He didn’t need to perform.
Neither did I.
So I let him hold it.
Eight months have passed since that wedding.
I heard through mutual friends that Mason and Vanessa did stay married.
At least for now.
Apparently their honeymoon was delayed because they spent several days fighting about why Mason had invited me.
Part of me once would have enjoyed that information.
Now it mostly makes me tired.
Because here’s the strange thing.
I spent so long believing that moving on meant Mason needed to see me happy.
He didn’t.
I didn’t need to prove anything to him.
And Julian didn’t rescue me.
We simply met each other at exactly the moment two people finally understood that someone else’s betrayal wasn’t evidence that we were unworthy of love.
Mason invited me to his wedding because he wanted me to sit alone and watch him win.
Instead, I walked through the doors beside the one man he never expected to see.
The former fiancé of the woman he’d stolen from another relationship.
For one spectacular hour, Mason and Vanessa’s perfect little story collapsed under the weight of the truth they’d spent years avoiding.
But that wasn’t the best part.
The best part came afterward.
A quiet apartment.
Two glasses of champagne.
No revenge.
No performance.
Just two people realizing they had survived the same kind of heartbreak.
Mason once told me I wasn’t the kind of woman a successful man would want beside him.
I spent years remembering that sentence.
Now, when Julian looks at me, I barely remember why it ever mattered.
Maybe our relationship lasts forever.
Maybe it doesn’t.
I’m not interested in making dramatic promises anymore.
But yesterday morning, I woke up to Julian burning pancakes in my kitchen.
He was barefoot, wearing one of my old college T-shirts, swearing at a smoke detector while trying to convince me breakfast was “supposed to look like that.”
And I laughed so hard I had to sit down.
There was nothing glamorous about it.
Nothing impressive.
Nobody was watching.
And somehow, it felt better than every beautiful thing Mason had ever promised me.
