The Wrong Groom

The light came in soft through the curtains, gold and warm, and for a few seconds Marlowe Reyes let herself just feel it. The ache in her body. The weight of an arm thrown over her waist. The smell of cologne still clinging to the sheets.

She smiled before she even opened her eyes.

Married. She was actually married. Twelve hours ago she'd been standing in a church in a dress that cost more than her father's monthly medication, promising forever to a man she barely knew but had convinced herself she could learn to love. And last night, in this bed, in this house that wasn't hers yet but would be, she'd believed every second of it.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

She reached for it without lifting her head, eyes still half closed, thumb finding the screen on instinct. Adrian's name lit up the display. She answered with a voice still thick from sleep.

"Hey."

"Hey, baby, I am so sorry." His voice came through tired and rushed, the kind of tired that comes from sitting on an airport floor all night. "The storm grounded everything. I tried calling last night but it kept dropping. I feel sick about missing this."

Marlowe sat up slowly, pulling the sheet with her, confusion working its way through the fog of sleep. "Missing what? Adrian, you were here."

A pause. Too long.

"What do you mean I was here? I've been stuck at O'Hare since six last night. I'm about to board now." Another pause, shorter this time, like he was choosing his next words carefully. "Did my brother get there okay? Please tell me he at least helped you with the bags."

The question didn't make sense at first. The words sat in the air like something foreign, something she had to translate before her brain would let her understand it.

His brother.

Marlowe went still.

"Adrian." Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "What brother?"

"Lucian." He said it like she should already know, like it was a fact she'd somehow forgotten, like it wasn't the first time she had ever heard that name in her life. "I called him last night when I knew I wasn't getting out. Figured he could at least let you into the house, get you settled, since I couldn't. He didn't tell you?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. Her eyes had already moved past the phone, past her own hand holding it, to the other side of the bed.

To the man still asleep beside her.

Same face she had stared at during her vows. Same jaw, same dark hair messy against the pillow, same small white scar above his eyebrow that she'd noticed at the altar and assumed was just one more detail about her husband she hadn't known yet. Same hands. The same hands that had touched every inch of her last night, slow and certain, like he'd done it a hundred times before, like he knew exactly what he was doing to her.

Wrong man.

Same face. Wrong man entirely.

"Marlowe?" Adrian's voice cut through the phone, distant now, like it was coming from somewhere far away even though it was right against her ear. "You still there? Hello?"

"Yeah." The word barely made it out. "Yeah, I'm here."

"Is he there? Can you put him on?"

Her gaze stayed locked on the sleeping man's chest, rising and falling slow and even, completely unaware that her entire world had just folded in on itself three feet away from him.

"He's asleep," she said, and somehow her voice came out steady, which felt like the strangest part of all of it. Like some instinct deeper than panic had already taken over and was handling damage control before she'd even decided what the damage was.

"Of course he is." Adrian let out a short laugh, the kind people use when they're not actually amused. "Tell him I said thanks when he wakes up. And tell him to behave himself, he's terrible with guests."

He's terrible with guests.

She wanted to laugh at that. Or scream. She genuinely couldn't tell which one was closer to the surface.

"They're calling my flight," Adrian said. "I'll be there by this afternoon. I love you. I'm sorry again, I promise I'll make the rest of this week up to you."

"Okay," she said. "Love you too."

The call ended. The screen went dark in her hand.

Marlowe sat there in the wreckage of a wedding night she now understood had happened with the wrong person, her chest rising too fast, her mind refusing to slow down enough to land on any single thought for longer than a second. She looked at her own hand like it belonged to someone else. She looked at the rumpled sheets, at the discarded dress draped over the chair across the room, the dress she'd been so careful with for months, now just fabric on furniture, evidence of a night she could never take back.

She thought about getting up. Running, maybe. Showering until her skin felt like hers again. Calling Maddie and screaming into the phone until something made sense.

Instead she sat completely still, staring at the man beside her, waiting for her body to decide what to do without her permission, because her mind clearly wasn't going to be any help.

That's when his eyes opened.

Slow, unhurried, the way someone wakes when they aren't afraid of what they'll find. He looked at her first, just looked, no scrambling, no panic, nothing close to the reaction she expected from a man who had apparently spent the night pretending to be his own brother. Then his gaze drifted to the phone still loose in her hand, and something behind his expression sharpened into understanding.

He didn't sit up. He didn't reach for the sheet to cover himself the way she half expected a guilty man to. He just watched her, calm in a way that made the hair on her arms stand up, calm in a way that felt far more dangerous than if he'd panicked.

"You talked to him," he said. Not a question. A fact, stated low and even, like he already knew exactly how this morning was going to go before it happened.

Marlowe's mouth went dry. She opened it to say something, anything, a question, an accusation, a demand for an explanation that actually made sense.

Nothing came out.

He held her stare, unreadable, unbothered, like a man who had already decided how this conversation was going to end before it even started.

And somewhere underneath the fear pooling cold in her stomach, a different feeling stirred, one she didn't have a name for yet and didn't want one for. Because the man looking back at her with her husband's exact face had just woken up beside her like he belonged there.

Like he had no intention of leaving quietly.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​