Chapter 2 Leo Jones
He walked down the red carpet as if he’d been invited. The coat caught the light with every step, so bright against the room that for one disorienting moment, he looked like the real groom and Aron the imposter.
The room went silent.
Somewhere in the crowd, someone probably thought: Is this one of those scenes? Is he here to stop the wedding?
“Who are you?” Aron snapped, his grip tightening on my hand.
The man smiled. “I’m someone very familiar with the bride.”
His eyes were an unnatural, striking blue. The kind of color you notice even from the back pew.
So he was here for me.
“I don’t know you,” I said. My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
“You don’t,” he agreed pleasantly. “But I know you sleep curled on your left side. I know the stuffed toy on your nightstand. I know you favor white dresses when you want to feel soft and innocent. I know there’s a small pink birthmark on your left breast. I know there are three little moles at the small of your back. I know that when you make love, you cry, and it’s… beautiful.”
The chapel detonated into shock.
No one was more stunned than Aron. As the man standing next to me, he knew every word was true.
The weight of the room shifted. Dozens, hundreds of eyes landed on me, pinning me in place.
One second, I was the glowing bride with everyone’s blessing.
The next, I was a scandal standing at the altar.
My mind emptied clean.
I had never cheated. I had never taken explicit photos or videos. I had never gotten so drunk I couldn’t remember what happened. I had been careful my entire life.
So how did he know?
Aron’s face said he hadn’t told anyone. He looked as blindsided as I felt.
His hand still clasped mine, firm, as if to say I believe you.
His parents’ stares said something else entirely. Their eyes were hard with suspicion, the kind that doesn’t care whether the truth is on your side or not.
On a normal day, if someone humiliated me like this, I might have been able to talk, to argue, to fight back. But this wasn’t a normal day. It was my wedding. Every relative, every old classmate, every colleague I’d ever wanted to impress was there.
And my most intimate parts had just been listed like items in a catalog.
When a stranger announces your secrets in front of everyone you know, there isn’t a script for how to prove you’re not what he implies.
My fists clenched. My body shook despite my effort to stay still.
I opened my mouth, desperate to say something, anything—
“These are generic traits,” a familiar voice cut in, calm and controlled. “They prove nothing. Security, escort this lunatic out.”
I turned toward the sound.
Leo.
Leo Jones. My uncle.
He stood at the end of the first row, shoulders squared, gaze fixed on the man in the white coat.
Memories didn’t so much surface as crash.
My parents’ business collapsed when I was five.
The debts.
Their quiet decision.
The news that they had killed themselves rather than face what they owed.
The illness that followed. The hospital bed. The cost of every day I stayed alive.
My grandparents had wanted nothing to do with me. To them, I was the curse that had killed their son and his wife.
They called me a witch. A demon. Said I had brought ruin on the family.
They wanted to throw me out.
Only Leo stepped between us.
He was ten years older than me. Still practically a kid himself. But he took my hand at the hospital and promised, with a seriousness too big for his age, that he would take care of me for the rest of his life.
He stayed by my bed. He argued with his parents. He refused to let them put me out on the street.
When my grandfather sold the house to pay debts, we moved into something too small for three adults and a child. There was no spare bedroom. I slept on the living room sofa, clutching a blanket like it might keep me from vanishing.
Leo offered me his bed and suggested he could sleep on the floor. My grandfather shut that down with shouting and threats.
Leo didn’t stop. Every night, when the house was finally quiet, he would carry me to his room and tuck me into his bed. He slept on a thin mat on the floor. And every morning, before our grandparents woke, he carried me back to the sofa like a secret.
When I was little, I thought it was a game.
When I grew up, I realized it was desperation, disguised.
By the time I was old enough for school, it was obvious I couldn’t go through childhood being called “puppy” by everyone.
My grandparents never bothered with a real name. It was Leo who fixed that.
He sat by me, thoughtful, and finally said, “Estelle.”
He gave me his surname, too. Estelle Jones. He told me it came from a word that meant “star.”
I stopped being the unwanted thing they blamed for everything. I became someone who might, in theory, belong in the sky.
Leo was the one constant in a world that kept breaking.
Until he wasn’t.
People grow up. They change. Whatever closeness we had didn’t survive my adolescence intact.
Slowly, Leo stopped ruffling my hair. Stopped letting me crash into his arms. Stopped holding my hand.
He grew colder, quieter, harder to reach.
He once promised that when he started working and bought a house, he’d take me away from our grandparents.
He did buy the house.
As soon as I graduated college, I lugged my suitcase over with my heart full of that old promise.
He blocked the doorway and looked at me like I was a stranger. “You shouldn’t believe what adults tell children,” he said. “They’re just words.”
Then he closed the door.
