1 ~ Sloane

The dress was beautiful and I was walking down the aisle in it.

The cathedral sleeves, the pearl buttons running down the back, the train sweeping the floor behind me like something out of a magazine. Cole had picked it himself and it was perfect and with every step I took I looked exactly like a bride was supposed to look.

Even if nothing else about today felt right.

I had been awake since four in the morning. Not from nerves, or at least not the good kind.

The kind that sits in your stomach like something is trying to warn you and you keep telling it to be quiet because everything has already been decided and there is no turning back at this point. I had sat on the edge of the hotel bed in my robe for an hour before my maid of honor found me and pulled me to the vanity chair and started on my hair.

I walked down the aisle of the Grand Meridian ballroom with my chin up and my bouquet steady in both hands. The hall was full, every seat taken, every face turned toward me. The Della-Ross family had booked this venue eight months ago. Cream florals cascaded from every pillar and a string quartet played something classical and elegant from the corner.

It was nothing like I wanted.

The Grand Meridian had a waiting list that stretched eighteen months and a price tag that made my eyes water when I first saw it. Cole's mother had booked it the week after we got engaged, before I had even thought about what I wanted. I had let it go because that was what I did. I let things go and smiled and trusted that the important things would work themselves out.

I wanted the beach, I really did. Sand between my toes and the sound of the ocean and something small and honest. I had mentioned it to Cole but his mum had just patted me on my shoulder and laughed as if I had suggested we get married in a car park.

I kept walking.

The guests on either side of the aisle blurred into a sea of expensive outfits and familiar faces. People who had watched me grow up. People who had attended my father's funeral and sent flowers when my mother left and smiled at me across dinner tables for years. They were all here to watch me get married.

Cole stood at the altar waiting for me. The dark suit, the dark hair, the easy smile was the first thing I ever loved about him. We had lived three houses away from each other all our lives. The first time I thought “I'm going to marry him some day” was when I was 10, and I haven't looked at another guy since. Fourteen years of certainty is a long time. People felt that some things were just a fact of life.

I reached him and he took my hand and squeezed it once.

The registrar opened his book.

“Before we begin,” I said.

My voice came out steady, I was proud of that.

All heads in the room turned. Cole's smile flickered.

"There's something I'd like everyone to see first." I nodded once toward the back of the room.

The screen behind the altar lot up.

The video lasted for 40 seconds. That was all it took. It was so quiet in the entire Grand Meridian ballroom for 40 seconds that I could hear my heartbeat.

Cole and a man. A hotel room I didn't recognize. A date stamp from three weeks ago.

Someone gasped. Then another. Then the room erupted into the kind of noise that starts low and builds fast and doesn't stop.

I looked at Cole.

The easy smile was gone.

I slapped him across the face with everything in me. The crack of it cut through the noise and the room went quiet again.

"Eight years." My voice remained flat. "We have been together since I was sixteen years old. Eight years and you were doing this.”

"Sloane." His voice was low. "Let's not do this here.”

"You picked here." I glanced slowly around the room. His mother was in the front row with her hand over her mouth. My stepmother was seated two places behind with her eyes open wide. All the big wigs of Seattle are looking me in the face. “You chose the location and the outfit and the flowers and the guests so we are doing this here.”

"We can still go through with this." He moved towards me. "It doesn't have to mean anything. Afterwards, we can talk about anything else, but don't…"

I pulled the ring off my finger.

It was a beautiful ring. The three carat, oval cut, that I had indicated in a magazine when I was nineteen. I looked at it for a moment, and dropped it on the ground at his feet.

"We're done, Cole."

I picked up my train and turned toward the door.

"Sloane." His voice sharpened behind me. "If you walk out of here you're not just ending us. You're ending everything our families have. Every deal, every partnership, everything the Della-Ross name has built with yours. It's all gone."

I didn't slow down.

Fourteen years was a long time. More than half my life. I had built everything around the certainty of Cole Della-Ross, my plans, my patience, my idea of what my future looked like.

My friends had dated freely and changed their minds a dozen times over and I had smiled and told them I already knew who I was going to end up with. I had believed that completely.

"It ended the moment you cheated." I said it without turning around.

The doors opened and the fresh air of the lobby hit my face and I continued to walk, past the sound of the ballroom.

I paused on the top step and took in a breath.

"Sloane."

The voice was in my left ear. Thick and slow, like a man who had never once raised it to be heard.

I turned.

His hands were in his pocket with his suit jacket open, and he looked at me with a blank expression on his face. No pity. No discomfort. No trace of the chaos happening thirty feet behind me.

Cole's older brother. The one that I had worked so hard to not be in the same room with, as long as I could.

“If you're here to tell me to go back inside," I said, "save it."

"I'm not." He held my gaze.

“If that's the case, then what do you want?

He was silent for a while. Not that quiet that is uncomfortable.The kind that belonged to someone who only spoke when they had decided exactly what they were going to say.

"Marry me instead."

I stared at him.

He didn't flinch. Didn't smile. Was not as soft as people typically would have been when asking for such a large thing.

“You're trying to save your family's name." I kept my voice flat.

"I'm offering you a solution."

"I'm not getting entangled with another Della-Ross." I turned toward the steps. "Whatever your family loses from this, that's not my problem anymore."

“The news will be released tomorrow and when it does," he went on behind me, calmly, "You'll see why an alliance is still important. I'll be waiting.”

I walked down the steps and didn't look back.

But I heard him.

His voice followed me all the way to the car. Calm and certain, like a man who already knew how the story ended.

I got in, closed the door, and sat in silence for a long moment before I told the driver to go.