The Parkinson house was too quiet for the storm brewing inside it. You stepped through the front door—unlocked, because why would Pansy Parkinson ever expect consequences to walk in unannounced?—and stopped just short of the sitting room.

Voices drifted out. Pansy’s first, sharp and impatient, like she’d been sitting on this particular secret for too long and it was starting to chafe.

A pause. The kind of pause that should’ve come with a warning label.

He said it so casually. Like you were a convenience. A service. A little household appliance with a pulse.

And just like that, the last few months made a horrible, humiliating kind of sense. The missed dates. The forgotten promises. Pansy needing him. Pansy wanting him. Pansy having another event. You’d been auditioning for a role you never knew existed: the other woman in your own relationship.

Standing there, just out of sight, you had a front-row seat to the exact moment your former best friend and your supposed future husband toasted their little conspiracy without even pouring drinks.

Meanwhile, somewhere across town, two boys who’d never submitted their marriage certificates were about to become very relevant.