They Gave My Wedding To My Sister Chapter 02
I gripped my phone, remembering how I’d turned this job down once before—for Ethan.
He’d held me so tightly that night, murmuring against my hair.
“Clara, if you leave the country, what am I supposed to do?”
“We’re about to get married. You’d really leave me behind?”
I’d agonized over it for days. And in the end, I chose him. I chose the wedding. I let the opportunity go.
Now, choking on the memory, I looked at Ethan one last time.
“If Pearl is back, why didn’t you just break up with me?”
“In those seven years, you must have loved me at least once. Didn’t you?”
Ethan said nothing.
Pearl gave a soft, pitying laugh.
“He didn’t leave you because I wouldn’t let him.”
“You’d made him your whole world.”
“I was afraid that if he left, you’d fall apart again.”
She approached me slowly, like a queen granting an audience.
“Clara, I let the man I love stay by your side for seven years.”
“I watched him celebrate your birthdays. Pose for engagement photos with you. Plan a wedding with you.”
“I stepped back for all of it.”
“Now I’m finally claiming the wedding that was always supposed to be mine. Why won’t you let me have even that?”
Then her hand drifted to her stomach.
“If it were just me, I could keep waiting.”
“But I’m three months pregnant.”
“I won’t let my child come into the world while his father is still pretending to be someone else’s groom.”
Ethan’s face changed instantly. He reached for her waist, steadying her.
“The doctor said you need to stay calm.”
“Stop explaining yourself to her.”
He looked at me, and his voice went cold.
“Clara, Pearl gave up seven years for your sake.”
“She’s carrying my child. I’m not going to keep pretending anymore.”
A few short sentences, and seven years were erased. Just like that.
But the Ethan I knew—he had once made me feel like the center of his world.
When I was hospitalized with acute gastritis, he canceled every meeting and sat by my bed for two days straight.
When his family disapproved of us, he cut himself off from his trust fund and moved into my tiny studio in Brooklyn.
During the worst of it, we’d split one bowl of instant ramen. He’d give me the egg and grin.
“Just give me a little more time, Clara.”
“I’ll make everyone see you didn’t choose wrong.”
Later, when his startup failed and the debt piled up, I was the one who carried us. Working my design job by day, freelancing by night, holding us together through two brutal years.
The day his first round of funding came through, he held me and cried for a long time.
He said he would never betray me. Not in this lifetime.
Those embraces were real. Those tears were real.
But now he stood shielding my pregnant sister, telling me that every moment of those seven years had been an act.
The screen behind the stage suddenly lit up.
The AV team, oblivious to the chaos, had started the couple’s anniversary montage on schedule.
Gold letters materialized across the screen:
Ethan & Pearl — 10 Years of Love
Photographs unfolded along a timeline.
My twenty-fourth birthday. Ethan had told me his flight was delayed. I’d sat alone in front of a cake going cold.
In the photo, he stood with Pearl on a ski slope in Aspen, wrapping a scarf around her neck before kissing the tip of her frozen nose.
Six months ago. The day I miscarried.
Ethan said he’d been called away on a last-minute business trip and couldn’t make it to the hospital.
My mother said she wasn’t feeling well.
Calls to both my father and Marcus went straight to voicemail.
I lay on that operating table alone, shaking so hard I thought my body would break.
In the photos, they were all in Tulum, celebrating Pearl’s birthday.
My mother held out a gift. My father cut the cake. Marcus hired a band to play on the beach all night.
And Sophie stood behind the camera, documenting the happy family reunion.
Photo after photo filled the screen—seven years of moments I was never part of.
Seven years of evidence hidden inside their lies.