Grant Sullivan & Iris Webb POV
The ballroom smells like white roses and expensive perfume. Iris has been walking for what feels like forever, though it's only been thirty seconds. Her father's arm is warm under her hand. The dress weighs more than she does. Two hundred thousand dollars of white silk and lace and dreams that suddenly feel heavy in a way that has nothing to do with fabric.
She sees Grant at the end of the aisle.
He's watching her. Dark suit. Sharp jawline. The man who called her three times last night just to hear her voice. The man who told her yesterday that marrying her was the smartest decision he'd ever made. The man who's supposed to be her forever.
His expression changes.
It's subtle. The kind of thing most people wouldn't notice. But Iris has spent six months learning every detail of this man's face. She sees it immediately. A tightness around his mouth. A flicker in his eyes like something just broke inside his chest.
She stops walking for a half second and her father squeezes her hand. Everything's fine. He's just nervous. Everyone gets nervous at weddings.
Except Grant's face doesn't look nervous. It looks like regret.
Iris pushes the thought away and keeps walking. Eight hundred people are watching her. The photographer is snapping pictures. The pianist is playing the song Grant specifically requested. This is happening. This is real.
She reaches the altar and her father kisses her cheek and whispers something she doesn't hear because her ears are ringing. Grant takes her hand. His palms are sweating. He doesn't smile at her the way they practiced.
The ceremony starts.
The vows happen and Grant says them in a voice that sounds like he's reading from a script someone else wrote. His eyes don't meet hers. Iris feels something tight in her stomach but she says her vows like she means them because she does. She means every single word about loving him forever.
They kiss because that's what you do. It's a good kiss. There's applause.
For exactly nine minutes, Iris Webb is a married woman.
The reception is chaos. Good chaos. The kind of chaos that happens when you invite eight hundred of New York's richest and most powerful people to celebrate your wedding. The band is playing. The champagne is flowing. Her mother has already cried twice, happy tears.
Iris is dancing with her father when she sees Grant stand up.
He doesn't take her hand. He doesn't ask her to dance. He just walks toward the microphone with his drink in one hand and something dark in his eyes.
Her mother stops talking mid-sentence.
The band realizes something's happening and the music dies. The room goes quiet. Eight hundred people turn to watch Grant Sullivan hold a microphone like it might burn him.
Iris's heart starts racing.
"I need to say something," Grant says. His voice is steady but his hands are shaking. She can see them from across the room. "I made a mistake today."
The room goes still. Nobody breathes.
"I made a mistake and I'm not going to let it destroy both of us." Grant looks at her. His eyes are empty in a way she didn't know eyes could be. "This marriage was a mistake. A terrible, terrible error in judgment on my part."
Iris feels her mother's fingers dig into her arm.
"I don't love her," Grant says simply. Like he's discussing the weather. "I thought I did. I tried to convince myself I did. But standing at that altar, I realized the truth. This was a business arrangement that went too far. And I can't do this to her. I can't do this to me."
Someone gasps. Then another person. Then the whole room.
"I'm sorry," Grant says, and he sounds like he means it. That's the worst part. He sounds genuine. "I'm sorry for humiliating you in front of all these people. I'm sorry for wasting your time. But better now than after we've both invested years in something that was never real."
He sets the microphone down.
He walks out of the ballroom without looking back.
The room explodes. People gasp and shout and pull out their phones. Cameras flash. Someone screams. Someone else is laughing like they can't believe what they just witnessed.
Iris is still standing in her dress.
Everything inside her has stopped. Her heart. Her breathing. Her ability to understand what just happened. The dress suddenly feels like it's made of cement. The room is too hot. There are too many people looking at her.
Her mother is pulling her, trying to guide her somewhere private. Her father's face is the color of wine. His hands are clenched into fists like he wants to hit something.
But Iris can't move. She can't process. She can't understand how someone goes from saying forever at an altar to saying never at a microphone in the space of nine minutes.
She watches Grant's empty chair at the head table. She watches her wedding cake with his name written in chocolate. She watches eight hundred people pull out their phones to record what just happened.
The video is probably already online.
Her face. His words. Her destroyed look frozen in pixels that will live on the internet forever.
A photographer pushes through the crowd and gets a shot of her standing alone in white silk while the party falls apart around her. That photo will be everywhere by morning. The girl who wasn't enough. The girl who got left at the altar. The girl who is officially the most humiliated woman in New York City.
Her mother is crying.
Her father is talking to security.
And Iris is standing in a dress that cost more than most people's cars, feeling like she's dying while eight hundred people watch it happen.
Grant is sitting in his Mercedes in the parking garage beneath the venue.
His hands are still shaking. His heart is racing so fast he thinks it might explode. He did it. He actually did it.
He feels like he can finally breathe.
For six months, he's been suffocating under the weight of what's happening. Under the weight of becoming soft. Under the weight of becoming his father's worst nightmare. Love makes you stupid. Love makes you weak. Love makes you lose everything.
He wasn't going to be his father.
Not for Iris. Not for anyone.
Grant reaches for his phone with trembling fingers. He has one hundred and seventy-three missed calls already. His mother. His business partner. His best friend. Everyone calling to ask what the hell he just did.
He turns the phone off.
He leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes and tries to convince himself that what he just did was the right choice. The smart choice. The strong choice.
But all he can see is Iris's face in the moment he said the words.
All he can feel is the weight of destroying the one person who ever made him feel like he could be more than his father's broken legacy.
Grant starts the car and pulls out of the garage.
He doesn't turn the phone back on.
He doesn't know that within three hours, the video will have three million views. He doesn't know that by morning, every magazine in New York will be calling Iris Webb the most pathetic woman in the city. He doesn't know that her life just ended in the nine minutes it took him to walk from the altar to his car.
He only knows that he just survived.
But as he drives through the dark New York streets, Grant Sullivan realizes something that makes his hands shake even harder.
He's not sure what he survived. And he's absolutely certain he just made the biggest mistake of his life.
He just doesn't know yet how much that mistake is going to cost him.