine doing what I did: spending five years in a long-distance relationship, saving every dollar for a future that kept getting postponed.
Then Nathan came home to Boston and proposed.
That same evening, Brooke's three-year-old sent me a voice message.
“Aunt Sophie! Mommy's getting married to my real daddy!”
I called her immediately. “We could have our weddings together. Remember?”
We'd been promising each other that since we were girls.
Brooke arrived the next day with an expensive gift bag and no invitation.
“His family's complicated,” she said. “The wedding has to stay private for now. Even my parents aren't coming. You'll understand, won't you?”
I understood wanting to protect someone you loved. What worried me was a man asking her to hide.
So on her wedding day I picked up a catering shift at the waterfront hotel. I'd worked enough banquets to know how to carry a tray without attracting attention. I wanted one look at the groom. One chance to reassure myself she was safe.
At the front of the ballroom, Nathan kissed her.
The man I'd loved for ten years. The man who'd told me, three nights earlier, that he could finally give me the life we'd planned.
“I choose you, Brooke,” he said into the microphone. “Whatever happens, you'll always be my wife.”
My hand tightened around a bottle of champagne.
He'd proposed to me with roses and an apology for not having a ring yet. Everything had happened so quickly, he'd said. He wanted me to know his intentions before he went shopping.
Now I watched him slide a diamond onto her finger.
The bottle slipped. Glass burst against the floor.
They both looked over. My hair was pinned up and I wore a server's black uniform, but neither of them could have mistaken me.
Brooke's smile vanished. Not with guilt. With annoyance.
“Nathan,” she whispered, touching his sleeve. “Please. Not today.”
He looked straight at me, then put his arm around her.
“I'll handle it.”
A minute later, my supervisor pulled me behind a service door.
“You said you had banquet experience.”
“I do.”
“Then you know better than to confront a guest.” Two security guards had appeared behind her. “You're leaving. Payroll will deal with your shift.”
Outside, the harbor wind cut through my thin shirt. I called the number pinned at the top of my phone.
He answered immediately. He always did when he wasn't overseas.
“Hey, wife.”
The pet name made me feel sick.
“What is going on with you and Brooke?”
A pause. Music drifted down the line.
“You saw the room. Neither family is here.”
“Is that supposed to make this better? How long? Is Oliver yours? Were you ever in London for work, or were you just living with them?”
“Go home, Sophie. Let me get through today. I'll explain afterward.”
He hung up with the same distracted tenderness he'd used for five years.
We'd reduced our relationship to little updates. In a meeting. Home safe. Miss you. Good night. I'd stopped telling him about my day because there was never time to finish a story.
Brooke had said distance did that. You accepted it if you loved someone.
Meanwhile, she'd complained about a man who wouldn't leave her alone on her travels.
“He wants pictures of everything. My lunch. Oliver feeding a cat. Honestly, how much can one person have to say?”
She'd laughed. “At least he pays for the trips.”
Nathan had flown home once a year. I'd worried about him alone in an unfamiliar city, working too hard and forgetting to eat.
He hadn't been alone at all.
第2章
I didn't realize I'd been crying until the cab driver offered me a tissue.
That evening Oliver sent another message from the little watch I'd bought him.
“Daddy got us a house! He said he bought it when I was a baby, but it took ages to make it ready.”
Pictures followed. A view over the Charles. A kitchen bigger than my apartment. A closing document photographed beside a bottle of champagne.
Nathan and I used to walk past that building after class. We'd been nineteen, living on scholarships and vending-machine dinners.
“One day,” I'd said, pointing at a lit window, “we could live somewhere like that.”
He'd bought us matching silver rings with the first money his startup made.
“When I can afford the real ring, the apartment comes with it.”
I enlarged the date on Oliver's picture.
An hour later, Nathan arrived with Brooke and their son. Her wedding dress had been replaced by a cream suit that probably cost more than my car.
“I'm sorry,” Nathan said before I could speak. “But don't take this out on Brooke. You and Oliver are family to her.”
Oliver ran toward me. I stepped back before he could hug me.
His face fell.
“This isn't your fault,” I said, because it wasn't. “But I need some space tonight.”
Nathan led him into my bedroom with a tablet. When he came back, his mouth was tight.
“He's three, Sophie.”
“And I just told him he did nothing wrong.” I held up my phone. “Did you buy that apartment outright?”
“Yes.”
“On this date?”
Brooke turned white.
My grandmother had raised me after my parents left. When her heart began to fail, I'd tried to get her to an out-of-state surgical team willing to review her case. Insurance wouldn't cover the transfer and recovery accommodation. I needed help, quickly.
Nathan had told me every dollar he had was locked in the company.
Grandma had died before I could put the arrangements together.
“You couldn't find money to help me get her there,” I said. “But you closed on a waterfront apartment.”
“I didn't understand how serious it was.”
“I told you she was dying.”
He stared at the floor.
That night I'd called again and again. When he finally answered, his voice was thick. He said he'd been drinking with a client. I heard a woman laughing, and he told me it was the television.
Brooke sank onto her knees.
“Blame me. I kept him there. I'd been drinking, and I wouldn't let him leave.”
Nathan's hand moved toward her, then stopped. That tiny movement hurt more than the apology.
Brooke wiped her face. “All of it was my idea. Even the job. I asked him to talk to your firm. I didn't know how much the settlement would cost you.”
I looked at her.
“What did you just say?”
