1.6 The Taste of the Wrong Man

The week before the wedding felt like a storm pressing down on the city. Every day brought another stolen message from Ryan that made Leana’s pulse jump. She barely slept. Her phone lit up with his name at midnight, then again at dawn, short messages that said too much with too few words.

“Need to see you. Soon.”

She tried to drown herself in work, in plans, in noise. None of it worked. Every room she entered seemed to hum with his absence.

Leana stood behind her mother, carefully fastening the row of tiny pearl buttons that ran down the back of the exquisite silk wedding gown. Her fingers, usually so steady, trembled.

“You look beautiful, Mom,” Leana said, her voice thick with an emotion she couldn’t name.

Julie met her daughter’s eyes in the reflection of the full-length mirror. Her smile was radiant, but her gaze was sharp, perceptive. “Thank you, darling. Is everything alright? You’ve been quiet these past few weeks.”

“Just pre-wedding jitters,” Leana lied, forcing a smile. “For you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about.” Julie turned, taking Leana’s hands in hers. The diamond of her engagement ring was cold against Leana’s skin. “Lee, talk to me. Is it work? Is it Ryan?”

The sound of his name was a physical blow. Leana’s carefully constructed composure cracked. “What about him?”

“I’m not blind, sweetheart. The way you two look at each other, the tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Did something happen? An argument?”

The guilt was a living thing, clawing its way up her throat. This was her moment, the moment to come clean, to beg for forgiveness, to shatter this perfect, happy day before it even began. She opened her mouth, the confession poised on her tongue.

A knock at the door interrupted them. “Ladies! Ten minutes to showtime!” the wedding coordinator chirped.

The moment was gone. Julie’s expression shifted back to that of a blissful bride. “We’ll talk later, okay? After the honeymoon.” She squeezed Leana’s hands. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

But it wasn’t. For Leana, the ceremony was a blur of white and gold, a beautiful lie set to the soundtrack of string quartets and sniffles. She stood at the altar as her mother’s maid of honor, feeling Ryan’s presence from the groom’s side like a constant, burning brand. 

The reception was a fresh kind of torture. It was during a slow song, as couples swayed on the dance floor, Leana had slipped away to a secluded alcove behind a curtain of weeping willow trees, desperate for a moment alone to catch her breath. She leaned against a cool stone pillar, closing her eyes, trying to steady her racing heart.

She didn’t hear him approach. She only felt his presence a second before his hand wrapped around her wrist, pulling her deeper into the shadows.

“Ryan,” she gasped, her eyes flying open.

He looked wrecked. His tuxedo was immaculate, but his hair was disheveled as if he’d been running his hands through it, and his eyes were blazing with a desperate intensity. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered.

“Neither should you.” He smiled faintly. “You’ve been avoiding me all night.”

“Because someone might notice.”

“Someone already has,” he said. “You keep looking at me like you want to run and stay at the same time.”

She turned away, hands trembling on the counter. “This has to stop, Ryan.”

He stepped closer, not touching her, just close enough that the air changed. “Do you believe that?”

She exhaled, shaking her head. “No. But I need to.”

For a moment they just stood there, inches apart, breathing the same air. Then he brushed his fingers down her arm, and she swayed toward him like a tide meeting shore.

“What do you want me to do? Ruin their day? Tell them now, in the middle of their wedding, that we’ve been lying to them for weeks now? That we’ve been… God, what have we been doing?”

He backed her against the pillar, his body caging hers. “Tell me you don’t love me, Leana. Look me in the eye and tell me that, and I’ll walk away. I’ll be the perfect, distant uncle. I’ll never bother you again.”

She wanted to. For her mother’s sake, for the sake of the family they were supposedly becoming, she wanted to lie. But the words wouldn’t come. His mouth crashed down on hers. It was not a kiss of tenderness, but of raw, frantic desperation. 

A sharp, horrified gasp sliced through the night.

They broke apart, stumbling back from each other as if scalded. Standing at the edge of the alcove, her hand pressed to her mouth, was Julie. Her face, moments ago radiant with joy, was a mask of utter devastation. Just behind her, David stood frozen, his expression a slow-dawning storm of betrayal and disbelief.

Leana jerked away, but too late. Her mother’s eyes darted from her to Ryan and back again, reading the silence like a confession.

Julie’s expression went from disbelief to horror. “Tell me I’m imagining this.”

“Mom…”

Ryan started, “Julie…”

“Don’t,” she snapped. “Don’t you dare.”

The room felt smaller than air.

“How could you?” Julie’s voice was a broken thread of sound. She looked at Ryan, her eyes brimming with a fresh, more profound pain. “David is your brother.”

Leana’s throat closed. “It wasn’t supposed to…”

Ryan stepped forward. “It’s my fault. Don’t blame her.”

Julie’s face crumpled. “Your fault?”

Leana tried to reach her mother, but Julie recoiled. “Don’t. Just don’t say another word.”

The silence that followed was the loudest thing Leana had ever heard.

The car ride home was a tomb of silence. The confrontation that followed in her mother’s living room, now stripped of its wedding decorations, was worse. Accusations hung in the air, unanswered. Explanations were impossible. There was no justification that could mend the trust that had been obliterated.

In the end, the wedding was not annulled, but the family was. David, hurt and proud, erected a wall of cold civility. Julie, heartbroken, could barely look at her daughter. Leana and Ryan had a final, heated argument in the rain outside her apartment.

Leana’s voice trembled between anger and despair. “Do you realize what we’ve done? They were supposed to be happy.”

“I know.”

“You don’t!” She turned away, pacing. “You made me believe this was something that could survive out there. It can’t.”

“We have to give them time,” Ryan had insisted, his clothes soaked, his face a mask of anguish. “We can fix this.”

“Fix it?” Leana had laughed, a hollow, broken sound. “There’s no fixing this, Ryan! We broke it. We were selfish, and we broke my mother’s heart. Don’t you see? This is the cost.”

The words hung between them like the last thread of a bridge. Then she turned and walked away before she could change her mind.

Months Later

Spring crept in quietly, painting the city in light again. The wind whipped across the construction site, tugging at the hard hat secured on Leana’s head. 

Leana threw herself into work. She rose fast, earned a name, stopped waiting for her phone to light up at midnight. Still, some nights, when the city went still, she’d catch the faint scent of sandalwood and remember the feel of a hand on her wrist.

“The foundation reinforcements are ahead of schedule,” her site foreman said, pointing to a set of blueprints.

Leana nodded, her eyes scanning the bustling site. “Good. Let’s keep the momentum…”

Her voice trailed off. A figure was standing by the site office, a silhouette she would recognize anywhere. Her heart stopped, then kick-started into a frantic, painful rhythm.

Ryan.

He was dressed not in a suit, but in dark jeans and a leather jacket, his hands shoved in his pockets. He looked more charming from the last time she remembered, but the intensity in his gaze was the same. It pinned her to the spot from fifty yards away.

Somehow, she finished her conversation, her voice miraculously steady. She walked toward him, her boots crunching on gravel, each step echoing the heavy beat of her heart.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice cool, a defense mechanism she had perfected.

“I heard about the project,” he said, his voice that familiar, low rumble that still had the power to unravel her. “I wanted to see it.”

She crossed her arms, ignoring the warmth his words sparked. “You can’t be here, Ryan.”

“David and Julie are back from their extended honeymoon,” he said, ignoring her protest. “They’re having a small, belated reception tonight. Just family. They asked me to come. They asked me to ask you.”

The world tilted. “What?”

“They’ve had time. So have we.” He took a step closer, his eyes searching hers.

That night, she stood in another dress, in another room filled with family. But this was different. The air was not thick with anticipation, but with a fragile, tentative hope. David shook her hand, his grip firm, his eyes wary but not cold. And her mother hugged her. It was brief, and it was stiff, but it was a hug. The dam of silence had been broken.

Later, after the speeches and dancing, Leana slipped out to the balcony overlooking the city. She leaned on the railing, the cool metal a shock against her palms. The stars were sharp and clear above the city’s glow. She heard the slide of the glass door behind her but didn’t need to turn. She knew it was him.

“Running away again?” He came to stand beside her, not touching, his presence a warmth along her side.

She turned her head to look at him. The anger was gone. The guilt had faded to a manageable scar. “I needed air,” she said softly.

“So did I.” He finally turned to face her fully. 

The music drifted out faintly from inside, a slow jazz tune that made everything feel suspended in time.

“You look happy,” he said.

“Do I?”

He smiled. “You look like someone who finally stopped fighting the world.”

After a long silence, she asked, “How are they?”

“Good,” he said. “David forgave faster than I deserved. Julie took longer. But she’s happy now. You did the right thing, Leana.”

“Then why doesn’t it feel like it?”

Ryan studied her, the city lights catching in his eyes. “Because doing the right thing rarely feels good.”

She laughed softly, bitterly. “You sound wiser.”

“Older,” he corrected.

The wind caught her hair, and he reached out instinctively to tuck it behind her ear. The touch was gentle, brief, but the air changed again like the night before a storm.

“I missed you,” he said simply.

She looked away. “Don’t.”

“I tried not to.”

“Ryan…”

He stepped closer. “I’m not here to make this harder. I just needed to see you, to make sure you were real and not just something my mind kept inventing at two a.m.”

Her throat tightened. “And now that you’ve seen me?”

He smiled faintly. “Now it’s worse.”

They stood that way for a long time too close, saying nothing, the city breathing around them.

Finally, she said, “We can’t go back.”

“I know.”

“But we can’t erase it either,” Leana said, her voice steady.

He nodded slowly. “No. And maybe we shouldn’t.”

Leana looked up at the stars barely visible through the city haze. “We broke something, Ryan.”

“Maybe we built something, too,” he said quietly. “Even if it’s just the truth.”

The door opened behind them, laughter spilling out. Julie’s voice floated across the terrace. “Leana? Are you out here?”

Leana turned toward the sound, then back to him. “Goodbye, Ryan.”

He reached for her hand, just once, their fingers brushing like the memory of a kiss. “Until next time.”

She slipped back inside, leaving him alone under the string lights.

“Some wrongs were never meant to be made right. Some were meant to be remembered,” she thought,