Chapter 3

His silence felt deafening in the empty stairwell.

I held his gaze and waited a full thirty seconds, but he never said a word.

"Go see the guests out," I said quietly, turning to head down the stairs.

"Natalie!"

Graham reached out and grabbed my forearm, his grip almost rough.

He pulled me back in front of him, his eyes reddening.

"The wedding is going ahead. We're going back in right now."

I looked at him. "You haven't answered my question."

"There's no point answering a question about something that never happened."

He grabbed my shoulders, his voice urgent. "I'm here now. I'm standing here in my wedding suit, and I'm here to marry you."

Before I could speak again, he pulled me through the emergency exit and back into the hallway.

He called over the lead wedding coordinator and gave firm instructions about the wedding.

"Tell security to cover every entrance to the ballroom. If anyone else barges in and disrupts our wedding, you can forget about getting the rest of your payment."

Then he went to the lounge and stood before both sets of parents.

My mother hadn't even dried her tears, and his father was livid.

Graham bent forward apologetically. "What happened was unexpected, and I've already asked the hotel to handle it. I'll take responsibility for what happens between Natalie and me. I won't let anyone turn us into a laughingstock."

He'd always been quick to take charge.

He was like that at the firm, and he was like that now, dealing with the mess in front of him.

I pressed a hand to my aching chest as I watched him stand before our parents, his back to me, arguing his case.

I'd seen him at his lowest and stayed beside him all the way to where he was now.

Seven years carried too much weight for me to walk away from everything in front of hundreds of friends and relatives over a scene I still didn't fully understand.

At two that afternoon, the delayed ceremony resumed.

This time, there were no personal vows, no extras.

The minister hurried through the ceremony, we exchanged rings, and we signed the marriage certificate.

At the reception that evening, everyone seemed to be walking on eggshells.

Graham held my hand the whole time, leading me around to chat and laugh with the guests.

Then a banquet supervisor approached him. "Mr. Whitmore, the woman from this morning left her coat on the terrace. What would you like us to do with it?"

"Whatever you want," Graham cut in, his expression turning cold. "It has nothing to do with me. Don't ask me again."

The supervisor paused, taken aback, then quickly stepped away.

My fingers tightened around my wineglass until my knuckles turned white.

But I didn't make a scene. It was our wedding day, and I didn't want to make it any worse.

At midnight, we finally returned to our suite on the top floor.

Graham took off his suit jacket and wrapped his arms around me from behind, burying his face in the crook of my neck.

His breath was warm, and he couldn't hide the exhaustion in his voice.

"I'm sorry, Natalie. You shouldn't have had to go through that today."

I stood in front of the full-length mirror without moving.

"You promised me all of that was long over."

"It is over." His arms tightened around me. "I married you. That should tell you everything. From tonight on, I won't have anything more to do with her."

I looked at my exhausted reflection, and for the first time all day, some of the tension eased.

I took off my heavy wedding dress and went into the bathroom for a hot shower.

When I came out in a robe, my gaze fell on the glass jar on the nightstand.

I'd tucked it into our luggage while we were packing.

Inside were seven blue-green glass stones.

We'd gotten them during our junior year of college, on our first trip to a little seaside town.

Back then, we'd been too broke to eat at a decent seafood restaurant, and when we passed a souvenir shop, we couldn't afford the expensive seashell wind chime in the window, either.

In the end, we'd picked out a little bag of glass stones, the cheapest ones they had.

With the sea breeze blowing around us, he'd placed them in my palm and smiled, promising that one day he'd give me the best life he could.

The love we'd shared in those days had been real.

If we could just sit down tonight and talk everything through, maybe we could keep going the way we used to.

I walked over, about to say his name.

The phone on the nightstand suddenly buzzed.

Its screen cast a harsh light through the dim room.

There was no name, just a missed call from a hotel extension, followed by a text preview.

[I'm on the seventeenth-floor terrace. Graham, I just want to see you one last time.]

Graham shot up from the edge of the bed.

Then he reached for the jacket he'd just left on the couch.