I Do Not

"Do not do this to me, Lina."

Freddie's voice was low. Controlled. But his hands were shaking.

She could see them from where she stood. Right there at the altar, three feet away, with two hundred people watching and a priest who had gone very still.

Lina looked at those hands. Then she looked at his face.

Big mistake.

His eyes were burning. Not with anger. With something worse.

Hope.

He still thought she was going to say yes.

"Freddie." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I can't do this."

The church went silent. Not quiet. Silent. The kind that presses against your ears.

"What?" He breathed it. One word. Like she'd punched it out of him.

"I'm sorry." She said it to his face, not to the floor. She owed him that much. "We're not meant to be."

Someone in the pews gasped. His mother. Lina recognized the sound.

Freddie didn't move. He just stood there in his perfect black suit, with the white rose boutonniere she had picked out herself, and he stared at her like she was speaking a language he didn't understand.

"Lina." His jaw tightened. "You are standing at the altar."

"I know where I'm standing."

"Then stand there and say the words."

She shook her head.

She watched something die in his eyes. It was quick. And it was brutal.

She walked back down the aisle alone.

Every face she passed was a different version of shock. His cousin Marcus, open-mouthed. His business partner, Giles, already looking down at his phone. Her own mother, pressing a hand to her lips.

And then she passed Marcos.

He was standing near the back, one shoulder against the stone pillar, arms crossed. He wasn't shocked. He wasn't horrified.

He was watching her with a small, slow smile.

Like he had known.

She kept walking.

Outside, the October air hit her like a slap. Cold. Real. She grabbed the iron railing at the top of the steps and breathed.

In.

Out.

She had done the right thing. She was sure of it.

Mostly sure.

Her phone buzzed. A text from a number she didn't recognize.

She opened it.

Three words.

"You'll regret this."

No name. No number she could trace.

She looked back at the church doors. They were still closed.

Then she looked at the text again.

Her thumb hovered over the screen.

And in the back of her mind, like a door cracking open in a dark room, something surfaced. Something she had been trying very hard not to think about for the last six weeks.

The morning she had woken up in a bed that was not her own.

The smell of expensive cologne.

The arm draped over her waist.

And the face she had seen when she turned over.

Marcos.

Her stomach dropped.

The church doors burst open behind her.

"Lina."

Freddie's voice. Right behind her. She turned.

He was standing in the doorway. Tie loosened. Eyes red at the edges. Two hundred guests visible behind him, all watching.

"Tell me," he said. "Look me in the eye and tell me there isn't someone else."

Her mouth opened.

And for one terrible second, the memory of that morning flashed through her mind again. Marcos's bare chest. His sheets. The champagne bottles on the floor.

She closed her mouth.

"There's no one else," she said.

It might even have been true.

She wasn't sure.

And that was the problem.