After I broke my leg two months before my wedding, everyone told me how lucky I was to have a fiancé like Adam. I believed them too, until one quiet night forced me to see the man behind the perfect act.
The bedroom felt too quiet for a Tuesday afternoon, the kind of quiet that pressed against my ears and made the ceiling fan sound like an engine.
My leg, wrapped in a heavy white cast, rested on two pillows I had not arranged myself.
On the nightstand sat a half-finished wedding planning binder and a framed engagement photo where Adam was kissing my cheek under string lights.
That was all the time I had until the wedding, and I had spent the morning at the hospital learning how to live inside a body that suddenly needed permission to move.
I remembered Adam at the doctor’s office, squeezing my hand and smiling at the nurse.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her,” he had said, in that low, warm voice that made strangers trust him instantly.
The nurse smiled.
“She’s lucky to have you.”
I had believed her.
He sighed. It was the kind of small sigh that lives at the back of the throat.
I told myself he was tired.
He had been at the hospital for hours.
“Long day, babe?” I asked.
By the time we got home, my phone was already lighting up.
Mom’s face filled the screen, her reading glasses pushed up into her gray curls.
