The Bride Who Actually Did It

On my wedding day, my husband killed himself.

Before he cut his own throat, he left two letters on the vanity of our bridal suite.

The first accused me of murderspecifically, of orchestrating the car crash that had wiped out the Cross family years ago.

The second was a love letter, a confession of his undying devotion to Mallory Cross.

In it, he claimed that I had been so desperate to marry him that I staged the accident to get Mallory out of the picture. Though Mallory had survived, she was left with severe psychological trauma and was currently receiving treatment at a private facility in Europe.

Galen wrote that he couldnt live with the weight of this ugly truth anymore. His suicide was an act of penance. As amends, he left his entire estate to charity, hoping the law would finally find me and make me pay.

The scandal tore through the media like wildfire.

Yet, I didn't panic.

Because a ten-years-older version of Galen had just crossed the boundaries of time to tell me the truth.

1.

When I walked into the bedroom, Galen was already gone.

He was still dressed in his tailored, pristine wedding tuxedo, but the dark crimson from his carotid artery had sprayed across the cream-colored ceiling, dripping slowly onto the white rug.

Within minutes, the soft, romantic acoustic melody playing in the courtyard was drowned out by the shrill wail of police sirens.

The police cordoned off the estate. Every guest was detained for questioning. But as the prime suspect, I was locked alone in the library. The heavy oak windows were bolted shut. Any object sharp enough to cause harm had been cleared from the room.

I was left in the stifling silence of that massive room, left to drown in the sheer absurdity of the day.

Then, the heavy door clicked open.

Framed in the doorway was the very face I had been mourning.

"Galen?"

I took a step forward, my hands trembling, my chest tight. "But... you're dead. I saw you."

My mind was spinning. The man I loved had accused me of killing a family, killed himself to escape me, and now... here he was. I pinched the soft skin of my thigh, hard enough to bruise, to make sure I wasn't trapped in some sleep-deprived nightmare.

But the urgency on his face was entirely real.

He scanned the room, his eyes turning bloodshot.

"I'm too late," he whispered, his voice cracking. "Iris, I don't have much time. You have to listen to me. Every single word."

He closed the distance between us, grabbing my shoulders.

"I am from ten years in the future. Today... this whole wedding, this suicideit's a trap. A carefully orchestrated scam."

"I didn't die. I've been having an affair with Mallory for years, but I was too much of a coward to break our engagement."

"So we faked my death. The plan was for me to slip out of the country and start a new life with her in Europe. The charity donation? It was just a legal loophole to transfer our marital assets out of your reach so we could live comfortably abroad."

I stood frozen, the breath knocked out of me.

Years ago, my father had died in a tragic accident while saving Galen's life. After that, the Barrett family took me in. Galen's father, Uncle Hector, knew about our feelings and happily arranged our engagement. To ensure I would always be secure, he wrote a clause into his will: Galen would only inherit the family fortune if he married me.

This entire performancethe blood, the letters, the griefwas nothing but a grand exit strategy to bypass his father's will.

I stumbled back, my boots heavy on the hardwood floor.

The man in front of me had Galen's face, his tall frame, the faint scent of sandalwood and rain that I had loved for a decade. But the words coming out of his mouth were monstrous.

"That's impossible," I stammered, shaking my head. "Galen loves me. He would never do this to me."

Galen's eyes welled with tears. He grabbed my hands, his grip tight and desperate.

"I am so sorry, Iris. I regretted it. I spent a decade drowning in remorse, and I built this machine to stop it. You have no idea what happens to you over the next ten years."

2.

Galen checked the glowing watch on his wrist and pulled me down onto the leather sofa. He took a ragged breath, steeling himself.

"In the first year after I left, you were ruthlessly doxed. The internet tore you apart. You lost your job at the firm, and under the immense stress, you miscarried."

My heart stopped.

A baby.

My hand instinctively drifted to my lower stomach.

My father's final wish before he died was to see me married, happy, and holding a child of my own. But my health had always been fragile, and the doctors told me the chances of conceiving were slim. The Barrett relatives had whispered behind my back, but Galen had always shielded me. He had stood by me through every painful injection, every fertility clinic visit, holding my hand and whispering promises when the tests came back negative.

I thought we would never have a child. To find out I was pregnant now, amidst this horror, felt like a cruel joke from a sadistic god.

"And my job?" I managed to ask, my voice barely a whisper. "How did they find out?"

Galen lowered his gaze, unable to meet my eyes.

"I didn't think the firestorm would grow so big," he muttered. "But Mallory and I... we knew you. We knew how smart you were, and I was terrified you'd find a crack in our story and track us down. So I hired online PR firms to keep you distracted. It was only supposed to keep you busy for a few weeks. But it spiraled out of control. You lost your career... and my mother disowned you."

"Your mother?"

My eyes widened.

But then the pieces clicked. Mallory had a degree in mass communications and investigative journalism; she knew exactly how to manufacture a villain. If she wanted to destroy someone, she didn't just ruin their reputationshe erased their humanity.

My mother, a proud, highly respected academic, could never bear the shame of having a daughter branded as a cold-blooded killer.

A sharp pain bloomed in my chest. I could almost see her facepale, cold, turning away from me in disgust as she signed the papers to cut me out of her life.

"Galen, how could you?"

I shoved him away, the tears finally spilling over.

"Have you forgotten? When my father died, you knelt by his headstone and swore to God that you would protect my mother and me. If you wanted to hurt me, fine! But why did you have to drag her into your hell?"

Galen reached for me, his expression frantic.

"I didn't mean for it to go that far! I swear, Iris, I didn't."

"Once the news took off, I tried to check on you. But Mallory got pregnant with our first child. We were high-risk, and I had to focus on her. By the time things settled, I received the news that your mother had locked herself in her apartment and lit a charcoal grill. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning. And you... in your grief, you lost the baby. The complications were so severe they had to perform an emergency hysterectomy."

His voice was soft, but every word felt like a serrated blade sawing through my ribs.

I closed my eyes, forcing down the violent, black tide of rage rising in my throat.

"And then?"

"You had nothing left," he whispered. "No family, no career, no moneybecause I took it all with me. In your desperation, you took a job at a high-end lounge downtown, hosting wealthy clients. But because of the murder accusations, the other girls targeted you. You were treated like dirt."

3.

I fought for breath, trying to keep myself from unraveling in front of him.

"When you saw what I had become, did you ever think to come forward? All it would have taken was one phone call. If you showed your face, the murder charge would have vanished. Did you do anything?"

Galen hesitated, his fingers twitching.

"I wanted to. I swear I did."

"But?"

"But Mallory was running for a seat on the board of a major international human rights foundation. Her public image had to be spotless. If the truth came out about me, she would have been ruined."

"So... you let me rot."

I stared at him, the tears drying on my cheeks.

"Did you forget that working for an international foundation was my dream? That was the career I went to school for."

Galen looked away. "I know. But I didn't have a choice."

I cut off his excuses with a cold laugh.

"Galen, I know myself. No matter how low I fell, I wouldn't have stayed in the mud forever. What else did you do to make you build a time machine just to beg for my forgiveness?"

If I had simply ended up a broken hostess, the Galen I knew would have felt a momentary pang of guilt and moved on. There had to be something more.

Galen remained silent for a long moment, a heavy sigh escaping his lips.

"You didn't give up," he admitted. "You studied during the day and worked the night shifts. You got accepted into a prestigious graduate program in London. And because the police never found any physical evidence linking you to the Cross accident, they finally dropped the investigation. You were on the verge of starting over."

"But?"

Galen's lip trembled.

"The campus you got into... it was only twenty minutes from our estate in Hampstead. I was terrified you'd run into us, that you'd see me. So I forged a whistleblower letter. I used my connections on the board of trustees to pressure the university. They revoked your admission and blacklisted you from every major academic institution in Europe."

"You took the last piece of hope I had left."

Looking at him, I felt a deep, chilling hollow open in my chest.

The girl I would have been... staying up under the dim yellow light of a cramped apartment, memorizing foreign policy terms, pushing through the shame and the physical exhaustion just to prove she was still worth something.

And with a single stroke of his pen, Galen had wiped her out.

"You are a monster, Galen," I whispered, shaking my head. "A literal monster."

Galen reached out, trying to steady my shoulders, his own eyes brimming with tears.

"Iris, please, hear me out. I realized I was wrong. The guilt was eating me alive, so I came back to find you. I left an envelope of cash at your apartment so you'd at least be financially secure. But Mallory found out. She thought I was still in love with you, and in a fit of rage, she tipped off the police. The old wedding ring I had left behind in the safethe one they found near the 'suicide' scenewas suddenly tied to a forensic match. They convicted you. You were sentenced to three years in a state penitentiary. While you were inside, some of the inmates... they broke your leg."

He didn't need to finish the story. I could piece together the rest.

A disfigured, crippled ex-con, unable to find even a decent cleaning job, let alone host at a lounge. Left to rot in a damp, cheap rental on the edge of the city.

I closed my eyes, grieving for the woman I would have been.

"I regretted it, Iris. I truly did," Galen pleaded, his voice breaking into a sob. "My life with Mallory wasn't a fairy tale. She is demanding, ruthless, and entirely self-serving. To her, I was just a step on the ladder. Our marriage was constant warfare. She didn't have your warmth. She didn't support my dreams. She didn't wake up to make me coffee, and she didn't even remember that I'm deathly allergic to peanut butter."

"I missed you so much. I wanted to fix it. But by the time I finally swallowed my pride and went to look for you... you were already dead. You died alone in a basement apartment. Your body was so badly decomposed that the neighbors only noticed because of the smell."

"That image... it haunted me. I divorced Mallory, poured every dime of my inheritance into quantum research, just for a chance to see you again. To hear your voice."

I looked at the faint lines around his eyes, the deep fatigue etched into his face.

"So," I said, my voice eerily calm. "You want me to forgive you? You want us to play house and pretend you didn't systematically destroy my life?"

"Why on earth do you think I would ever give you another chance?"

4.

Galen broke down, weeping openly, his face buried in his hands.

"I know I don't deserve it. I know I have no right to ask. But every single day after you died, I lived in a living hell of my own making. I just want to stop this from happening. We can have the life we were supposed to have."

Growing up, everyone said Galen and I were written in the stars.

Until Mallory Cross moved in next door.

She was loud, vibrant, and possessed an old-money confidence that drew Galen in. I watched him shift from cold indifference to quiet hesitation whenever her name was mentioned.

I had my doubts back then. But I chose to trust him. I chose to trust the boy who had knelt at my father's grave and promised to love me forever.

That trust had cost me everything in another lifetime.

"Galen," I asked, my voice flat. "When did it start? Before or after we got engaged?"

Galen took a ragged breath.

"Before. She was my first love, Iris. She always held this idealized space in my mind. When she first came back to the States, I wanted to break things off with you, but then her family had that accident, and she vanished before I could say anything. When she returned years later, we ran into each other... and it just happened."

He looked up, desperate.

"But I was wrong. The nostalgia blinded me. She isn't the angel I thought she was. You... you were the one I should have cherished."

He choked on his words, his chest heaving.

"I saw the autopsy report from your future self, Iris. Your body... it was covered in old, poorly healed fractures. Your fingers were misshapen. You had blunt force trauma to the back of your skull. I can't bear the thought of what you went through."

He reached out to grab my hand again.

"I'll go to the police. I'll tell them I faked my death. Just... please, give me a chance to make it right."

This was the first time in our lives I had ever seen Galen look so small, so utterly broken. It was the first time he had ever begged me for anything.

He expected me to soften. He expected the good, gentle Iris to wrap her arms around him and offer absolution.

But he didn't know me at all.

I reached out, gently wiping a tear from his cheek, and leaned in close.

"Thank you for the story, Galen. It was very illuminating."

I leaned closer, my voice a quiet, freezing whisper.

"But there's one thing you got wrong."

"The car crash that killed the Cross family? I actually did it."