Poolside Confessions

The palm reader had been wrong about the marriage, but she'd been dead right about the secret.

Maya traced the **palm** of her left hand, the lifeline the fortune teller had pronounced "troubled" three nights ago at the bachelorette party. At the time, Maya had laughed it off, along with the woman's prediction that she'd soon "bear a weight that would crush her if she didn't set it down."

Now, watching Chloe and Marcus by the resort pool, Maya understood.

The **pool** glittered like shattered turquoise in the Mexican sun. Chloe's white dress billowed as she threw herself into Marcus's arms, laughing—truly, radiantly laughing—in a way she'd never laughed with anyone else. They'd been married for three hours. Their wedding photos were still being taken by the jacaranda trees.

And Maya had slept with Marcus two weeks ago.

It had happened after their engagement party—too much tequila, years of unresolved chemistry, the kind of moment that destroys lives when acted upon but festers just as destructively when withheld. He'd told her the next day that he loved Chloe, that it was a mistake, that they could never speak of it again. He'd chosen his honor over his heart.

Maya had chosen silence.

She thought she could **bear** it—stand beside her best friend as maid of honor, toast to their happiness, carry the knowledge like a stone in her stomach until eventually, somehow, it dissolved. But watching them now, seeing how purely Chloe trusted them both, Maya felt the weight buckling her knees.

"You look like you're attending a funeral, not a wedding."

Maya turned to find the palm reader standing there, still wearing her sequined wrap from three nights ago. The older woman's face softened with something like pity.

"You're still carrying it," she said quietly. "Whatever it is."

Maya's eyes filled. "I can't. It'll destroy her."

"It already is," the woman said, gesturing toward Chloe and Marcus. "Look."

Chloe was watching them, her smile faltering. She'd seen Maya's face. She'd felt it, the way best friends always do—the ripple of wrongness beneath the surface.

The truth has a way of rising, Maya realized. Like bodies in water. "You told me my lifeline was troubled," she said to the fortune teller. "You didn't tell me I'd have to break it myself."

"I only read what's already written," the woman said, then walked away toward the bar.

Maya turned toward the pool. Chloe was coming toward her, Marcus following slowly behind, his face already knowing. Behind them, the reception continued—music, laughter, champagne toasts—three hundred people celebrating a love that already had a crack running through its foundation.

Maya took a breath. Then another. Then she walked forward to meet them.