Chapter 243 The Hallucination at the Wedding

Ethan’s POV Spring arrived almost without me noticing. The trees along the streets had started to green again, the air carried warmth instead of sharp cold, and people on the sidewalks no longer hunched into coats. But none of it touched me. My own life still felt like winter. Weeks had passed, and I still hadn’t been able to reach Katelyn. Every call ended the same: silence or unanswered rings. Every message sent into the dark, never answered. I told myself she was alive. I told myself she was safe somewhere. But the truth was, I didn’t know, and that truth gnawed at me until sleep and food barely mattered. Rachel and Xander’s wedding came in the middle of all this, like a fixed date that couldn’t be moved no matter what storms filled the rest of the world. I dressed in a suit, though my hands trembled buttoning it. My reflection looked hollow, the fever that had gripped me days earlier still written in the shadows under my eyes. But I went anyway. I couldn’t let them down. The venue