The airport terminal buzzed with the energy of a thousand departures, but all I could focus on was the boarding pass trembling in my hand. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. "Ethan," I said, my voice cutting through the ambient noise of announcements and rolling luggage. "Why does my ticket say Montreal?" My husband of exactly forty-eight hours looked up from his phone, his expression distracted. "What?" I thrust the boarding pass toward him, the paper crinkling under my grip. "Montreal. My ticket is for Montreal. Our honeymoon is supposed to be in Cancun." The color drained from Ethan's face as he fumbled for his own boarding pass, pulling it from the pocket of his perfectly pressed khakis. His eyes darted across the information, and I watched something flicker across his features—surprise, yes, but also something else I couldn't quite name. "That's impossible," he muttered, but his voice lacked conviction. "Let me see." A soft, apologetic voice interrupted us, and I turned to find Nina hovering at Ethan's elbow like she'd materialized from thin air. Nina. His childhood best friend. The woman who'd been at every wedding planning meeting, every dress fitting, every cake tasting. The woman who'd stood at the altar during our ceremony with tears streaming down her face—tears I'd interpreted as happiness for us but now seemed to carry a different weight entirely. She reached for Ethan's boarding pass with familiar ease, her fingers brushing his in a way that made my stomach clench. Her eyes scanned the information, and then those same tears I'd seen at our wedding began to well up again. "Oh God," she whispered, her hand flying to her mouth. "Oh God, Ethan, I'm so sorry. I think... I think I mixed them up." "You mixed them up?" I repeated, my voice sharper than I'd intended. "How exactly did you mix up our honeymoon tickets, Nina?" She looked at me then, her blue eyes wide and brimming with what appeared to be genuine remorse. "I was trying to help. You were both so busy with the wedding, and you mentioned you hadn't printed the boarding passes yet, so I offered to do it. I must have... I don't know, I must have accidentally put the wrong names with the wrong destinations." "Accidentally," I said flatly. "Cara." Ethan's tone carried a warning I didn't appreciate. "She was trying to help." "Help?" I looked between them, noting how close they stood, how naturally Ethan's body angled toward hers. "She somehow managed to send me to Canada in February while keeping herself conveniently next to you on the way to a Mexican beach resort?" Nina's face crumpled. "It wasn't like that. I swear, Cara, I would never—" "Your seat is next to his?" The question came out as barely more than a whisper. The silence that followed was deafening. "The system must have automatically assigned seats," Ethan said quickly. Too quickly. "When the names got switched—" "Stop." I held up my hand, suddenly exhausted. We'd been married for two days. Two days. And already I was standing in an airport, arguing about why my husband's best friend had somehow engineered a situation where she'd be spending our honeymoon week with him instead of me. Except I wasn't sure it was an argument anymore. I was starting to see it for what it really was: a revelation. I thought back to the wedding planning, how Nina had opinions about everything. The flowers—"Ethan's always loved peonies, ever since we were kids." The music—"Oh, you have to include this song, it's from that summer we spent at the lake house." The venue—"Ethan's mother would have wanted something more traditional, don't you think?" Ethan's mother had been dead for six years. Nina had known her. I hadn't. I thought about the rehearsal dinner, where Nina had given a speech so intimate and knowing that several guests had asked if she was the bride. I'd laughed it off then, secure in the knowledge that I was the one wearing the ring, the one who'd be standing at the altar the next day. But now, watching Ethan's hand rest on Nina's shoulder as she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, I wondered if I'd been laughing at my own funeral. "We can fix this," Ethan said, finally turning his full attention to me. "We'll go to the ticket counter, explain the situation—" "It's a holiday weekend," Nina interjected softly. "The flights are completely booked. I checked when I realized what happened. That's why I came to the airport, to try to fix it before you both got here, but there's nothing available." Of course she'd checked. Of course she'd come to the airport. Of course there was nothing available. "So what do you suggest?" I asked, my voice eerily calm even as my heart hammered against my ribs. Ethan and Nina exchanged a glance, a wordless communication that spoke of years of friendship, of inside jokes and shared memories and a connection I would never be part of no matter how many years I stayed married to him. "You could take the Cancun ticket," Nina offered, but even she didn't sound convinced. "I'll go to Montreal. It's my mistake, I should be the one to—" "The ticket is in my name," Ethan interrupted. "They won't let you board." "What about me?" I asked. "Will they let me board a flight to Cancun with a ticket that says Montreal?" Another heavy silence. The announcement for boarding came over the intercom then, first class passengers welcome to board, and I watched something shift in Ethan's expression. A calculation. A decision being made. "Maybe," he said slowly, "you should just go to Montreal. We'll video chat every day, and when you get back, we'll plan another trip, a proper honeymoon—" "When I get back?" I repeated. "You mean while you're in Cancun? At the all-inclusive resort we booked for our honeymoon? The one with the couples' packages and the romantic sunset dinners?" "I'll be with Nina," he said, as if that made it better. "It's not like I'll be alone with some stranger." The laugh that escaped me was sharp and bitter. "Right. Not a stranger. Just the woman you've known your entire life. The woman who's been in love with you since high school." Nina gasped. "Cara, that's not—" "Don't." I cut her off with a look. "Don't insult my intelligence by pretending I haven't seen the way you look at him. The way you've always looked at him." I turned to Ethan, really seeing him for perhaps the first time since we'd met eighteen months ago. He was handsome in that clean-cut, all-American way that had first attracted me—strong jaw, warm brown eyes, the kind of smile that made you feel like you were the only person in the room. Except I'd never been the only person in the room. Nina had always been there, hovering in the background, a constant presence I'd been too naive or too trusting to question. "Tell me something," I said quietly. "If you had to choose right now—if you could only take one of us to Cancun—who would you choose?" "Cara, that's not fair—" "Answer the question, Ethan." He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. His eyes flickered to Nina, just for a second, but it was enough. It was more than enough. The final boarding call echoed through the terminal, and I felt something inside me crystallize into diamond-hard clarity. I'd spent the last year and a half competing in a race I hadn't known I was running, against an opponent I hadn't realized existed, for a prize that had never actually been mine to win. "You know what?" I said, surprised by how steady my voice sounded. "You should go. Both of you." "What?" Ethan blinked at me, confused. "Go to Cancun. Enjoy the honeymoon." I looked down at my left hand, at the platinum wedding band that had been on my finger for exactly forty-eight hours. It felt heavy suddenly. Foreign. Like it belonged to someone else. Because maybe it did.