3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
ELLA
The shiny black SUV rolls down the track, its pristine paintwork catching the sun. I’ve no idea where they were parked before. The lot outside the equipment barn, maybe. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Carla’s here with her mystery man, and I need to get my shit together, fast.
I shuffle my feet wider apart, as if I can somehow hide the unfinished venue behind me. Nobody’s ever called me petite, but there’s no hiding a failure this size.
Gravel sprays as Carla brings the SUV to a stop right in front of me.
If tight white chinos and sockless loafers were my jam, I’d call the guy climbing out of the passenger side sexy.
But there’s something too curated about him.
Not a hair out of place. Not a bead of sweat on all that perfect skin.
Even his eyebrows look shaped to within an inch of their lives.
This one’s clearly made use of the honeymoon cabin’s bathroom, not just its bed.
Mystery Man walks around the car and opens Carla’s door. She unfolds one long tanned limb at a time, straightens, and shakes out her glossy blond hair. The corner of his mouth curls as the sun turns her hair gold, his hand hovering an inch off her butt.
“Ella!” Carla rushes at me, and I’m in awe that anyone can cross gravel in heels without a single wobble.
“Carla.” I wipe my sweaty palm on my jeans before I hold out my hand.
She air-kisses me twice, sets both hands on my shoulders, and physically moves me aside.
“Oh my Lord.”
Here it comes. “I know. I’m so sorry. The builders were supposed to be done by now, but…”
“It’s perfect!”
“It is?”
Carla ignores me, her hands flapping by her sides, her bottom lip wobbling.
“I’m Garrett.” Mystery Man steps forward, hand out, breezing right past whatever’s happening to Carla. Panic attack? Seizure? “The best man.”
“The best…” My heart slams so hard I wonder if they can see it through my shirt. The best man. The best fucking man. What the fuck?
Carla’s whimpering now, clutching her chest.
I ignore the six-foot problem in white chinos and turn to her. “Listen. I know it’s rough around the edges.”
“It’s stunning.”
“Really?” Could this day get any weirder?
“The wildflower pots, the tin roof, the chalkboard. Oh gosh, I don’t know where to look.” Carla grabs Garrett and links her arm through his. “Isn’t it perfect?”
Garrett raises one perfectly threaded eyebrow. “It’s… rustic?”
“Exactly!” Carla lets go of him and claps her hands. “Rustic chic meets old money. This is going to look incredible on my socials.” She pulls the newest iPhone from her purse and hands it to Garrett.
This is not Garrett’s first rodeo. No instruction needed. He opens the camera and starts fiddling with the settings while Carla arranges herself into a candid pose so carefully staged I want to laugh. It’s fake bullshit, all of it. Her followers are going to eat it up.
I clear my throat. “Would you like to see inside?”
Before Carla can answer, Garrett’s phone rings. He frowns at the screen. “Honey, I gotta take this.”
Honey?
“Don’t be long.” Carla chews her lip and drops her eyes to the gravel. “You know how much your opinion means to me.”
“I won’t be long.” Garrett leans in and kisses her cheek.
If I didn’t know what I know, I’d have missed the half-second his mouth moves to her ear and nibbles it. But I don’t miss it. And it makes me want to throw up.
Carla’s eyes flick to me. She flushes. She’s quiet the whole walk to the Tobacco Barn. Maybe with Garrett out of sight, she no longer feels the need to perform.
“I’ve set the tables the way they’ll be on the day.” Somehow I keep my voice cheerful. “If you want any changes to the decorations, now’s the time to say.”
Carla glances behind her. Closes the barn door. Lays a hand on my arm. She has zero interest in the table decorations.
“I know you saw us.”
“What?”
“At the cabin. You were there.” She shakes her head. “God, Ella. I’ve been such a fool.”
I aim for innocent. “Sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t play dumb.” Her voice hardens for half a second. “We both know what you saw. And I’m begging you. Don’t tell Ben.”
I open my mouth.
“Hear me out. Please.” She holds up a hand.
“It’s really not my place, Carla.”
“Garrett’s my oldest friend.” The words come out in a rush. “My best friend. We’ve known each other our whole lives. And there’s always been that question mark, you know?”
I really don’t.
“Like, why did nothing ever happen? We’re both hot, we’ve got the same sense of humor, the same goals. It should’ve happened years ago.”
“But it didn’t?” Despite myself, I’m curious. Why pick the week of your own wedding to find out?
“We were never single at the same time.”
“You’re not single now.” It’s out before I can stop it.
Carla’s hands fly to her face. “You must think I’m a terrible person.”
There’s a wobble in her voice and her eyes are shining, but I let the silence stretch. It’s not my place to judge. It’s also not in me to tell her that sleeping with another man three days before her wedding is fine.
“It meant nothing. I swear to you. I love Ben. He takes care of me, he’s steady, he’s calm, and that’s what I need. But I had to get Garrett out of my system. I had to know. Surely it’s better I did it now than after I’m married?”
It would be better if she didn’t do it at all. I keep that to myself.
“So here’s what’s going to happen.” Carla straightens, dabs carefully under each eye so the makeup survives, and just like that the wobble’s gone. “I’m going to tell him. Everything. I am. When the time’s right.”
“When’s the time ever going to be right for this, Carla?”
“After the wedding. Once we’re settled, when it isn’t all so…” She waves a manicured hand at the barn, the flowers, the table decorations. “I’ll sit him down, I’ll be honest, and we’ll get through it. That’s what married people do.”
I stare at her. I don’t have the first clue how to answer that.
“But if he hears it now?” She steps closer. “If he hears it from someone who isn’t me, three days out, or at his own wedding? You don’t know him, Ella. You have no idea what that would do to him.”
“So tell me.”
And she does.
She tells me about a little boy who found his daddy gone in the worst possible way.
About a mama who climbed into a bottle and never climbed back out.
She tells me about Ben at six years old learning to pack lunches for his baby brother because nobody else was going to do it.
A childhood spent being the reliable one who held it all together, so it never fell on anybody smaller than him.
“Nobody has ever taken care of Ben,” she says.
“Not once. Not in his whole life. He takes care of everyone, he asks for nothing, and if this blows up in his face in front of all our family and friends, it’ll break something in him that can’t be fixed.
I love him too much to do that to him. It should never have happened, I know that, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am.
But I made the worst mistake of my life, and now I have to consider the best way to deal with the fallout. Surely you can see that?”
And God help me, her words hit home.
Because I know that person. Not the Ben Callahan version, but the person Carla’s describing.
Because in some ways I’ve been that person too.
I’ve spent my whole life being the one who holds it together, so it doesn’t come down on someone smaller.
I clear the plates. I write the lists. I carry life’s stresses so nobody else has to.
And I would never, in a hundred years, want to be handed the worst news of my life by a stranger, in public, at what’s supposed to be the best day of my life.
Ten minutes ago, I was certain. Tell Ben. Simple. The right thing to do.
Now Carla’s turned it inside out, and telling him myself doesn’t feel like honesty anymore. It feels like cruelty. Like walking up to a man I barely know and setting his life on fire because I decided he had a right to the match.
Maybe the kind thing is to let her do it. Gently. In her own time. Her mess, her marriage, her truth to tell.
Maybe the kind thing is to stay out of it.
But a man is about to stand in my grandmother’s barn and promise the rest of his life to a lie.
There’s staying out of it, and there’s setting the tables for it.
“You have to tell him,” I say. “Not me. You. Before the wedding.”
Carla goes still. “Ella—”
“Before he stands up in that barn in front of everyone he cares about.” My heart’s beating hard enough to hurt, but my voice holds. “He has to know. All of it. If he still wants to marry you once he knows, that’s his choice. But he gets to make it.”
“And if he doesn’t?” The polish is gone now. “If I tell him, and I lose him?”
“Then you lose him with honesty, which is better than keeping him with a lie.”
She stares at me.
“Okay.” It’s hardly a word at all. “Okay. Before the wedding. He’ll hear it from me, Ella. I swear it.”
“Carla.” I wait until she looks at me. “I mean it. He deserves to hear it from you. If you leave me holding this, that isn’t fair. Not to him, and not to me.”
“I know.” Her eyes fill, and this time I honestly can’t tell if it’s real. “Thank you. Thank you, Ella. You’ve been more understanding than most people would be.”
She pulls me into a hug. She smells like money and someone else’s cologne.
Over her shoulder, through the crack in the barn door, Garrett’s out by the SUV, phone to his ear, laughing at something. Not a care in the world.
I hug her back.
“Please don’t make me regret this.”