The Wrong 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."

"Is he there? Can you put him on?"

Her gaze stayed locked on the sleeping man's chest, rising and falling slow and even, completely unaware that her entire world had just folded in on itself three feet away from him.

"He's asleep," she said, and somehow her voice came out steady, which felt like the strangest part of all of it. Like some instinct deeper than panic had already taken over and was handling damage control before she'd even decided what the damage was.

"Of course he is." Adrian let out a short laugh, the kind people use when they're not actually amused. "Tell him I said thanks when he wakes up. And tell him to behave himself, he's terrible with guests."

He's terrible with guests.

She wanted to laugh at that. Or scream. She genuinely couldn't tell which one was closer to the surface.

"They're calling my flight," Adrian said. "I'll be there by this afternoon. I love you. I'm sorry again, I promise I'll make the rest of this week up to you."

"Okay," she said. "Love you too."

The call ended. The screen went dark in her hand.

Marlowe sat there in the wreckage of a wedding night she now understood had happened with the wrong person, her chest rising too fast, her mind refusing to slow down enough to land on any single thought for longer than a second. She looked at her own hand like it belonged to someone else. She looked at the rumpled sheets, at the discarded dress draped over the chair across the room, the dress she'd been so careful with for months, now just fabric on furniture, evidence of a night she could never take back.

She thought about getting up. Running, maybe. Showering until her skin felt like hers again. Calling Maddie and screaming into the phone until something made sense.

Instead she sat completely still, staring at the man beside her, waiting for her body to decide what to do without her permission, because her mind clearly wasn't going to be any help.

That's when his eyes opened.

Slow, unhurried, the way someone wakes when they aren't afraid of what they'll find. He looked at her first, just looked, no scrambling, no panic, nothing close to the reaction she expected from a man who had apparently spent the night pretending to be his own brother. Then his gaze drifted to the phone still loose in her hand, and something behind his expression sharpened into understanding.

He didn't sit up. He didn't reach for the sheet to cover himself the way she half expected a guilty man to. He just watched her, calm in a way that made the hair on her arms stand up, calm in a way that felt far more dangerous than if he'd panicked.

"You talked to him," he said. Not a question. A fact, stated low and even, like he already knew exactly how this morning was going to go before it happened.

Marlowe's mouth went dry. She opened it to say something, anything, a question, an accusation, a demand for an explanation that actually made sense.

Nothing came out.

He held her stare, unreadable, unbothered, like a man who had already decided how this conversation was going to end before it even started.

And somewhere underneath the fear pooling cold in her stomach, a different feeling stirred, one she didn't have a name for yet and didn't want one for. Because the man looking back at her with her husband's exact face had just woken up beside her like he belonged there.

Like he had no intention of leaving quietly.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Marlowe was off the bed before she fully decided to move, sheet wrapped around her body, putting distance between herself and the man who was still watching her with that same unreadable calm.

"Get out." Her voice cracked on the second word. She hated that it cracked. "Get out of this room right now."

He sat up slowly, unhurried, like her panic was something he'd already accounted for. "It's my house too, technically."

"Don't." She held up a hand, like she could physically stop whatever was about to come out of his mouth. "Don't talk to me like this is normal. Like we're having a conversation about whose house this is. You let me think you were him. All night."

Something flickered across his face, there and gone too fast to read. "You never asked who I was."

"Because I thought I already knew." Her voice rose, sharp enough that she almost flinched at her own volume. "I married Adrian yesterday. I said vows to Adrian. I assumed the man in my bed was my husband, not because I'm stupid, but because that's a reasonable thing to assume on your wedding night."

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the shirt draped over the chair, unbothered by her staring, unbothered by any of it. "I never told you I was him."

"You didn't correct me either."

"No." He pulled the shirt over his head, calm as anything, like they were discussing the weather instead of the fact that she had slept with a stranger wearing her husband's face. "I didn't."

Marlowe's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her stomach to make them stop. "Who are you?"

He looked at her for a long moment before he answered, like he was deciding how much of the truth was safe to hand over. "Lucian."

"Adrian's brother." The words tasted strange in her mouth. "He's never once mentioned having a brother. Not once. Not during the engagement, not during the wedding planning, not to his own father at the rehearsal dinner."

"That sounds like Adrian."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting right now."

She stared at him, searching his face for some crack in the composure, some sign that he understood the size of what had happened, what he had done. There wasn't one. He looked at her the way a man looks at weather he can't control, mildly inconvenienced, nothing more.

"I'm calling him back." She reached for her phone on the nightstand, fingers closing around it like a lifeline. "I'm telling him exactly what happened, right now, before he gets on that plane."

Lucian crossed the room in three steps and closed his hand gently but firmly over hers, stopping her before she could unlock the screen. It wasn't rough. It didn't need to be. The look on his face did all the work instead.

"You're not telling him anything."

"Watch me."

"Marlowe." Her name in his mouth landed strange, too intimate for a man she'd known less than a day, too steady for the chaos currently living in her chest. "If you tell him, you lose everything you came here for. Do you understand that? Everything."

Her breath caught. "Is that a threat?"

"It's a fact." He let go of her hand, stepping back like he hadn't meant to get that close in the first place. "You didn't marry into this family for love. We both know that. You married Adrian because your father owes this family more money than he'll ever be able to pay back on his own, and Adrian offered to make that debt disappear in exchange for a wife. That's the deal. That's the whole deal."

Marlowe's throat tightened. "How do you know that?"

"Because I know this family." Something dark passed behind his eyes, gone before she could name it. "And I know exactly what happens to people who embarrass them in public. Your father's company gets buried so fast he won't see it coming. His medical bills don't get covered. None of it. All because you couldn't keep your mouth shut about one mistake that wasn't even your fault."

"It wasn't my fault." Her voice shook, somewhere between fury and panic. "It was yours. You're the one who let me believe you were him."

"And you're the one who has to live with the consequences either way." He said it without cruelty, which somehow made it worse. Just truth, flat and unbothered, laid out like a fact of weather she couldn't argue with. "That part doesn't change no matter whose fault it was."

She sat down hard on the edge of the bed, sheet still wrapped tight around her, the room suddenly too small, too bright, too full of a man she didn't understand and apparently couldn't trust. "Why were you even here? You disappeared. Nobody talks about you. There's not a single photo of you in this entire house. Why show up the night before your brother's wedding and pretend to be him?"

"That's not something I'm explaining to you right now."

"Then when?"

"Maybe never." He said it simply, like the door on that question was already closed and locked. "What matters today is what you do with what already happened. Not why I was here."

"You can't just decide that for me."

"I'm not deciding anything for you." He picked his jacket up off the floor, pulling it on like he was getting ready to walk out and disappear from her life as easily as he'd walked into her bed. "I'm telling you what happens if you choose wrong. You tell Adrian, your father loses everything, and you lose the only reason you agreed to any of this in the first place. You stay quiet, you get to keep pretending this never happened, and your father stays protected. Your call."

"That's not a choice. That's blackmail."

"Call it whatever helps you sleep tonight." He moved toward the door, pausing with his hand on the frame, looking back at her one last time, and for half a second something almost soft crossed his face before it vanished completely. "But you should decide fast. Adrian lands this afternoon."

He left her sitting there, sheet clutched to her chest, heart slamming against her ribs, staring at the closed door like it might give her an answer the man on the other side of it had refused to.

Her phone buzzed again on the nightstand. A text this time, not a call.

It was from Adrian.

"Almost there, can't wait to see my wife."

Marlowe stared at the screen until the words blurred, her thumb hovering over the reply box, no idea what version of the truth she was about to live inside of for however long this lie needed her to.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Marlowe heard the car in the driveway before she heard the front door, and her stomach dropped straight through the floor.

She'd spent the last three hours rehearsing a version of herself calm enough to pass inspection. Showered until her skin felt raw. Changed twice. Practiced her own face in the bathroom mirror until the panic sitting behind her eyes looked something close to normal. None of it felt like enough now that the moment had actually arrived.

Lucian was already in the living room when she came down the stairs, a glass of something amber in his hand, posture loose against the back of the couch like he'd been there all day with nothing on his mind. He glanced at her once, a brief unreadable flick of his eyes, and said nothing.

The front door opened.

"Honey." Adrian's voice carried through the foyer, warm and easy, the kind of voice built for rooms full of people watching him. He came around the corner already smiling, suit jacket slung over one shoulder, looking exactly like the man she'd married. Looking exactly like the man currently sitting on the couch behind her.

Marlowe's whole body went rigid for one terrible second before she forced it to unclench.

"Hey." She crossed the room and let him kiss her, brief and soft, his hand settling at her waist like it belonged there. She had to remind herself it did belong there. He was the one with the legal claim. He just wasn't the one who'd earned it.

"I am so sorry about last night." He pulled back, brushing a strand of hair from her face with a tenderness that should have felt nice and instead felt like static against her skin. "I know that's not how either of us wanted our first night to go."

"It's fine," she said, and the lie came out smoother than she expected. "These things happen."

Adrian's gaze slid past her to the couch. "Lucian. You're still here."

"Figured I'd stick around until you got back." Lucian's voice was even, almost bored, nothing in it that hinted at anything that had happened in that house overnight. "Made sure your wife wasn't completely abandoned on her wedding night."

Something passed across Adrian's face, quick and gone, there and then smoothed over before Marlowe could fully name it. "Thoughtful of you."

"I try."

The two of them looked at each other for a beat too long, something unspoken moving between them that Marlowe couldn't read, old and tangled and clearly not something either of them planned on explaining to her anytime soon.

Adrian turned back to her, the warmth snapping back into place like a switch flipped. "Did he behave himself? I told him to behave."

"He was a perfect houseguest," Marlowe said, and felt Lucian's eyes land on her from across the room, steady, daring her to say one wrong word.

"Good." Adrian set his jacket over the back of a chair, loosening his tie with the easy confidence of a man who'd never once questioned whether a room belonged to him. "I want to take you to dinner tonight. Somewhere nice. Properly start this marriage off the way it should have started last night."

"I'd like that," she said, because it was easier than explaining what she'd actually like, which was several hours alone to figure out how she was supposed to survive this.

Dinner happened at a restaurant with white tablecloths and a wine list longer than the menu. Adrian talked the entire time, easy and charming, telling stories about deals he'd closed and people he'd outmaneuvered, and Marlowe nodded in the right places and laughed where laughing seemed required and felt every word land somewhere far away from where she actually was.

It wasn't until the check came that the first crack showed.

"You barely touched your food," Adrian said, signing the receipt without looking up. "You feeling okay?"

"Just tired. Long day."

"You should eat more than that." He finally looked at her, and his voice carried something underneath the casual concern, something with edges. "I don't like watching you waste good food. People who grew up the way you did should know better than that."

Marlowe blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I just mean." He smiled, smoothing it over fast, but the words had already landed and there was no taking them back. "Your father's situation. Money's been tight for your family for years, hasn't it? Seems strange to be picky about a meal like this when plenty of people would be grateful for it."

The comment sat in her chest like a stone. She thought of every dinner she'd skipped so her father could afford his medication. Every job she'd worked through college to keep the lights on. The casual cruelty of it, dressed up as concern, stunned her into silence for a second longer than she wanted to give him.

"That's not fair," she said quietly.

"It's just true." He reached across the table and covered her hand with his, and the gesture should have felt comforting and instead felt like a hand closing around something it intended to keep. "I'm not trying to upset you. I just want you to remember how good you have it now. That's all."

She pulled her hand back slower than she wanted to, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing how deep that had cut.

"You said you were stuck at the airport all night," she said, changing direction before she said something she couldn't take back. "Which airport? I tried looking up the delays this morning and couldn't find anything for O'Hare."

Adrian's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes did, a flicker too quick for most people to catch. "Midway. I misspoke earlier. Long night, easy mistake."

It was a small thing. A forgettable thing, if she let herself believe it was nothing.

But she'd checked Midway too. There hadn't been a single delay reported there either.

She said nothing. She smiled instead, the same practiced smile she'd been wearing all day, and let him pay the check and lead her out to the car with his hand at the small of her back like he owned every inch of her.

By the time they got home, the lights in the house were off except for one lamp in the living room, where Lucian still sat exactly where they'd left him hours earlier, like he hadn't moved at all, like he'd been waiting.

He looked up when they walked in. His eyes found Marlowe's first, holding there for one charged second before sliding to his brother.

"Good dinner?" he asked, voice perfectly level, nothing in it that gave away whatever he was actually thinking.

"Great dinner," Adrian said, already heading toward the stairs, pulling Marlowe along by the hand. "Don't wait up."

Marlowe glanced back once before the staircase swallowed her view of the living room. Lucian hadn't moved. He was still watching her, steady and unreadable, like he already knew something about tonight that she didn't.

And as Adrian's hand tightened slightly around hers, pulling her up toward the bedroom they were supposed to share for real this time, she realized she had absolutely no idea which brother's lie she should be more afraid of.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​