The ballroom at the Harborview Grand Hotel in Seattle glowed with soft light. The water outside the tall windows reflected the city, and everyone kept saying it looked like a scene from a magazine. I had just become Grace Miller-Hart, after months of planning every tiny detail, from the flowers on the tables to the song for our first dance.
I remember feeling light, almost floating, as people came up to hug me and call me “Mrs. Hart” for the first time. My husband, Lucas, kept squeezing my hand and whispering that the night was perfect. My parents looked proud and tired in the way only parents of the bride do. My younger sister, Claire, glowed in her pale blue dress, her eyes bright even though she kept drinking water instead of wine.
By the time dinner plates were cleared, I thought the rest of the evening would be easy. Talk, laugh, dance, cut the cake, smile for a hundred more photos. Nothing too complicated.
Then Lucas stood up with a glass of champagne in his hand, and my life split into “before” and “after.”
He gave me that familiar crooked smile he always used before saying something warm or funny. He tapped his fork against the glass until the room began to quiet.
I straightened in my chair, my bouquet resting in my lap, already sure he was about to say something sweet about me, about us, about how long he had loved me.
Instead, he said something that made the room stop breathing.
“This dance,” he announced, “is for the woman I’ve been secretly in love with for ten years.”
At first, I smiled.
I honestly thought he was building up to a joke about me, or about how long we’d known each other, or about some silly story from college. The guests let out a half-laugh, half-gasp, expecting something playful.
But Lucas didn’t look at me.
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