The Replaced Groom

The light came in soft through the curtains, gold and warm, and for a few seconds Marlowe Reyes let herself just feel it. The ache in her body. The weight of an arm thrown over her waist. The smell of cologne still clinging to the sheets.

She smiled before she even opened her eyes.

Married. She was actually married. Twelve hours ago she'd been standing in a church in a dress that cost more than her father's monthly medication, promising forever to a man she barely knew but had convinced herself she could learn to love. And last night, in this bed, in this house that wasn't hers yet but would be, she'd believed every second of it.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

She reached for it without lifting her head, eyes still half closed, thumb finding the screen on instinct. Adrian's name lit up the display. She answered with a voice still thick from sleep.

"Hey."

"Hey, baby, I am so sorry." His voice came through tired and rushed, the kind of tired that comes from sitting on an airport floor all night. "The storm grounded everything. I tried calling last night but it kept dropping. I feel sick about missing this."

Marlowe sat up slowly, pulling the sheet with her, confusion working its way through the fog of sleep. "Missing what? Adrian, you were here."

A pause. Too long.

"What do you mean I was here? I've been stuck at O'Hare since six last night. I'm about to board now." Another pause, shorter this time, like he was choosing his next words carefully. "Did my brother get there okay? Please tell me he at least helped you with the bags."

The question didn't make sense at first. The words sat in the air like something foreign, something she had to translate before her brain would let her understand it.

His brother.

Marlowe went still.

"Adrian." Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "What brother?"

"Lucian." He said it like she should already know, like it was a fact she'd somehow forgotten, like it wasn't the first time she had ever heard that name in her life. "I called him last night when I knew I wasn't getting out. Figured he could at least let you into the house, get you settled, since I couldn't. He didn't tell you?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. Her eyes had already moved past the phone, past her own hand holding it, to the other side of the bed.

To the man still asleep beside her.

Same face she had stared at during her vows. Same jaw, same dark hair messy against the pillow, same small white scar above his eyebrow that she'd noticed at the altar and assumed was just one more detail about her husband she hadn't known yet. Same hands. The same hands that had touched every inch of her last night, slow and certain, like he'd done it a hundred times before, like he knew exactly what he was doing to her.

Wrong man.

Same face. Wrong man entirely.

"Marlowe?" Adrian's voice cut through the phone, distant now, like it was coming from somewhere far away even though it was right against her ear. "You still there? Hello?"

"Yeah." The word barely made it out. "Yeah, I'm here."