Never Mine

I saw him just as the sky turned that in-between color — half light, half shadow, the hour when the world hasn't decided yet what it wants to be. And I felt it. That strange pull behind my ribs, like I'd stumbled across a memory that hadn't happened yet. Like missing someone I had never met, the way you ache for a house you've never lived in, a voice you've never heard, and somehow already know by heart. It made no sense. But the ache stayed anyway — quiet and sharp, the kind that doesn't announce itself so much as settle in and wait to be noticed. I was at my mother's wedding. The woman who had always believed, in that bone-deep way some people believe things without ever examining them, that she deserved more. More sparkle. More square footage. More "forever" than any man had ever managed to hand her — including my father, who had tried, in his quiet, tired, imperfect way. He worked late. He said little. He loved the way some people breathe — automatically, without needing anyone to notice. It was never going to be enough for her. Nothing about him was loud enough to compete with what she thought she was owed. I stayed with her after everything fell apart. Not because I loved her more. Because he already had enough weight on him, and I refused to be one more thing he had to carry alone. I wore black. Simple, unadorned, clinging to my ribs like it had always belonged there, like my body had been waiting for permission to grieve in public. She'd wanted me in red — bold, expensive, the kind of red that photographs well and means nothing. I couldn't do it. This wasn't a day for that kind of color. Wearing it would have felt like smiling with a knife still in my hand, like celebrating the exact moment I was betraying my own father simply by existing in that room. The courtyard was crowded with people who'd rehearsed their joy in the mirror that morning — suits and glittering gowns, glasses clinking, laughter performed just a half-second too late to be real. I drifted toward the edge of the terrace, to the place where the light gave up and the shadows took over, far enough that no one would corner me and ask if I was excited for the big day. I wasn't. I found a door I hadn't chosen for any reason except that it didn't lead back to them, and on the other side of it: an empty parking lot, blessedly silent, the kind of quiet that feels like it's been waiting just for you. My heels clicked against the pavement as I made my way toward the trees at the far end, where a bench sat half-swallowed by darkness. It would do. I sat the way you sit when you're not escaping a party so much as your own body has quietly given out halfway through pretending. My fingers found my phone before my mind had caught up with the decision. My thumb hovered over one name. Dad. Two rings in, it hit me — I hadn't told him about the wedding. Couldn't. The words had never made it out of me, not once, not even close. When he picked up, his voice wrapped around me the way my childhood blanket used to, worn thin and warm from years of being exactly what I needed. "Val? Hey. I was just about to call you." A pause, the kind that carries more than words do. "I guess... you felt it." "Felt what?" I asked, nudging a pebble with the toe of my shoe, watching it skitter off into the dark like it had somewhere better to be. "Passed a stand selling candied apples on my way to your grandmother's. You used to love those. Remember?" I blinked, and the sting came fast, unexpected, the way grief does when you think you've already used it all up for the day. The surrounding air got heavier, thicker, like it too was trying to hold something back. "Yeah," I said. "I still do." "You alright?" His voice softened, careful, like he already suspected the answer. "Where are you right now?" "Just... out." I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat refusing to dissolve. "With Mom." Close enough to the truth to survive the phone call. "Well, I'm at Grandma's. She cooked too much again — you know how she is. Want to come with me next week?" "Sure." My voice cracked clean down the middle. "Don't want the food to get cold." "I love you, Val." "Love you too, Dad." I hung up before the tears could turn real, before I gave them the chance to become something I'd have to explain later. I don't know how long I sat there afterward, staring at nothing, letting the dark finish swallowing the sky whole. That's probably why I didn't notice him approaching until his shadow had already fallen across my shoes, long and quiet, like it had been there before he had. "Are you okay?" He was tall — my age, maybe a little older — his white shirt rolled to the forearms like he'd stopped pretending to care about looking pressed somewhere around the second hour of the reception. His dark trousers, his stillness, something unreadable moving behind eyes that weren't quite one color or another. I turned toward him, and that same ache from earlier hit me again, sudden and disorienting — not quite déjà vu, not quite heartbreak, but some cousin of both, standing at the intersection of memory and premonition. "I'm fine," I said, rising too fast, the blood rushing strange and fast to my head. "Just needed some air." "The ceremony's starting." He said it like a fact laid on a table, not an invitation extended. "I was hoping to miss it, actually." He didn't laugh. But something moved at the corner of his mouth — the ghost of an almost-smile, there and gone so fast I could have imagined the whole thing. We started walking back together, side by side, without either of us deciding to. Neither of us spoke. The silence that stretched between us wasn't awkward so much as unclaimed. When we reached the hall, he opened the door, and I stepped through into the light and noise of it. We both paused. Looked at each other, just for a second, like we were each trying to memorize something we didn't yet know we'd need. Then we walked toward the front — same pace, same direction, like it had already been decided somewhere neither of us had been consulted. I didn't question it. It simply happened, the way weather happens, the way seasons turn without asking permission. There was a table set for two. Our names, printed in careful calligraphy that had clearly cost someone a great deal of money. I read his first. Finn Carter. And then mine. Valerie West. His expression shifted, and it shifted completely — every trace of that quiet, unbothered calm burned away in an instant, replaced by something darker, sharper. Recognition first. Then disgust, close behind it, and something that might have been betrayal riding just underneath both. He sat anyway, leaning back in his chair, eyes fixed on my name card like it had personally reached out and insulted him. His jaw tensed, a muscle working there, visible even in the low light. And just like that, I understood everything. Finn Carter was James Carter's son. The man my mother had just married in front of two hundred witnesses and a string quartet. And Finn — Finn hated me. He'd decided it in less time than it takes to read a name out loud.