Becoming My Ex's Step Mother

Stella / Victor's POV Stella's palms wouldn't stop sweating…. She pressed them flat against the ivory silk of her dress, dragging her fingers over the fabric like she could scrub the moisture away, but it came back every time, slick and cold despite the July heat pressing against the church's stained glass windows. Somewhere behind her, Emma was fussing with the hem of her veil, murmuring something about how gorgeous she looked, and Stella nodded because that was easier than admitting her stomach had been in knots since six that morning. Five years of double shifts at the diner so Nathan could finish law school without loans. Five years of quietly slipping her own savings into his checking account when his parents' allowance ran short before the end of the month, never once mentioning it, never once asking for credit. Five years led to this moment, this dress, this church smelling of white lilies and candle wax. "You're shaking," Emma said, catching Stella's hand. "I'm fine." "Stella," Emma called. "I'm fine, Em." The words came out sharper than she meant, and she softened them with a small smile that didn't reach her eyes. Through the c***k in the vestry door, she could hear the low murmur of two hundred guests settling into pews, the creak of old wood, someone's baby fussing near the back. Her father would be out there already, in the suit he'd rented because the one he owned no longer fit around a man who had lost twenty pounds worrying about warehouse payroll. He has been sitting up straight, pretending none of it weighed on him. The organ music shifted… Emma squeezed her hand once and slipped out to take her seat. Stella closed her eyes and breathed in the lilies, the wax, the faint mothball smell of the old church itself, and let herself believe, just for one more minute, that she was about to become someone’s wife. Across town, in a glass tower that scraped the underside of a bruised gray sky, Victor Gilbert stood at his office window with a tumbler of scotch he hadn't touched. Fifty six floors below, Houston moved the way it always moved, indifferent and enormous, brake lights bleeding red down Louisiana Street, a city that didn't care whose wedding was happening across town or whose father's will was quietly running out the clock on a five year deadline neither Victor nor his lawyers could extend. He turned the glass slowly in his hand, watching the amber liquid catch the last gray light of the afternoon. On his desk sat a single manila folder. THOMPSON, HENRY was typed across the tab in a font that had gone slightly out of style a decade ago, the same folder Rebecca had walked in with an hour earlier, her heels clicking against the marble with a rhythm that told him she already knew he wouldn't like what was inside. He hadn't opened it yet. His phone buzzed on the desk, and he didn't reach for it. Daniel's name flashed on the screen, and Victor let it ring twice before picking up, because a man who answered too fast was a man who looked desperate, and Victor Gilbert did not look desperate, not even alone in an empty office at four in the afternoon. "Talk to me," he said. "The Thompson girl's wedding starts in twenty minutes,”. “Do you still want an update on it?,” Daniel said, with his voice careful and testing. "Yes." Victor said, jaw tightened. "Copy that." He hung up and kept the phone face down on the desk, harder than necessary, the c***k of plastic against wood, very loud in the silent room. He didn't know why he needed to know. He told himself it was due diligence, the same instinct that made him verify every contract twice before signing, but due diligence didn't explain the tightness behind his ribs, or the way his eyes kept drifting back to that folder like it might open itself if he stared long enough. Back at the church, the doors at the rear of the aisle swung open, and for one second, Stella thought it was her father coming to walk her down. But It wasn't. Nathan stood there instead, still in his long sleeve shirt, tie hanging loose and undone around his collar like he'd torn at it without thinking. Behind him, half hidden in the doorway's shadow, stood Sophia, her cousin, her bridesmaid, wearing the pale blue dress Stella had picked out for her three months ago, mascara already smudged beneath one eye. The organ music faltered and died…. "Nathan?" Stella's voice came out smaller than she wanted it to, swallowed almost immediately by the sudden hush rolling through the pews behind her. Two hundred faces turned…. Two hundred guests held breaths…. Nathan didn't move from the doorway, like the aisle itself was something he couldn't cross. "Stella, I can't do this,” he finally said. "Can't do what." She heard herself ask it even though some cold, sinking part of her already knew, had maybe known for weeks and refused to look directly at it, the late nights he claimed were work, the way he had stopped looking into her eyes at breakfast. "I can't marry you." His gaze flicked, just once, helplessly, toward the shadow behind him. "It's Sophia. I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry, Stell, I never meant for it to…." The rest of his sentence dissolved into the roaring in Stella's ears. She looked past him to her cousin, waiting for Sophia to deny it, to laugh, to say this was some cruel, tasteless joke the two of them had cooked up that would end with everyone breathing a nervous laugh of relief. Sophia didn't deny anything…. She stood there twisting her hands together, guilt and something uglier, something that almost looked like triumph, fighting for space on her face. Stella's bouquet slipped from her fingers. White roses scattered across the red carpet runner, petals bruising against the stone floor, and the sound of two hundred people inhaling at once was somehow louder than if they'd all screamed… She didn't cry. Not yet. Her body wouldn't let her, locked rigid inside a dress she had spent four months' salary on, staring at the man who'd let her carry him for five years only to watch him walk out on her in front of everyone who mattered, choosing, of all people, her own blood…. "Get out!!," she said, and her voice didn't shake at all, which surprised her more than anything else that day. "Both of you, Leave now!" Nathan opened his mouth like he wanted to argue, to explain further, to somehow make this better with more words, but one look at her face stopped him. He turned, Sophia followed, throwing one last unreadable glance over her shoulder before the heavy church doors swung shut behind them with a sound like gravel coming down…. Stella stood alone at the altar, roses scattered at her feet, two hundred strangers staring at the wreckage of the life she had built, and somewhere in the silence, she thought she heard, very faintly, the click of a phone camera.