The Wrong Groom

Marlowe was off the bed before she fully decided to move, sheet wrapped around her body, putting distance between herself and the man who was still watching her with that same unreadable calm.

"Get out." Her voice cracked on the second word. She hated that it cracked. "Get out of this room right now."

He sat up slowly, unhurried, like her panic was something he'd already accounted for. "It's my house too, technically."

"Don't." She held up a hand, like she could physically stop whatever was about to come out of his mouth. "Don't talk to me like this is normal. Like we're having a conversation about whose house this is. You let me think you were him. All night."

Something flickered across his face, there and gone too fast to read. "You never asked who I was."

"Because I thought I already knew." Her voice rose, sharp enough that she almost flinched at her own volume. "I married Adrian yesterday. I said vows to Adrian. I assumed the man in my bed was my husband, not because I'm stupid, but because that's a reasonable thing to assume on your wedding night."

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the shirt draped over the chair, unbothered by her staring, unbothered by any of it. "I never told you I was him."

"You didn't correct me either."

"No." He pulled the shirt over his head, calm as anything, like they were discussing the weather instead of the fact that she had slept with a stranger wearing her husband's face. "I didn't."

Marlowe's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her stomach to make them stop. "Who are you?"

He looked at her for a long moment before he answered, like he was deciding how much of the truth was safe to hand over. "Lucian."

"Adrian's brother." The words tasted strange in her mouth. "He's never once mentioned having a brother. Not once. Not during the engagement, not during the wedding planning, not to his own father at the rehearsal dinner."

"That sounds like Adrian."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting right now."

She stared at him, searching his face for some crack in the composure, some sign that he understood the size of what had happened, what he had done. There wasn't one. He looked at her the way a man looks at weather he can't control, mildly inconvenienced, nothing more.

"I'm calling him back." She reached for her phone on the nightstand, fingers closing around it like a lifeline. "I'm telling him exactly what happened, right now, before he gets on that plane."

Lucian crossed the room in three steps and closed his hand gently but firmly over hers, stopping her before she could unlock the screen. It wasn't rough. It didn't need to be. The look on his face did all the work instead.

"You're not telling him anything."

"Watch me."

"Marlowe." Her name in his mouth landed strange, too intimate for a man she'd known less than a day, too steady for the chaos currently living in her chest. "If you tell him, you lose everything you came here for. Do you understand that? Everything."

Her breath caught. "Is that a threat?"

"It's a fact." He let go of her hand, stepping back like he hadn't meant to get that close in the first place. "You didn't marry into this family for love. We both know that. You married Adrian because your father owes this family more money than he'll ever be able to pay back on his own, and Adrian offered to make that debt disappear in exchange for a wife. That's the deal. That's the whole deal."

Marlowe's throat tightened. "How do you know that?"

"Because I know this family." Something dark passed behind his eyes, gone before she could name it. "And I know exactly what happens to people who embarrass them in public. Your father's company gets buried so fast he won't see it coming. His medical bills don't get covered. None of it. All because you couldn't keep your mouth shut about one mistake that wasn't even your fault."

"It wasn't my fault." Her voice shook, somewhere between fury and panic. "It was yours. You're the one who let me believe you were him."

"And you're the one who has to live with the consequences either way." He said it without cruelty, which somehow made it worse. Just truth, flat and unbothered, laid out like a fact of weather she couldn't argue with. "That part doesn't change no matter whose fault it was."

She sat down hard on the edge of the bed, sheet still wrapped tight around her, the room suddenly too small, too bright, too full of a man she didn't understand and apparently couldn't trust. "Why were you even here? You disappeared. Nobody talks about you. There's not a single photo of you in this entire house. Why show up the night before your brother's wedding and pretend to be him?"

"That's not something I'm explaining to you right now."

"Then when?"

"Maybe never." He said it simply, like the door on that question was already closed and locked. "What matters today is what you do with what already happened. Not why I was here."

"You can't just decide that for me."

"I'm not deciding anything for you." He picked his jacket up off the floor, pulling it on like he was getting ready to walk out and disappear from her life as easily as he'd walked into her bed. "I'm telling you what happens if you choose wrong. You tell Adrian, your father loses everything, and you lose the only reason you agreed to any of this in the first place. You stay quiet, you get to keep pretending this never happened, and your father stays protected. Your call."

"That's not a choice. That's blackmail."

"Call it whatever helps you sleep tonight." He moved toward the door, pausing with his hand on the frame, looking back at her one last time, and for half a second something almost soft crossed his face before it vanished completely. "But you should decide fast. Adrian lands this afternoon."

He left her sitting there, sheet clutched to her chest, heart slamming against her ribs, staring at the closed door like it might give her an answer the man on the other side of it had refused to.

Her phone buzzed again on the nightstand. A text this time, not a call.

It was from Adrian.

"Almost there, can't wait to see my wife."

Marlowe stared at the screen until the words blurred, her thumb hovering over the reply box, no idea what version of the truth she was about to live inside of for however long this lie needed her to.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​