30. Abigail
THIRTY
ABIGAIL
I picked up the pace, my heels clacking against the tile floor as I headed to the coat check. As I approached, I noticed Tammy standing in the doorway, filming something.
Ugh. The bridesmaids must be in there, and I was in no mood to see anyone right now. Could I walk home? I looked down at my shoes. No, I needed to get my keys and get out of here fast.
When I got closer I heard low voices. It sounded like Blair and Rex, but it had to be Blair and Donny, right? I made it to Tammy’s side, and she looked up at me, eyes wide and mouth gaping, but she kept filming ahead.
“Abigail,” she whispered.
“What?” I stepped up beside her. And that’s when I saw.
I stopped short, heat creeping up my cheeks and the back of my neck. Blinking my eyes, I tried to convince myself I wasn’t seeing what I thought I was seeing. The bride and the man I was falling for were chest to chest, like lovers about to embrace .
“I love you too,” Blair said, and I blinked. It took me a second to process her words.
Love was what I thought I felt for Rex. Love was the out-of-control, too-big-to-explain feeling that had been growing in my chest.
Rex loved…Blair?
Love was humiliating. Love was vulnerability, exposed and weeping, for someone else to exploit.
All those things he did… All those lines he fed me…were just lies?
Time pushed and pulled around me, like I was stepping through a funhouse full of mirrors. Blair went up on her tiptoes, and they kissed. Shock bolted through my system.
“Rex?” I said. Suddenly, I was back to that moment when I caught Travis in bed with another woman and my whole world came crashing down. I was the idiot who’d tried to change myself, to fit in a box that was never meant to hold me.
How could this happen? How could I have fallen for two lying, cheating jerks? I held my breath as my mind raced.
Rex’s gaze whipped in my direction. “Abigail.”
I wanted to throw up. Actually, I was going to throw up. Right now, all over the beautiful marble floor of this vineyard I’d organized for the wedding. And Tammy would get it all on video.
“Oh, my God.” I turned on my heel and ran. It took me longer than it should to realize that I was running in the wrong direction. The exit was back where I came, but—there! The cocktail bar. The first few guests waited for the ceremony with their drinks, but more importantly, there was a side door on the far side of the room. I’d hotwire my car and get out of here. It wasn’t a crime if I owned it, right?
“Abigail, wait!” Rex called after me just like Travis had. I hadn’t wanted to hear anything Travis had to say back then, and I didn’t want to hear anything that Rex had to say now. “It’s not what you think.”
“I saw you with my own two eyes, Rex. It’s exactly what I think,” I yelled back as his steps gained on me.
“T! Where are you going?” Blair’s shrill voice echoed behind us.
“Abigail, wait. Please!” Rex reached for my arm, but I shrugged him off.
“Don’t touch me!” I hated this. I hated him .
I’d actually believed him. When he told me I was beautiful, when he made me feel like I was the woman he wanted, I’d believed him . Like a fool. Like a pathetic, love-starved fool . I’d thought he was going to parade me around town on his arm like he actually cared about me.
I needed to get out of here. I needed my keys. I needed a car. I needed to not be so close to Rex, and I needed to not hear Blair’s voice ever again.
“Abigail—”
“I said don’t touch me!” My voice was shrill as I ripped my hand out of Rex’s once more. The man whose touch I couldn’t get enough of was suddenly painful for me. When I glanced up, Gabe was rushing toward me, that protective look in his eyes. He rounded the bar, shoving a wide-eyed Mrs. Montgomery out of the way.
“What happened?” Gabe demanded, stopping right in front of me .
I looked up at him with tears puddling in my eyes and anger swirling in my chest, but I couldn’t say the words. My throat was too tight. My heart was too broken.
I was too fucking humiliated to have fallen for this again.
And I didn’t have to say a word, because Tammy spilled the whole story with her recording device aimed and ready. “I’ll tell you what happened. Rex and Blair kissed.”
“Tammy!” Blair yelled, but the bridesmaid didn’t skip a beat.
“Now Abigail’s heartbroken, and I caught the whole thing on video,” Tammy finished, all smug and proud.
“What?” My brother’s eyes went dark as he glared at Rex over my shoulder.
“I didn’t?—”
“I told you not to get involved with my sister.”
“Stay out of this, Gabe.”
“Stay out of it? This might have been fake for you, but Abigail actually had feelings for you, Rex. And now you turn around and do this ?”
Oh, my God. I wanted to die. Gabe knew I had feelings for Rex. Tammy was still filming. Blair looked like she wanted to crow in victory. Rex was saying something, but all I could hear was the rushing of blood in my ears.
“So let’s see the video!” Gabe screamed, then shot his arm out to block Rex from stepping toward me. “And stay away from my sister.”
“She doesn’t need you to speak for her,” Rex snapped.
In another life, I might’ve appreciated that, but right now, I did need Gabe to speak for me. I had no words. They’d been stolen by the pain radiating from my chest to my extremities, by the pounding between my ears, by the gasping breaths I struggled to take.
“I played along with this stupid charade for long enough,” Gabe said.
Blair let out a triumphant laugh. “Charade? Wait, what? Was this fake, T?”
“Stay out of this, Blair! Abigail, I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me .”
I scoffed. “Oh, right.”
“I didn’t—” Rex started, and my brother shoved him back as hard as he could. I watched Rex find his footing. “It’s just a misunderstanding,” he growled back at Gabe, then his gaze grew desperate as he looked at me. “Abigail, please!”
“Don’t talk to her,” Gabe said, stepping between us again. “Don’t fucking look at her!”
Part of me wanted to watch Rex get pummeled by my big brother—one of the few times I appreciated his overbearing nature. But there was another part that knew no punch in the face could make this right. As messy as the whole thing was, it was my mess. My heartbreak.
Besides, I was sick of these men acting like they knew what was best for me. I was sick of not being good enough. Of being incidental to their big lives.
I mattered . And my heartbreak fizzled into something that felt a lot more familiar.
White-hot rage.
“Both of you, stop it!” I screamed, marching between them.
Unfortunately, that’s when Gabe decided to throw a punch. I ducked out of the way, and my brother clipped Rex’s jaw. Rex let out a grunt and stumbled back, hands scrabbling toward me .
“Hey! Back off!” Donny flew into the scene out of nowhere and side-tackled Gabe like a linebacker in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl. They both went down to the ground. I stepped back with a gasp.
“You should be after Rex too. He kissed Blair!” Gabe roared and shoved off New Elwood’s golden boy football star.
“He what?” Donny turned his fury back at his brother.
Rex’s hands were in tight fists. His brows furrowed. “No, I didn’t. I wouldn’t?—”
“Yes, he did!” Blair yelled, inserting herself in the middle of the fight scene. All the frustration, annoyance, and indignation she put me through this week bubbled up inside of me. I’d had just about enough of her Blairzilla crap! Maybe a punch in the face wouldn’t heal my heartbreak, but if someone could just shut her up, it might take the edge off.
I spotted a full glass of wine on the nearby bar, snatched it up, and tossed it in her face. Red wine splashed on her cheeks and smattered across the lacy fabric of her gown like a murder scene.
“Ah! My new dress!” she shrieked so loud her voice echoed off the walls. “You’ve ruined everything, Abigail! You’ve ruined everything again !” Her blue eyes were bloodshot with rage and her face dripping with merlot as she barreled toward me, grabbed onto my shoulders, and pushed me hard. So hard that I crashed into something…soft and creamy?
With Blair’s hands practically around my neck, I felt a mix of Styrofoam, crumbled cake, and thick frosting beneath me, sticking to me like mud to boots after a rainy day.
Oh, crap! The cake! Sophie’s beautiful tower of buttercream and deliciousness, which had been on glorious display for all the guests to admire ahead of the ceremony, was currently squashed beneath me.
So much for not messing up Sophie’s cake.
Blair screamed in my face so loud I thought my eardrum would rupture. She was the bride from hell. She was the worst houseguest I’d ever had. She’d made a fool of me by kissing the man I thought I loved.
And she made my compost explode. Basically.
I grabbed a handful of the wedding cake and smashed it in her face. She squealed, then scraped at the buttercream and went for my eyes. I dodged out of the way and took another handful of cake and smacked her across the face with it. The sound was wet and satisfying.
But instead of stopping her up, she gripped my arm, clamped her jaw over my hand, and bit the crap out of my skin. What the hell? Was she three years old?
“Aargh!” I cried. The pain shooting through my hand generated enough energy to shove her the hell off of me. Donny snatched her by the waist as she wailed her arms and legs in the air. Breaths sawed out of me. I lay in the mess of demolished cake, feeling like I’d just sprinted a hundred-yard dash.
When I tried to pick myself up off the floor, my hand slipped out from under me and I fell into the cake again. Growling in frustration, I flipped onto my front, crawled onto my hands and knees, and finally got to my feet. My head was full of static. My hands were full of buttercream. My heart—my heart was empty. Numb.
I took in the scene. Gabe and Rex were going at it—red-faced with bowties and shirt collars askew. Tammy stood by filming the whole thing. She flipped the camera around to selfie mode. “See, y’all, Blair and Donny’s wedding part two is even crazier than part one!”
Hold on. She wasn’t just filming the whole thing. She was streaming it live. That meant everyone had seen it. Everyone would know I’d been cheated on. Again. Only this time, there was video proof. Humiliation was bitter and acrid. It was the stickiness of half-melted icing under my fingernails. It was the mush of compacted cake in every wrinkle of my clothes.
I couldn’t take any more.
She, and the rest of the world, had seen enough of me. I marched over and snatched her phone out of her hand.
“Hey! Give that back!” Tammy lunged for me, but I clutched the phone close to my chest and headed for the door. She jumped on my back, and the icing slipped and slid against my skin.
I hurled the phone, and it smashed against the closest wall with a loud crack. “Get off me!” I hollered and clawed at her arms.
“Hey, hey! Now what in the hell is going on here?” Bryce called, grabbing my arm and yanking me away from Tammy. His grip was tight and pain seared up my arm.
“Bryce, stop! You’re hurting me!”
“Shut up, Stone. I’m sick of you causing trouble around here,” he barked back, wringing his hand around my arm so hard it felt like a burn. He slapped a pair of cold metal cuffs on my wrists.
“Get off of her, Lawson,” Rex growled, and gripped him by the collar so hard that Bryce let go and pushed me at his partner. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“That’s it, Montgomery. You’re under arrest.” Bryce pinned Rex’s arm behind his back and clawed at his belt. I had his cuffs, but Bryce pulled out a pair of plastic cuffs that looked like zip ties. Rex winced as the policeman tightened them. My gaze met Rex’s, but I didn’t know how to feel. He’d saved me from Bryce, but he’d betrayed me in the biggest way.
Several other police officers stormed in and surrounded us. “Arrest all of them!” Bryce ordered the others. “Except her.” He gestured to Blair, then ran to her side. “Are you all right, Blair?”
She fluttered her hands near her face. “No! Abigail attacked me!”
“Don’t worry,” Bryce said, eyes snapping to mine. “She’s going back where she belongs. In jail.” The two glared at me. Grimacing, I could almost hear the clatter of the jail cell bars from all the way over here.
But hey. It’s not like my day could get any worse.