I didn’t move. I asked him, very quietly, to repeat the part about the merger into the microphone. He smirked and did it — louder, prouder, hands spread like he was closing a deal. That was when the chapel doors opened at the back and the noise in the room changed. Not gasps yet. Just the sound of a lot of expensive shoes going still. Six men in dark suits walked up the aisle in a wedge, earpieces catching the light. Behind them came a woman in a slate-grey coat I recognized from every business magazine Ethan’s father kept on his desk — the chairwoman of the holding company that had just bought Ethan’s father’s network last Tuesday. She walked straight past Ethan without looking at him, stopped in front of me, and said, “Ma’am, the board is outside. Do you want to take the meeting here, or should we clear the room first?” Ethan laughed once, the wrong kind of laugh, and asked who the hell she thought she was talking to. She finally looked at him. “I’m talking to my principal,” she said. “She owns the paper your father signed on Tuesday. She owns the chapel your mother booked. And as of nine this morning, she owns the non-compete you just violated on a livestream.” The confetti of my torn vows was still stuck to my veil. I bent down, picked one piece up, and pressed it flat against Ethan’s lapel like a boutonnière. His mother stopped clapping. His father stood up so fast his chair fell. Ethan’s mouth opened, closed, opened again, and the only word that came out was my first name — the one he’d spent two years pretending was too rural to say in public. I turned to the chairwoman and told her to clear the room. She nodded once. The men in suits began, very politely, walking three hundred guests toward the door. Ethan reached for my wrist. One of the earpieces stepped between us without breaking stride. I lifted my veil, shook the last of the paper scraps onto his shoes, and finally smiled for his father’s cameras.
