148 I arrived at my little brother's wedding with my cheeks hurting from smiling and my thrift-store heels already cutting into my feet. None of it mattered. Ethan was finally happy.
I arrived at my little brother's wedding with my cheeks hurting from smiling and my thrift-store heels already cutting into my feet. None of it mattered. Ethan was finally happy. The boy I raised after our parents died was standing under crystal chandeliers and white orchids, straight-backed in a black tux, looking like life had finally apologized.
Then I found my seat.
The cream name card beside the gold-rimmed plate didn't say Maya Bennett. It said, "Poor, Uneducated Sister—Living Off Her Brother."
The bride's family burst out laughing before I even finished reading it. Clara's cousin covered her mouth with a napkin. Her mother looked down into her champagne like she wasn't enjoying the show. Her father, Richard Whitmore, glanced at my navy dress, my bargain heels, and that card, and smirked like humiliation was just another centerpiece.
I went cold.
I had buried both parents by seventeen. I had skipped college, worked double shifts, stretched soup, sold my mother's ring, and raised Ethan through every panic attack, report card, and winter he outgrew his coat before I could afford another one. I had not come to Rosemont Country Club asking for applause.
I wanted one chair.
Instead, Clara leaned close enough for her perfume to sting and whispered, "Please don't make a scene over a joke. Tonight isn't about you." Her father added, loud enough for two tables to hear, "Some people should be grateful they were invited at all."
I nearly walked out through the service doors.
But an hour earlier, Ethan had slipped a slim silver folder into my purse and said, strangely, "Keep this with you, May. And whatever happens, don't leave before I ask you to." I thought it was nerves. I had noticed a law firm's name on the tab. I hadn't opened it.
So I set the card back down with shaking fingers and turned to go quietly.
A hand closed around mine.
Ethan had crossed the ballroom without a sound. He looked at the card once. Just once. Then his face emptied in a way that frightened me more than shouting would have.
Clara grabbed his sleeve. "Ethan, please. It's a seating mistake."
"No," he said.
Richard Whitmore gave a thin laugh. "Don't be ridiculous. You're not going to derail a wedding over your sister being oversensitive."
Ethan picked up the card, slid it into the silver folder, and placed that folder on the table between us like evidence.
Then he took my hand again, faced his future father-in-law, and said in a voice so calm the entire room went silent, "You just made the most expensive mistake of your life."
No one laughed after that.
Even the string quartet stopped.
Richard's smile twitched. Clara went pale. And right then Ethan's attorney stepped into the ballroom, opened the folder I'd been carrying all evening, and said, loud enough for the head table to hear, "Ms. Bennett, before tomorrow morning's acquisition can close, the majority owner needs to review the file."
Richard looked at me.
Then at the folder.
Then at Ethan.
May you like
And for the first time that night, his glass shook in his hand.
Type PART 2 and press Like.
