"Why?"
The word tore out of my throat, raw and shredded.
George yanked his trousers up, his hands shaking so violently he dropped his belt buckle against the linoleum. "Nicole, stop. Just let me—"
"Why her?!" I screamed, stepping into the room. The yellow tulips lay crushed under my heels. "You stood in our foyer twelve hours ago and swore on your life! You swore I was the only one!"
Becky tumbled off the mattress, yanking her thin cotton gown down over her bare thighs. Mascara ran down her cheeks in thick gray tracks.
"Nicole, please!" Becky lunged forward, throwing her arms around my waist before I could dodge. Her damp skin pressed against my coat. "It was an accident! We split a bottle of wine at my flat before the cramps started. We lost our minds. I swear on my mother's life, it was just a stupid, drunken mistake!"
I shoved her back with both hands. Becky hit the edge of the rolling tray, sending plastic cups clattering across the floor.
"Don't put your filthy hands on me," I spat.
"I didn't plan this!" Becky sobbed, dropping to her knees, clutching the hem of her gown. "I don't know how it ended up like this. Nicole, you're my sister. You're the person in this world I least wanted to hurt!"
"You seemed pretty eager thirty seconds ago," I said, my voice trembling with disgust. "You told him to go deeper. You called me a blind idiot."
Becky’s face drained of color. "I was out of my head. I was talking crazy because of the pain meds—"
"Shut up, Becky," George cut in, his voice low, gravelly, strained. He stepped between us, his dress shirt hanging open, revealing the scratch marks scoring his collarbone. "Nicole, look at me. Don't look at her."
"Don't command me, George."
"I made a mistake," he said, taking a step toward me with his palms open. "A disgusting, unforgivable mistake. But there are no feelings here. None. It's empty physical garbage. You're my wife. She means nothing to me."
Becky flinched from the floor, her wet eyes darting to his back, a brief twitch of venom crossing her mouth before she masked it behind another sob.
"Nothing?" I laughed, a sharp, bitter bark that sounded foreign even to my own ears. "You were fucking her on a hospital bed while her mother thought she was dying of appendicitis. Get away from me. Both of you."
I turned on my heel and walked out.
George shouted my name down the corridor, his heavy footsteps pounding against the floor, but the head nurse intercepted him at the double doors, barking about his missing pants.
I didn't stop. I walked through the sliding glass doors into the cold night, got into my sedan, and drove home.
***
I didn't pack a bag. I didn't smash his scotch collection. I sat on the living room sofa in the dark with my laptop open.
My phone buzzed forty-two times with incoming calls from George. I switched it to silent and laid it face down on the coffee table.
I opened Becky’s public Instagram account.
For months, her posts had been the standard influencer aesthetic—matcha lattes, pilates studios, solitary weekend trips. But over the last six weeks, the captions had turned strange.
A photo of two coffee mugs at dawn: *Some habits take ten years to break. Some never do.*
A shot of a man's watch resting on a hotel nightstand: *Borrowed time always tastes sweeter.*
My stomach churned. The watch had a scuffed black leather strap and a scratch near the four o'clock mark. George’s grandfather had given him that watch for his college graduation.
Then, my feed refreshed.
Becky had posted three minutes ago.
It was a black-and-white photo of an empty street under rain, paired with a long caption:
*You can force a man into a ring, but you can't force his soul to stay where it doesn't belong. Three years of playing house won't erase the girl he built his dreams with first. Some people are thieves who think possession equals love.*
Comments were already flooding in from our shared circle of friends.
*Wait, is this about George?*
*Are you serious? Nicole stole him from you?*
*I knew it. I always wondered why they rushed the wedding.*
My hands grew numb against the keyboard.
I opened an old high school alumni forum for their hometown. George had always claimed he and Becky were casual acquaintances back then—classmates who shared an AP English class and ran into each other years later in the city through mutual friends.
"We barely spoke in school," he told me during our second month of dating. "She was too loud for my taste."
The search bar loaded.
A digital scan of a local yearbook surfaced from nine years ago.
There they were. Prom King and Queen.
George’s arm was wound tightly around Becky’s waist, pulling her flush against his side. Becky was tilting her head back, laughing straight into his mouth while he kissed the corner of her lips.
The caption beneath the photo read: *George and Becky: Four years strong. Voted Most Likely to Marry.*
The front door clicked open.
George walked into the foyer. He had changed into fresh jeans and a dark jacket, his face pale and haggard. He carried his keys in one hand, looking exhausted, looking guilty.
"Nicole," he said softly, closing the door behind him. "Thank god you're here. We need to talk."
I spun the laptop around so the screen faced him.
"Casual acquaintances?" I asked.
George froze. His eyes scanned the vintage prom photo, his jaw shifting as he swallowed hard.
"Nicole, that was a decade ago," he stammered, walking over to the couch. "We broke up right before freshman year of college. It crashed and burned. It was a stupid teenage romance."
"A stupid teenage romance?" I stood up, stepping around the glass table. "You lied to me for three years. You told me you met her at a networking mixer in Chicago."
"Because I knew how you'd react!" he shouted, throwing his hands up. "You're insecure, Nicole! If I told you my ex lived three subway stops away, you would have made my life a living hell every single day!"
"You made me invite her to our wedding, George!" My voice cracked, tears finally spilling over my lashes, hot and stinging. "She sat in the second row! She gave a toast at our rehearsal dinner!"
"That's all in the past!" George stepped closer, reaching for my shoulders. "Listen to me! What happened at the hospital was a relapse. A sick, twisted moment of weakness because we had history. It had nothing to do with love. I chose you. I married you."
I knocked his hands away before they could touch my sweater.
"Does something in the past continue after you marry me?" I asked, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Does the past pin her against a hospital mattress while you call your wife a nagging bitch?"
George flinched as if I had struck him with an iron bar. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
"Get out," I said.
"Nicole, this is my house—"
"Get the fuck out of my sight before I burn every stitch of clothing you own on the front lawn."
George stared at me for five long seconds. His expression hardened, shifting from pathetic remorse into cold resentment.
"You're blowing up our marriage over a ghost," he said flatly.
He didn't wait for an answer. He turned, grabbed his keys off the console, and slammed the heavy oak door behind him.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Hours passed. Midnight came and went. The clock above the fireplace ticked past two in the morning.
For the first time in three years, George’s side of the bed stayed untouched.
My phone screen lit up on the counter, vibrating against the stone.
A notification from Instagram popped onto the screen.
Becky had tagged George in a new post.
It was a Polaroid from that same prom night. George was shirtless on the hood of his old truck, Becky sitting between his knees, her arms locked behind his neck, both of them laughing into the camera lens with raw, shameless intimacy.
The caption consisted of one single line:
*Some people are never truly lost.*
A second notification flashed directly beneath it.
George’s official profile had just liked the photo.
