Unforgivable Love
I did something unforgivable. A week before my wedding, I sl-pt with my fiancé’s best friend. I wish I could say it was a mistake. But it wasn’t. It was inevitable.
It started long before that night—years of stolen glances, fleeting touches that lingered a second too long, and words unspoken in the quiet spaces between laughter. Ethan had always been there, standing just behind Daniel, my fiancé, his best friend.
Daniel was my safe place. Steady, kind, reliable. The kind of man you married. And I loved him. Or at least, I had convinced myself that I did. But Ethan was different. He was fire and chaos, the feeling of the ground shifting beneath me. He made my heart race in a way Daniel never did. And I hated myself for wanting him.
I fought it. I told myself it was nothing, just a stupid attraction, something that would fade with time. But it didn’t. It only grew, festering beneath the surface, until it became unbearable.
Then came the night that changed everything.
Daniel was out of town for his bachelor party, leaving me alone in our apartment, surrounded by wedding plans, seating charts, and a dress I wasn’t sure I wanted to wear. The weight of it all crushed me. I needed air, an escape.
I found myself at Ethan’s door. I shouldn’t have gone. I knew that even as I knocked. But when he opened it, shirtless, his hair tousled like he had just woken up, I knew I was already lost.
He didn’t ask why I was there. He didn’t need to. He just stepped aside, letting me in, closing the door behind me with a quiet click that sealed my fate.
For a moment, we just stood there. The air between us was thick, charged with something we had both been running from for too long.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he finally said, his voice strained.
“I know.”
Silence.
And then he was kissing me. Or maybe I was kissing him. I don’t remember who moved first, only that the second our lips met, there was no going back.
It wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t an accident. It was every suppressed feeling, every stolen moment finally breaking free. It was desperate and reckl-ss and wrong. But it was also inevitable.
After, as we lay tangled in his sheets, reality crashed down around us. I should have felt guilty. I should have hated myself. But all I could think about was how right it had felt.
“I love him,” I whispered, as if saying it would make it true.
Ethan turned his head to look at me, his blue eyes dark with something I couldn’t name. “Do you?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came. Because I didn’t know.
I left before the sun rose, slipping out of his apartment like a thief in the night. But I couldn’t steal back what I had given him.
For days, I carried the secret like a stone in my chest. I went through the motions, smiling for dress fittings, pretending to be the blushing bride everyone expected me to be. But inside, I was unraveling.
Ethan was everywhere. In the way my hands trembled when Daniel touched me. In the way my heart lurched whenever my phone buzzed, terrified it would be him. In the way I lay awake at night, replaying every second of that night, wondering if he was doing the same.
The night before the wedding, I found him standing outside the reception hall, his hands in his pockets, his jaw tight.
“We need to talk,” he said.
I swallowed hard. “No, we don’t.”
He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “Are you really going to marry him?”
“Yes.” My voice didn’t sound like my own.
“Why?” His voice was quiet, but his eyes burned into me.
Because I love him. Because it was just one night. Because it can’t happen again.
But none of those were the truth. The truth was, I was afraid.
I didn’t answer. I just turned and walked away.
The next day, I stood at the altar, my hands clasped in Daniel’s, my heartbeat a war drum in my chest. He smiled at me, love shining in his eyes, and I wanted to scream.
When the officiant asked if anyone had objections, the room was silent.
Ethan wasn’t there.
I said “I do.”
And I spent the rest of my life wondering if I had made the biggest mistake of all.
