Whispers of the Stolen Fiancé

I was the maid of honor at my fiancé's wedding. He'd been missing for five years. The bride was my best friend.

She had my hand in hers, grinning, whispering the story of how they met. "I'm the one who pulled him out of that wreck," she said. "Word was he had a fiancée somewhere.

But I had him on a plane to Switzerland that same night." "Pretty slick, right?" I couldn't laugh. Soon he would toss a hotel key card at me himself.

And tell me to go find another man. Before that, he wouldn't even look at me. Chapter 1 Five years. One thousand eight hundred and twentyfive days.

The man I loved most, hidden away by the friend I loved most. Hidden for five whole years. Sienna was still talking, bright and fast. I didn't catch a word.

There was a high ringing in my ears, thin and mean. I bent forward. My breath came in short ugly pulls, and my hands wouldn't hold still. Sienna took one look at my face.

Then she had an arm around me, steering me into the dressing room. "Viv?" she said carefully. "What's wrong. Is it the depression again?" Five years of looking for Sebastian Shen.

Missingperson flyers stapled to poles. Money spent boosting his photo to the top of every feed. Even his family gave up. I didn't.

There were nights I stood at the edge of the road and wanted all of it to stop. And it turns out the whole thing was a joke.

The scars on my right hand had split and healed and split again. They went hot and blurry. Sienna sighed. "You're thinking about your fiancé again. Let it go, Viv.

It's been forever. He's probably dead." "I'll set you up sometime. One of Seb's friends." The door opened. Sebastian walked in. Black suit.

Tall, straight, exactly the way he stood five years ago. Our eyes met. His eyes went over me and kept going. He crossed the room and started fixing Sienna's veil.

The groomsmen came in behind him. Same friends. I knew most of their faces. They looked at me and swallowed whatever they wanted to say.

A minute ago I could still tell myself he'd lost his memory. That he didn't know me. His friends' faces told me the truth. He remembered everything.

He just didn't love me anymore. "Babe," Sienna said, "don't let your friends run off tonight. We're keeping them." She shot me a look while she said it.

Sebastian nodded, easy, unbothered. He never turned my way again. Like we had never met. I closed my eyes. Someone had a fist around my heart.

Then they tore it out and threw it on a fire. My nails were already through the skin of my palm. I stood up, went into the bathroom, and drove my forehead into the wall.

A dull crack. Blood came down over my eyebrow, fast and warm. The room tilted. I slid down the tile with my back against it. I lifted my right hand and caught the edge of the sink.

Under the light, the scars that had healed and torn open again went white. The woman in the mirror had blood running into her eye. She was smiling. I folded in on myself.

The ache spread across my chest in a thousand small needles. Then I laughed, very softly. "Sebastian.

So you don't want me anymore." Chapter 2 By the time I came out, the ceremony had started. Sienna had put someone else in my place. She thought I needed the room.

I stood as far back as the room allowed. She said I do. Her voice came out sweet, like a line she'd rehearsed.

Sebastian went down on one knee, slid the ring onto her finger like it was a serious thing, and something green and awful turned over in me. I wanted to run up there.

I wanted to grab Sienna by the shoulders and ask her why. Why my fiancé. Why she hid him. Why she let me spend five years looking. And him. Why pretend.

Why come back and never once come for me. Why did everyone know but me. Every part of me wanted to smash that wedding to the floor. I didn't.

I sat in the corner, and when the vows were over I started clapping first. I clapped hard. Heads turned all down the row. I let them look.

When Sebastian glanced my way, I met his eyes and held them. My nose stung. The tears I'd been holding came down at once. Something flickered in his face.

Then he looked away, and his eyes went flat and black and empty. I dug my nails into my palms. I was losing my mind. I picked up my phone. Me: [Sebastian.

I'm not going to wish you a happy marriage.] Me: [I curse you. May you never get the one thing you want.] I left before it ended.

One more hour in that room and something in me was going to come apart in public. Three years ago, when word of him dried up a second time, I tried to end it. I didn't manage.

A neighbor got the door open and got me to a hospital. When I woke up, Sebastian's mother was holding my hand with her face wet, telling me to live. To live for him.

A world without Sebastian was more than I could carry. We met at six. Fell in love in high school. The month we finished college, we booked a slot at the county clerk's office.

He crashed on the way there. After that, nothing. I went back to the police station until they knew my name. I asked everyone who'd been at the scene the same question.

Nobody saw him. Now he was back. He just didn't love me. I slept badly and woke up thickheaded and reached for my phone. Missed calls from Sienna.

A few gentle messages from Sebastian's mother. And one reply, sitting at the top of the screen. One word. Cold as ice. Chapter 3 Him: [Get out.] A laugh scraped out of me.

All that worry I'd carried around like it was worth something. To him it was a joke. After that I shut the door on everything. I stopped sleeping. Whole nights, eyes open.

My hair came out in handfuls. Ten days without leaving the apartment. You could watch the weight fall off me. There was never much of me. Now there was bone.

Then Sienna showed up because I wouldn't answer my phone, and Sebastian was standing behind her. Ten days without a shower. I could smell myself. She didn't care.

She threw her arms around me and started dragging me toward the hospital, and I knew exactly what she was afraid of. I slid my hand out of hers.

My voice came out polite and far away. "I'm fine. Thank you." I didn't know how to look at her. Whether I hated her or wanted to be happy for her.

She didn't hold the coldness against me. She figured I was having a bad week. Sienna let out a long breath. "Can you please pick up the phone. What did you buy it for.

Do you understand how scared I was." "Starting today, my husband and I are moving in. We'll take care of you until you're better." "You don't get a vote.

No takebacks, no takebacks, no takebacks." Dead serious face. Warm, loud, impossible to dislike. So of course Sebastian fell in love with her.

I looked past her at the man in the doorway. His eyes were cold. They narrowed a fraction, the way you'd look at a stranger blocking your car. Even that far away. Even that frozen.

I still wanted whatever heat was left in him. It didn't have to be mine. Give me one more day of looking at him. One more minute. One more second, and I'd take it.

Maybe I just wanted him under my roof. I let them move in. The house was supposed to be ours. Mine and Sebastian's. I bought it for the wedding.

After he vanished I decorated it top to bottom the way he liked it. Every chair, every lamp, his taste. Sienna's eyes went wide. "Wow, Viv. That's a choice. Why is it all black?

It's so heavy in here." "Black, gray, black.

There's no color anywhere." Because there was no light left in my world. "My fiancé liked it," I said quietly. "So I did it his way." Sienna frowned. "You should have opinions of your own.

Why does everything have to be his." "My husband does what I say at home. It's cozy. I make him sleep on pink sheets." I looked at the floor.

When we first moved in together, I loved pink too. Pink sheets, pink mugs, pink toothbrush, pink bowls. I even bought his boxers in pink. He never wore a single pair.

Same with the sheets. He'd sleep on the floor before he'd get in that bed. I gave up and changed the color, and he came back. Something in me locked up.

I asked it anyway, the way you press a bruise. "Really.

Would he sleep on the floor?" Sienna snorted and cut her eyes at Sebastian. "He wouldn't dare." "Right now he's wearing pink boxers." His jaw tightened.

For one second he looked embarrassed. He patted the top of her head, trying to shut her up. "What's wrong with pink sheets?

If your fiancé slept on the floor over a color, that just proves he didn't love you enough." "All those years you spent looking.

What a piece of garbage." I sat with that for a long time. The room went quiet. "You're right." "Maybe he really didn't love me enough." Nobody said anything for a while.

The moment it was out of my mouth, I felt his eyes stop on me. His voice was thin and cool. "Then Ms.

Jiang should have the decency to step aside." "Stop pushing your way into other people's lives.

If you can manage it, disappear from his completely." "The only person moved by any of this is you. Everyone else just gets sick of you." Chapter 4 He said it plainly.

He said it to cut. The only person moved by any of this was me. It had always only been me. My eyes went hot. My voice shook. "You understand him so well.

Is that because you're the same kind of man?" "The kind who disappears. Who makes people wait.

Who burns through every hope they have and never says sorry." "And then calls them pathetic for it. I wanted an explanation. That's all.

Do five years just get waved away?" His brows pulled down. Now he was angry too. "Nobody asked you to wait. Love, hate, you choose it.

You chose to keep waiting, so whatever came of it is yours to carry, isn't it." "Or does five years mean he owes you? He should fall on his knees and marry you?" Cold. Final.

I stood there. Everything I'd been holding onto came down at once, quietly, like a shelf giving out. Tears ran. Every sentence out of him was a knife going into the same place.

He was right, wasn't he. Love, hate. You choose it. Nobody forced me. Nobody asked me to wait. So this was mine to carry, alone.

Five years ago that love could have held up a building. Now I couldn't find a brick of it. Sienna felt the air change and pulled him into the bedroom.

Her warning came through the door at exactly the volume she meant it to. "Are you looking to get hit? You know she's not okay and you talk to her like that." "Stop setting her off.

Do you hear me." He made a sound in his throat. Pure contempt. "She's putting on a show." I stood in the living room a long time and didn't say anything.

The cut on my forehead had started to throb again, like it was laughing at me. After that fight I barely saw him. I think he arranged it that way. Two weeks under one roof.

I could count our runins on one hand. I got quieter. I stayed in my room. Sienna sat with me anyway. Cooked something different every day.

Counted the pills into my palm and watched me swallow them. I selfishly wished she'd stop being good to me. Every kind thing she did took away my right to want him back.

It made me the other woman, circling somebody's husband in the dark. But how was I supposed to let it go. He smiled at her. He was gentle with her. I wanted to claw my own eyes out.

There were ugly nights when I thought it would have been better if he'd died out there. At least then I could have kept the lie. So I started sitting in the living room for hours.

If he came home, I'd get to look at him. He must have felt it. He didn't come home for days.

Finally I asked her. "Where is he." Sienna was curled on the couch, texting, smiling at her screen. "He hasn't been back in the country in three years. Work piled up.

He's been sleeping at the office." I stopped. When I spoke, I didn't believe my own mouth. "Sebastian came back three years ago