Chapter 2: Signed and Sealed

She had lost count of the champagne glasses somewhere around the fourth one.

Or the fifth. She wasn’t entirely sure and had stopped caring around the same time she stopped being able to feel the specific shape of her heartbreak and it had blurred into something more general and bearable and golden at the edges.

The reception had ended.

The guests had gone.

The Grand Celestine’s bridal suite was quiet now in the way that places were quiet after too many people had filled them. That leftover silence that felt almost loud.

Clarissa sat on the edge of the bed in her wedding dress with her heels still on and a half empty champagne flute dangling from her fingers and looked at the wall and felt absolutely nothing which was either the champagne working or something breaking so completely it had gone past the point of feeling.

She preferred to think it was the champagne.

The door opened.

Charles.

He had loosened his tie somewhere between the reception hall and here and the top button of his shirt was open and it was such a small departure from his usual immaculate composure that she found herself staring at it.

“You should sleep,” he said.

“Probably.” She looked back at the wall. “Did you know?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Clarissa—”

“Did you know he was going to leave.” She turned to look at him then. The champagne made everything slightly warm and slightly too honest. “Before today. Did you know.”

He looked at her steadily. “Go to sleep.”

“That means yes.” She laughed. It came out wrong. Too hollow. “Wow.”

She stood up.

That was a mistake.

The room tilted pleasantly and she took one step and her heel caught the hem of her dress and she was falling sideways before she could process it and then Charles was there. Both hands catching her by the waist, pulling her upright, solid and immediate and warm in a way she felt through the layers of ivory lace.

“Careful,” he said quietly.

She was very close to him now.

She could see the line of his jaw and the dark of his eyes and the slight tension in his expression that he was working to keep still. His hands were still at her waist. Warm. Steady.

“Charles,” she said.

“Mm.”

“Why did you do it.”

“We’ve discussed—”

“Not the Richard name.” She looked up at him. The champagne had dissolved whatever careful distance she normally kept from this man. “The real reason. Why did YOU do it.”

He looked at her for a long moment.

Something in his expression shifted. That door opening an inch again. Just an inch.

“You know why,” he said quietly.

She didn’t know why. She thought maybe she was beginning to understand the edges of why but her mind was warm and slow and she was standing very close to him in a wedding dress that belonged to a day that had broken her open and he was the only solid thing in the room.

She leaned forward.

She kissed him.

It was soft and clumsy and tasted like champagne and grief and for one devastating moment he kissed her back. One moment where his hands tightened at her waist and something in him that was usually locked completely down came loose just slightly and she felt it, felt the warmth of it, felt how much was living behind all that composure.

Then he pulled back.

Both hands gentle on her arms, creating distance, holding her steady while he did it.

“Clarissa.” His voice was rougher than usual. Just slightly. “No.”

“Why.”

“Because you’ve had half a bottle of champagne and your heart is broken and I will not be something you regret in the morning.”

She stared at him.

Her eyes were burning suddenly.

“He didn’t even come,” she whispered. The words cracked right down the middle as she said them. “Four years and he didn’t even come. He didn’t even—”

The sob came from somewhere so deep it surprised her.

Then another one.

She was crying before she fully understood she had started and it was ugly and real and nothing like the composed stillness she had maintained all day. Charles didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell her it was going to be alright or that she was strong or any of the things people had been saying to her all day like words could patch over something this size.

He just guided her gently to the bed and sat her down and crouched in front of her and removed her heels one at a time with careful hands.

She cried until she had nothing left.

At some point the room tilted for the last time and the pillow was cool against her cheek and the blanket came up over her shoulders and she was too far gone to do anything but let it happen.

She heard him move toward the door.

“Charles,” she said. Her voice was barely there.

His footsteps stopped.

“Was any of it real.” She didn’t know if she was asking about Luca or about that kiss or about this entire impossible day. “Any of it.”

The room was quiet for a long moment.

“Go to sleep,” he said softly.

Then just before the door clicked shut, so quiet she would spend the next morning wondering if she had dreamed it entirely, his voice came one last time.

“Some things are more real than you know.”