After She Could Smell Emotions, She Called Off the Wedding Chapter 01
I’d been able to smell other people’s emotions for as long as I could remember.
Affection smelled sweet, sadness bitter, and anger and disgust sharp and peppery.
In the ten years I’d been with Nathan Cole, his scent around me had always been almost unbearably sweet.
The only exception came three years ago, when my older sister, Jasmine Bennett, left the country.
Nathan came home late that night, smelling so bitter that I frowned the moment he walked in.
Still, I never connected the two.
Then Jasmine came home three years later to get married.
On her wedding day, Nathan’s scent was bitter and peppery at once, a combination I’d never smelled on him before.
Something felt wrong, so I followed him out of the ballroom—only to hear his strained, anguished voice in the hallway.
“That’s enough, Jasmine! You’d rather marry some man you barely know just to make me give up on you?”
I froze outside the door. My hands went numb, and for a second, I forgot how to breathe.
Just then, my phone lit up with a calendar reminder.
[Wedding: Georgia Bennett and Nathan Cole. Next Saturday.]
I stared at it, numb, then called the hotel and canceled our wedding.
***
Through the crack in the door, I watched them hold on to each other like they were the ones being torn apart. Their bitterness seemed to spill through the doorway.
Jasmine covered her face as she cried, her shoulders shaking.
“Nathan, this has to end. We can’t keep doing this.”
She looked up at him, barely concealing her grief.
“I’m getting married, and you and Georgie are getting married next week. After Mom and Dad died, Georgie and I only had each other.”
“She’s the last person I’d ever want to hurt. Please don’t hurt her. I’m begging you.”
I leaned against the wall as needle-sharp pain spread through my chest.
A laugh escaped me, followed by a sob. Then another laugh.
Soon I couldn’t tell whether I was laughing or crying. My fiancé and my sister had been betraying me, and somehow I was the last to know.
Jasmine and Nathan.
I’d never once imagined the two of them together. They had always kept their distance, behaving more like strangers than anything else, with me as their only connection.
On holidays, Nathan would bring gifts to our house and greet her with a polite, distant, “Hi, Jasmine.”
She would give him a cool nod and say nothing more than, “Come in.”
Whenever Nathan left, Jasmine would smooth my hair as if she were struggling to hold something back.
“You have to be happy, Georgie.”
I’d never understood the sadness in her eyes.
Now I did.
Nathan reached for her, his hand trembling.
“Don’t do this, Jasmine. Please don’t do this to me.”
She closed her eyes and shoved his hand away.
“I said it was over. Some people just aren’t meant to be together, Nathan. We have to accept that.”
He drove his fist into the wall. Blood ran over the hands he relied on in surgery, but he barely seemed to notice.
“I don’t believe that for a second. Come with me, Jasmine. We can leave all of this behind.”
She pulled away, her expression resolute.
“I won’t hurt Georgie. If you try to take me away, I’ll never speak to you again.”
Nathan’s entire body went taut as a bowstring. Then all the fight drained out of him. His shoulders slumped as he let out a bitter laugh.
“Fine.”
“You win, Jasmine. You win.”
“I’ll stay with Georgie, and I’ll treat her right for the rest of my life.”
A bitter, self-mocking smile twisted my lips.
I walked away in a daze, barely feeling the floor beneath my feet.
Nathan returned a while later and sat beside me.
“What’s wrong?” He brushed his thumb beneath my reddened eye. “Have you been crying?”
I looked up at him, digging my nails into my palm.
Once again, he was the gentle, composed man I knew, as if everything I’d witnessed had been an illusion.
I moved away before I could stop myself.
“I’m fine.”
He didn’t press. The ballroom lights dimmed, and his attention shifted to the closed double doors.
“Please rise for the bride.”
Jasmine appeared at the far end of the aisle in her wedding gown.
Her gaze found me first. Then she glanced at Nathan, and although it lasted only a second, the sorrow in her eyes was unmistakable.
Nathan clenched his fists, struggling to hold himself together.
I saw everything. I breathed in softly, and grief surged through me.
Of the three of us, not one carried even the faintest trace of sweetness.
At the altar, Jasmine exchanged vows of eternal devotion with Ethan Parker. When it was time for the bride’s family to speak, the emcee brought the microphone to our table.
“We’d now like to ask the bride’s sister, Georgia Bennett, to say a few words.”
I reached for it, but Nathan, silent since returning to the ballroom, suddenly stood and took the microphone.