Please marry me

Chapter 2:The Betrayal

I watched the video four times.

Not because I didn't understand it the first time. I understood it perfectly, every frame, every

sound, every devastating second of it. I watched it four times because some part of me kept

waiting for the moment it stopped being real. The moment I'd find the flaw in it. The angle

that explained everything was a lie.

That moment never came.

Daniel's voice. Clara's laugh. The way she said his name, soft, familiar, like she'd been

saying it in private for a long time.

How long? I asked myself

The question settled in my chest like a stone.

I set my phone face-down on the vanity table. I looked at my reflection. The woman staring

back at me had perfect makeup and a perfect veil and eyes that were very, very still.

I didn't cry.

I wanted to. I could feel the grief pressing against the back of my throat, hot and enormous.

But something else moved faster than the tears. Something cold and quiet that slid into the

space where my heart had been and started rearranging things.

Think, it said. Don't feel. Think.

I picked up my bouquet from the floor.

Clara came back into the room seven minutes later.

She was carrying a glass of champagne and wearing that smile, the one I'd trusted for ten

years. The one I'd seen across lecture halls and hospital waiting rooms and the worst night

of my life.

"One last toast before you become Mrs. Delgado," she said, holding the glass out to me.

I looked at her hand. Steady. Not even a tremor.

She's good, I thought. I'll give her that.

"Put it down," I said.

She blinked. "What?

"The glass." My voice came out even. Quiet. Almost gentle. "Put it down!, Clara!"

Something shifted in her expression. So fast I almost missed it. A flicker behind the eyes,

there and gone.

She set the glass on the table.

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

I tilted my head and studied her the way you study a painting you've looked at a hundred

times and suddenly can't recognize. The bone structure. The practiced softness. The

performance of friendship worn so naturally it had become a second skin.

"How long?" I asked.

Silence.

"Clara." My voice didn't shake. I was almost proud of that. "How long?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Her chin lifted slightly, a reflex, the beginning of a denial

and then something in my face must have told her it was pointless. That I already knew. That

there was no version of this conversation where she walked out clean.

Her shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.

"Lila—"

"How long!?" I threw the glass closer to me at the walk and it broke into piece just like my

heart is broken right now.

The word landed like a blade between us.

She exhaled in shock. Slow and careful. "Eight months."

Eight months.

I did the math without meaning to. Eight months ago, Daniel had proposed to me on a

rooftop in Spire with a ring I later found out he'd asked Clara to help choose. Eight months

ago, I had cried happy tears and called Clara first before my mother, before my sister

because she was my person.

She had answered on the second ring.

She had screamed with joy.

I looked at her now and felt something I didn't have a word for. Not just betrayal. Something

older and deeper than that. The specific grief of realizing the life you thought you were living

was never quite real

"Before the engagement," I said quietly. It wasn't a question.

She didn't answer. She didn't need to.

"Did you ever…." I stopped. Steadied myself. "Did you ever feel anything? When you sat

with me and helped me plan this wedding. When I told you I was the happiest I'd ever been."

I kept my voice low. Controlled. "Did any of it touch you at all?"

Clara's eyes filled with tears.

I used to know her cry. I could tell her real cry from her polite one, her exhausted one from

her afraid one. I'd held her through all of them.

Standing here now, I didn't know which one this was. I wasn't sure it mattered.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I know that's not enough—"

"No," I agreed. "It isn't."

I turned back to the mirror.

I looked at the white dress. The veil. The careful, loving, meticulous work of a woman who

had believed with her whole heart.

Then I reached up and unpinned the veil.

Folded it once. Set it on the chair.

"Lila." Clara stepped forward. "What are you doing?"

I met her eyes in the mirror.

"What I should have done the moment I saw that video." I kept my voice perfectly calm. "I'm

taking control."

She grabbed my arm lightly. "Please. Just, don't do anything you'll regret. You'll embarrass

yourself. Everyone's already seated. Your family is out there. His family"

I looked down at her hand on my arm.

She let go.

"Embarrass myself," I repeated. I let the words sit in the air between us for a moment.

Turned them over. Let them show their full shape.

Then I smiled.

It was not a warm smile. It was the smile that arrived only after something inside me had

finished burning.

"Clara," I said softly.

She looked at me.

"I won't be the one who's embarrassed."

I reached for my phone. Opened the video. Forwarded it to an email address I kept only for

work, the one linked to the laptop I'd had delivered to the estate's AV room yesterday

because I'd planned to run a wedding slideshow.

My fingers moved quickly and precisely.

Clara watched me with wide eyes and said nothing because she was confused and worried

at the moment of what I'm about to do.

I smoothed the front of my dress. Checked my lipstick in the mirror. Squared my shoulders.

Then I walked out of the room and down the hall toward the last door on the left, the one

where the venue staff kept the extra linens, and where, three days ago, I had noticed a rack

of garments left behind by a previous event.

One of them was a black dress.

Floor-length. Elegant. Structured at the shoulder.

My size exactly.

I had walked past it without a second thought three days ago.