“Nothing.” I look back down at the notes. “Just… give me a second.”
Because now I know why it feels familiar.
Ethan stole my ideas.
Not literally, not line for line, but enough. Years ago, back when I still thought he might propose one day, I made a folder for myself. Notes, screenshots, colors, flower combinations, table styles. Little things I liked. Things I thought felt elegant without trying too hard. Things I thought would make a wedding feel warm instead of cold.
I never showed it to many people, but Ethan saw it once. And now here it is, pieces of it everywhere, rearranged for Camille.
I stare at the page for another second, waiting for the old feelings to come. The humiliation. The anger. That hollow, sick kind of hurt.
They don’t.
Or not much of them anyway.
Nadine is still watching me. “You all right?”
I nod. “Yeah. Just tired.”
She studies me for a moment, then lets it go. “Understandable.”
I run my finger farther down the schedule. “The second aisle arrangement should be moved inside if the weather shifts.”
She makes a note. “Agreed.”
We keep going.
I can tell this should bother me more than it does. A year ago, even six months ago, I think it would have wrecked me. I would have sat there and picked it apart and wondered if he had ever listened to me at all, or if he only collected pieces of me to hand to someone else later.
Now I just feel… done. Not numb exactly. Just past it.
Ethan doesn’t live in that part of me anymore. That place belongs to someone else now, which is its own problem.
Because the truth is, every time my mind slips, it goes to Viktor. To the sound of his voice, the way he looks at me when he knows I’m lying. His hand on my back. His mouth on mine. The fact that even now, after everything, some part of me still feels calmer just knowing he’s somewhere in the house.
That’s what unsettles me.
Nadine taps the page. “Do you want the family portraits before or after the chapel exit?”
I blink and drag myself back. “Before,” I say. “If they wait until after, someone important will wander off.”
“That was my thought too.” She writes it down.
We go through the rest of the list the same way.
Finally Nadine flips to the last page, but neither of us says anything for a moment.
The room is quiet except for the rustle of paper and the faint noise of people still moving somewhere deeper in the house. It’s late now. Late enough that everyone should have stopped pretending this day can be salvaged.
Nadine looks down at the schedule again and says, “I think proceeding with the ceremony is in poor taste.”
I don’t answer right away.
Because she’s right.
A girl nearly died at breakfast. She’s still in the hospital. No one knows what happened for sure, and yet the whole machine isstill trying to grind forward because there are flowers and guests and deposits and a bride who cannot imagine the world not arranging itself around her.
Nadine sets her pen down. “Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe they’re in shock. But I can’t imagine standing at an altar tomorrow as if none of this happened.”