The door opened. Six inches, the chain still on. Kate's face appeared in the gap. She was still in her maid-of-honor dress, dark hair pulled back, eyes red-rimmed but dry. She glared at him.
"She's asleep," Kate said. "She cried for four hours and then she fell asleep on my couch holding a stuffed frog. Do you want to know what that looked like? Do you want me to describe it to you?"
Guilt simmered in his chest. He ignored it.
“I’ll wait. I need to explain."
"Explain what?" Kate's voice was low, controlled. Dangerous in a way he hadn't expected from her. He'd always thought of Kate as Charlotte's sharp-tongued sidekick: funny, protective, harmless. "Explain how you said another woman’s name while your fiancée was standing there with her vows in her hand? Vows she wrote. She cried while she wrote them. Did you know that?"
"I know."
"Do you? Because you stood there, heard those words and then you saidJacqueline."
"I want to see Charlotte," he repeated.
"No. And do you want to know something? She changed everything for you. She changed her clothes, her schedule, her weekends. She stopped seeing friends because your events were always on the same nights. She learned which fork was for salad. Shepracticed. She sat in my kitchen with a YouTube video and practiced which fork to use so she wouldn't embarrass you at your mother's dinner party. And she never told you because she didn't want you to think she didn't belong."
He opened his mouth. Kate held up a hand.
"She rearranged her entire life to fit into yours, and you couldn't even remember her name when it mattered."
The door closed. He heard the deadbolt turn. Then the chain slide into place. Then nothing.
He stood in the hallway. He knew he should leave. Kate wasn't going to open the door again. He should go home, regroup, come back tomorrow with a plan.
He knocked again.
"Dominic."
Not Kate's voice. Charlotte's.
The door opened. She was wearing a sweatshirt that was too big for her — Kate's, he guessed — and bare feet, her hair down. All those brown curls loose, tangled and falling past her shoulders. The elaborate updo undone. Her face was swollen. Her brown eyes were red and glassy. His chest tightened.
"Charlotte. Please let me —“
“Who is Jacqueline?"
He hadn’t expected that. At least, not yet. But the question landed between them. Direct, unavoidable. Charlotte’s eyes were locked on his through the six-inch gap, and there was nowhere to look except back at her.
"She's someone I used to know. It's over. It's been over for years."
"Then why was her name in your mouth?"
He didn't have an answer. Not one that would work here, in this hallway, with Charlotte looking at him with heartbreak in her eyes. Like she could see through every layer of strategy and self-preservation to the hollow space underneath. He was used to being looked at with admiration, with deference, with the automatic respect that money and a good surname purchased. From her, he was used to her looking at him like he was the air she breathed. He’d taken that look for granted.
"She's an ex — someone I dated years ago. It's been over for a long time."
Charlotte studied him. Her expression was unreadable.
"When you proposed to me," she said slowly. “Were you in love with me?"
"Charlotte—"
"Answer the question."
"Of course I was."
She didn't react. Didn't flinch, didn't soften, didn't break. She just looked at him, and he realized that she didn't believe him. He wasn’t certain he was telling the truth himself. She could see right through him, and the worst part — the part that made his hands start to shake inside his pockets — was that she wasn't even surprised by what she was seeing.
