The hotel was buzzing with the strange kind of energy that comes before a wedding. Laughter in the hallways, clinking glasses from the bar downstairs, floral arrangements being shuffled between rooms. You were supposed to be asleep, tucked into your bridesmaid’s bed, ready for the long, exhausting day ahead.

But instead, you sat awake, your dress for tomorrow hanging neatly by the closet door, while your phone buzzed relentlessly with texts you couldn’t bring yourself to answer.

Your best friend the bride had just ended everything.

Hours before vows were supposed to be exchanged, she’d confessed to you in a shaking voice that she couldn’t go through with it. That she didn’t love Colin the way she thought she did. That she couldn’t marry him. And you, her confidante since childhood, had been forced to sit there, holding her hand as she unraveled her entire future, knowing that the man waiting at the other end of the aisle would have his heart shattered in ways he didn’t deserve.

You thought maybe she’d tell him herself, that she’d at least give him that courtesy. But the knock at your door told you otherwise.

When you opened it, Colin stood there — no tie, jacket wrinkled, eyes bloodshot, cheeks blotchy like he’d been trying and failing to hold it together. He looked nothing like the steady detective, nothing like the man who usually carried himself with awkward but endearing confidence. He looked lost.

“She said she doesn’t love me,” he muttered, voice breaking as he stepped inside without waiting for you to answer. His hands shook when he pressed them to his face, shoulders curling like he was trying to make himself smaller. “I just— I don’t understand… how can she just…” His words crumbled, and so did he, sitting down heavily on the edge of your bed.