Chapter 6
Kelsey’s apartment smelled like coffee that had been left on the warmer too long. I noticed it the moment she opened the door, along with the silence that followed us inside.
Levi stayed in the hallway.
“I can wait in the car,” he said.
I looked at Kelsey, who had changed out of the champagne robe and into jeans and a loose gray sweater. Her blonde hair was pulled back, but several strands had fallen around her face. She looked less like the maid of honor from my wedding morning and more like someone who had been awake for several nights.
“Wait downstairs,” I told him. “I’ll call if I need you.”
He nodded without asking what I needed protection from. That restraint mattered. It also made the apartment feel smaller when he left.
Kelsey shut the door and leaned against it.
“You said you had messages,” I said.
“I do.”
“Not deleted ones.”
“No.” Her fingers tightened around her phone. “The ones still there.”
I sat at the small kitchen table. The chair scraped against the floor, and Kelsey flinched at the sound.
She unlocked the phone and opened a conversation with Brandon. His name appeared at the top beside a photograph of him smiling in a suit, the same practiced expression he used at campaign events and in family pictures. I had once believed that smile meant he was comfortable.
Kelsey placed the phone on the table between us.
The first message was from several weeks before the wedding.
BRANDON: Don’t bring up Westbridge around Rachel.
My throat tightened.
KELSEY: She asked why some mail goes there.
BRANDON: Then tell her it’s campaign storage. I’ll handle the rest.
I read it twice. The words were plain. They didn’t mention love, promises, or what had happened between them. They showed something colder: a decision to keep me uninformed.
Kelsey scrolled.
BRANDON: The filing deadline is close. I can’t have this become a thing now.
KELSEY: You said the address was fixed.
BRANDON: It is if everyone stops making noise.
I leaned back from the phone.
“That doesn’t prove the affair,” I said.
Kelsey’s eyes filled, but she nodded. “No.”
“It proves he knew I was asking. It proves he wanted me kept away from the address.”
“Yes.”
“And it proves you agreed to help him.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. She looked down at her hands.
“I didn’t think it would go this far.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I was scared,” she said. “I thought if I told you, you’d hate me. If I told anyone else, Brandon would say I was trying to destroy the campaign. He kept telling me that people would blame me for everything.”
The phone buzzed as she scrolled farther. Another message appeared from Brandon, sent the week before the wedding.
BRANDON: No calls. No visits. No messages that could be misunderstood. Rachel is already watching.
KELSEY: You’re the one who keeps coming here.
BRANDON: Because you don’t know how to stay quiet.
Kelsey covered her mouth.
I felt the old pain move through me, but I refused to let it become proof of something the messages didn’t establish. The betrayal was real without needing me to exaggerate it.
“Did he tell you what to say about Westbridge?” I asked.
“He told me to repeat that the apartment was temporary campaign space. He said the address on the DMV envelope was an administrative mistake.”
“And did you believe him?”
“At first.” She swallowed. “Then I stopped asking.”
I took photos of each visible message with my phone. Kelsey watched me, shoulders drawn tight.
“Send them to me,” I said.
She hesitated.
“Kelsey.”
She forwarded the conversation. I saved the files in a new folder and sent copies to a separate email account Levi had helped me create. I didn’t forward everything to him yet. The messages needed to remain mine until I decided what happened next.
Kelsey stared at the table.
“Will you tell people I helped?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Rachel, please.”
“I can’t promise to protect you from consequences.”
Her face changed at that—not anger, exactly, but the moment she understood that our friendship could no longer be used as a shield.
“I didn’t mean to lose you,” she whispered.
“You chose silence because you were afraid of losing me,” I said. “But you still made the choice.”
She nodded, crying quietly now.
I stood and slipped my phone into my coat pocket. The messages gave Levi and me corroboration, but they didn’t give me back the morning before the wedding, or the trust I had placed in the person holding my veil.
At the door, I stopped.
“Keep the phone,” I said. “Don’t delete anything else. Don’t contact Brandon about this.”
Kelsey wiped her cheek. “Are you going to confront him?”
“Not yet.”
Outside, Levi stood beside his car beneath the apartment’s weak yellow light. He looked at my face, then at the phone in my hand.
“Did you get what you needed?”
May you like
I thought about the messages, the careful instructions, and Kelsey’s silence.
“I got what he wanted hidden,” I said. “That’s different from getting the truth.”
