Semua Bab I Buried My Fiancé, Married His Brother: Bab 1 - Bab 10

Christabel The zipper on my wedding dress hated me. "Suck it in," Marie said, both knees on my back like she was trying to start a lawnmower. "I am sucking in. This is me, sucked in." "Then breathe out and try again, because right now you look like a mermaid who lost a fight." I laughed so hard the zipper slipped another inch and Marie swore at it in French, which she only did when she meant it. I stood there in front of the mirror in my mother's old bridal suite, half zipped, cheeks pink, hair still in rollers, and thought, this is it. This is the last morning I get to be just Christabel Chen, before I become somebody's wife. My phone buzzed on the vanity. Gabriel's name lit up the screen. Third call in twenty minutes. "Someone's needy," Marie said around the pins in her mouth. "He's probably panicking about the seating chart again." I didn't pick it up. Groom's rule, my rule, whoever made it up, we weren't allowed to talk to each other on the wedding day before the ceremony.

Sebastian I hadn't slept in eleven days, not really, not the kind of sleep that counts, and I was starting to think my body had simply given up asking. Jane had woken twice the night before, both times from the same nightmare she wouldn't describe, and both times I'd sat on the edge of her bed until her breathing evened out, watching her small chest rise and fall and thinking about another small chest that used to do the same thing three years ago, until it stopped. I didn't sleep after that. I went down to my office instead and read quarterly reports I didn't absorb a single word of, because staring at numbers was easier than staring at the ceiling and thinking about my brother's face the last time I saw it, laughing about something stupid, completely unaware it was the last time. Beatrix found me there at seven in the morning, which should have told me something was wrong immediately, because Beatrix didn't do mornings unless she wanted something. "You look terrible," she said, b

Christabel The text hadn't come from Beatrix. It had come from him. I found that out the hard way, standing outside a private room at a restaurant so expensive it didn't have prices on the menu, my heart going so fast I could feel it in my throat, wondering if I'd walked into the wrong building entirely. A host in a black suit led me back without asking my name, like he already knew exactly who I was and exactly why I was there, which was somehow worse than if he'd asked. Sebastian Vettel was already seated when I walked in, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the forearm, a single glass of water in front of him instead of wine, and he didn't stand when I came in, which I decided to be annoyed about instead of anything else, because annoyed was easier to hold onto than terrified. "You're late," he said. "You're the one who texted me two hours ago and told me to show up alone with no context. I had to figure out which restaurant this even was." "Sit down." "Is that how you talk to ever

Christabel Sebastian never answered my text. Not that night, not the next morning, and by the time moving day arrived four days later, I'd decided that was answer enough. "You could still say no," Marie said, sitting cross-legged on my bare mattress, watching me tape shut a box labeled kitchen, which was really just three mugs and a rice cooker my mother gave me before she passed, because apparently that's what my entire adult life fit into a box. "It's not too late. We could run. I have a cousin in Lisbon. He owes me a favor." "Marie." "I'm serious. He has a boat." "You hate boats." "I hate a lot of things, Christabel, doesn't mean I won't use them against my better judgment when the situation calls for it." I laughed, because it was easier than the alternative,and forty minutes later a driver I'd never met loaded my entire life into the back of a car that probably cost more than the shop's original mortgage, and drove me across Paris to a building with a doorman who called me

Sebastian The headline was worse in print than my assistant had made it sound over the phone, which I hadn't thought was possible until I was standing in my own office staring at it on three separate screens. Grieving Widow or Convenient Timing? Insiders Question Sebastian Vettel's New Romance. Beneath it, a photograph from the funeral, grainy, clearly taken from a distance with a long lens, of me leaning down to say something to Christabel near the coat check. I didn't even remember the moment. Probably something logistical, about cars, about timing, and somehow it had been turned into evidence of an affair that never happened with a woman who'd buried my brother eleven days ago. "Do we know who leaked it," I asked, not looking up from the screen. "Not yet. Legal's looking into it." My assistant hovered near the door, the way she did when she had more bad news and was trying to decide how to pace it out. "There's also this." She set a second printout on my desk. A different phot