Page 9 of The Substitute Fiancée

I stay there for a moment, lost in thought.

“Where to, sir?” Gilles asks.

“Kristel’s,” I reply without hesitation.

It wasn’t planned. But for a reason I don’t understand, a strange tension has gripped me ever since I bought the ring. I need to see her, to shake off this unease. The drive to the sixteenth arrondissement feels longer than usual.

I should be excited, impatient. We’ve been talking about engagement and marriage for weeks. Instead, I feel… uncertain.

*

The car stops in front of Kristel’s Haussmann building. Immaculate façade. Wrought-iron balconies. Large white-framed windows.

“Would you like me to wait, sir?” Gilles asks.

“No. I’ll be staying here tonight. You can head home. Thank you for today.”

He nods, and I get out.

When I reach Kristel’s door, no one answers when I knock. I wait a few seconds and knock again. Still nothing.

Strange. She didn’t have plans tonight.

Since I have a spare key, I decide to wait inside.

The moment the door opens, I know something is wrong.

The apartment is plunged into semi-darkness. Only the bedroom light filters under the door. But what freezes me is the sound.

Muffled sounds. Moans. Labored breathing.

My mind refuses to understand at first. Kristel is watching a movie. That’s all. She didn’t hear me come in. I cling to that explanation as I move forward on unsteady legs, cold sweat breaking out along my spine.

With every step, my heart tightens.

The sounds grow clearer. The slap of skin against skin.

No. No. Not this.

The bedroom door is ajar. My body already knows what my mind still refuses to accept. My hands tremble. My throat tightens. And when my eyes take in the scene, it takes exactly two seconds for my world to collapse.

Kristel—the woman I love, the one I planned a future with—is there, completely naked, straddling Grégoire. One of my friends. Their skin glistens with sweat under the dim bedside lamp. Their cries of pleasure and the obscene sound of their bodies colliding fill the room.

The shock hits me like a punch to the gut. The air leaves my lungs all at once. I can’t breathe. The image burns into my retinas with surgical clarity: the curve of her back, her hair stuck to her neck, her hands gripping her lover’s shoulders.

I stand there, paralyzed, faced with a betrayal I never saw coming. Unable to shout, to move, even to look away.

How do you survive this?

Then the questions come crashing through my mind like a savage horde. How long has this been going on? Is he the first? How could I have missed it? Every happy memory, every tender moment is now tainted. Everything I thought was real was a lie.

“Harder,” she moans.

Words that once aroused me now make me want to vomit.

That detail finally breaks my paralysis.

It’s time for me to leave.