No one spoke, but no one needed to. The unspoken answers hovered between us like an uncomfortable truth no one wanted to claim ownership of.
“I know some of you think I married her because I needed stability,” he continued, a faint smile touching his lips, not bitter, not defensive, just honest. “A home. A safety net. Someone to save me.”
My fingers curled into the fabric of my dress beneath the table, my heart pounding so loudly I was sure the people beside me could hear it.
“I don’t blame you,” Adrian said. “If I had only seen the version of me you met, I might have thought the same.”
He paused, his gaze moving slowly across the room, landing briefly on Bianca, on my aunt who had almost refused to attend, on a few coworkers who had accepted the invitation more out of curiosity than affection, and finally, on me.
“But there’s a part of my life most of you don’t know,” he said, his voice softening without losing strength. “A part Elena herself only learned piece by piece.”
Something in my chest tightened.
This wasn’t part of any speech we had planned.
“Before I slept on park benches,” Adrian said quietly, “before I counted days by the kindness of strangers or the cruelty of winter nights, I had a very different life.”
A murmur rippled through the room, curiosity replacing judgment, judgment replaced by something closer to attention.
