My Best Friend Took My Man. I Gave Her the Whole Ceremony Chapter 02

My Best Friend Took My Man. I Gave Her the Whole Ceremony Chapter 02

He rushed Valerie to change out of the dress, and the two of them left without another word.

The sales clerk shifted on her feet, glancing at me. “Miss Albright, about that dress…”

I could still see the way Valerie’s face had lit up in front of that mirror. I pulled out my card. “I’ll take it.”

Wedding gift number one.

The second gift was next on my list. I took a completely new plan to the wedding planner.

The coordinator winced. “Miss Albright, this is a completely different direction from what we had before.”

They’d already pulled late nights on the original concept, and I felt bad asking them to start over. “I’ll pay the rush fee. Whatever it takes.”

Once the fee was high enough, they stopped hesitating. One month, champagne roses, everything perfect. They guaranteed it.

I smiled. “One more thing. We need to change the bride’s name.”

Her smile disappeared.

“I’m dying,” I told her quietly. “And the two people I love most in this world, I need to know they’ll have each other.”

My expression must have been too calm, too steady, because the clerk let out a nervous laugh, like she was waiting for me to admit it was a joke.

“It’s terminal. There’s nothing anyone can do. Please, don’t tell them.”

I held her gaze until every word landed. She swallowed hard. “Okay… okay.”

Outside, I let out a long breath.

Then the nausea hit me hard. I doubled over on the sidewalk, gagging and heaving until I coughed up blood.

I dug through my bag for the pills, the ones I kept in an antacid bottle so no one would ask questions. Gone. I’d left them in Ethan’s car.

My hands were shaking when I called him. “Ethan… my stomach, it’s bad. My pills are in your car. Can you…”

There was a time when Ethan would sprint six blocks just to bring me Band-Aids for a paper cut.

Today, he let out a harsh scoff.

“Are you serious right now?”

Cold sweat was running down my temples.

“Wh… what?” The pain was so bad I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.

“You saw Valerie’s latest post, right? She’s wasted at some bar right now, alone, and you pull this? A stomachache? Just to keep me from going to get her?”

“I wasn’t…”

My vision went white for a second. The pain in my stomach was nothing compared to what his words did to my chest.

The unfairness of it hit me all at once, and my throat burned with the effort of not crying.

“Enough. You just keep getting more and more selfish, you know that? Valerie already got hurt once because of you. She doesn’t get to be in danger again. Get your own damn pills.”

I opened my mouth to say okay, but the line was already dead.

The street was empty. I dragged myself upright and made my way to the pharmacy for a refill on my own.

Everything hurt.

I was too much of a coward to let it end the slow way. So I scheduled it. An assisted dying procedure in Oakhaven. Three days before the wedding.

That night, after the pills kicked in, I sat down at home and started writing my will.

Halfway through, my eyes wouldn’t stay open. I slumped over the desk and drifted off, straight back into the past.

We were eighteen. Valerie, Ethan, and me.

Back then, we thought we owned the city, three kids who thought we were invincible.

Then Ethan asked me out, and I said yes. And the night I came home after that, everything changed.

My uncle, my legal guardian, the man who’d raised me, was completely out of his mind on something.

He was waiting when I walked in. His eyes were bloodshot, locked on the rose in my hand. “Clara,” he said. “Don’t you love me?”

He was family. He had never been anything else to me. Not once.

He came closer, one slow step at a time, and knocked the phone out of my hand before I could dial.

He backed me into the windowsill. I screamed. Valerie and Ethan were still close enough to hear.

They busted through the door.

One look at my uncle over me, and something in Ethan snapped.