CHAPTER THREE

EVELYN

The reception was beautiful. I know that because everyone kept telling me.

"You look stunning, Evelyn."

"This venue, my God."

"Oscar is so handsome. You two are perfect."

I smiled every time. I lifted my glass and toasted and laughed at the right moments. I danced the first dance with my husband and felt his hand on my waist and told myself that this was enough, this was real, this was the life I had chosen. But I could feel him watching me from across the room.

Eden didn't stare. That would have been too obvious. He sat at his table and talked to the people around him like he belonged there, like this was just another event on his calendar and yet every time I turned my head, my eyes found him before I could stop them.

"I need some air," I told Oscar.

He squeezed my hand without looking up from the conversation he was having. "I'll be right there."

I slipped through the side door.

* * *

The pool area was empty. The night air was cool and still and tasted nothing like the inside of that hall. I leaned against the railing and breathed and let the quiet reach me.

"After all these years," a voice said behind me, "you survived without me."

I did not turn around.

My hands gripped the railing tighter. "Why are you here, Eden?"

"I needed to see you."

"That's not a reason. That's a sentence."

He walked around until he was in front of me. Too close. The kind of close that felt like he was daring me to step back. He looked the same not exactly the same, because time had carved new lines into his face, new weight into his eyes, but his presence was the same. That particular stillness that he carried, like the whole world could be shouting and he would just stand there, unhurried, inevitable.

"Eve," he said.

"Don't." My voice cracked on that one small word. "Don't call me that."

"Why not?"

"Because you don't get to." I turned to face him fully, and I didn't care that my eyes were burning. "You don't get to walk into my wedding and call me Eve. You gave up that right seven years ago when you left the country and decided never to pick up a phone."

He frowned. "That's not.."

"I called you." My voice rose slightly. I lowered it fast, conscious of the walls and the windows and the people just inside. "I called you fifteen times, Eden. Fifteen. And a woman answered. Do you know what she said to me?"

His jaw tightened.

"She said, 'He moved on. You should too.' And then she hung up." I looked at him steadily. "So I did. I moved on. I built a life. I healed. And now you walk in here, on the one day I was supposed to feel safe, and.."

"I never told her to say that," he said sharply.

"It doesn't matter what you told her."

"It matters to me." He stepped forward. "Eve, Evelyn. I left to build something. I promised I would come back. I meant it."

"A promise without contact is just a memory, Eden."

Something moved across his face. Pain, maybe. Or guilt. With Eden, the two always looked the same.

"I never replaced you," he said quietly. "Not once. Not ever."

I laughed, not unkindly, just honestly. "I saw the pictures. Two years after you left. Another woman. Deleted everything. Our photos, our videos, every trace ..,"

"She deleted those," he said. "Not me."

"But you let her into your life. You let her into your space. While I was here, waiting, telling myself you would call." I shook my head. "I waited two years, Eden. Two years before I accepted that waiting was the same as disappearing."

He said nothing for a long moment. The music from inside the hall drifted out through the walls, something slow, something sad. I recognized it without wanting to. Little Do You Know. Of all the songs.

"I love you," he said. Low. Simple. Like it was just a fact. "I have loved you since before I knew what the word meant. And I know that changes nothing right now, and I know you have every reason to hate me, and I'm not asking you to .."

"I'm married," I said.

"You're still listening."

Those three words hit me like a door swinging open in a storm. I stepped back. "Please. Let me be."

He held my gaze for one long moment. Then he nodded, once, and walked away.

At the edge of the garden, journalists materialized from nowhere cameras, microphones, voices overlapping.

"Mr. Blackwood, why did you come today?"

"What does Oscar James's ambassadorship mean for Prada's expansion?"

"Do you have a message for the newlyweds?"

Eden paused. Turned slightly. Looked directly at the camera.

"I wish them a home filled with patience," he said, calm as still water. "And the strength to endure what comes their way."

Then he was gone.

I stood alone in the dark.

My wedding was not yet twelve hours old. And already somethi

ng in me knew, it would never be the same again.