4. Cami
— · —
Cami
The church doors slammed behind me and I ran.
Not toward anything. Just away. Away from Logan’s voice calling my name. Away from my mother’s tears. Away from the crowd who had just watched my life implode in real time.
The hallway stretched out in front of me, endless and blurry through the tears I couldn’t stop. Reception rooms on either side. The catering kitchen at the end. Stairs leading down somewhere I didn’t care where.
My heels caught on the carpet. The dress was too long, too heavy, yards of white fabric tangling around my legs, dragging at me with every step. Fistfuls of silk and tulle bunched in my hands as I ran, the veil tearing loose somewhere behind me, drifting to the floor in a white flag of surrender.
Footsteps echoed in the distance. Voices. Someone calling my name.
Faster. Had to go faster.
The reception hall blurred past on my left. Row after row of place settings gleaming under crystal chandeliers. Centerpieces of white roses and peonies. The five-tier cake with our initials piped in gold frosting, C and L, Cami and Logan, a lie written in buttercream.
All of it for nothing.
The photo booth came next with its glittery backdrop and its basket of stupid props.
Feather boas and oversized sunglasses and signs that said “Just Married” and “Happily Ever After.” Someone had already set out the guest book, pristine and white, waiting for messages of congratulations that would never come.
My foot caught on something. A cord. An extension cable. The world tilted and I stumbled, caught myself on the wall, kept going.
The stairs appeared out of nowhere. A metal door propped open, concrete steps leading down into fluorescent dimness. The parking garage. Underground.
Good. Hidden. Away.
The first step nearly killed me. My heel slipped on the concrete and my ankle twisted, pain shooting up my leg.
My hand slammed against the metal railing hard enough to rattle my teeth.
Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting away from those voices, those footsteps, all those eyes that had watched me shatter.
Down. Down. Down.
The parking garage was cold. Industrial. A place that existed between places, forgotten and overlooked. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in sickly yellow. The smell of exhaust and motor oil and something damp and rotting filled my lungs.
Ten steps. That was all I managed.
My heel caught in a crack in the concrete. The world tilted again and this time there was nothing to grab, nothing to stop the fall. My knees hit first, a jarring impact that sent shockwaves up my thighs. Then my palms, scraping against the rough concrete, skin tearing.
The dress ripped somewhere. A loud, ugly sound. Fabric giving way. Didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. Nothing could matter anymore because everything was gone.
Everything.
The sobs came from somewhere deep. Somewhere I’d been holding together for months, maybe years, through sheer force of will.
They ripped out of me now, ugly and raw and violent.
My whole body shook with the force of them, curled on cold concrete in a parking garage, my ruined wedding dress spreading around me, gray and filthy across the floor.
Four years. Four years of my life poured into a man who never loved me.
The job at his company. Gone. How could I go back there now? How could I walk into that office and face the people who had watched me project photos of my fiancé’s affair on a church screen?
The apartment. Gone. It was his apartment. His name on the lease. His furniture. His life that I had moved into and made myself small enough to fit.
The savings account. Empty. Drained for wedding deposits and dress alterations and a honeymoon in Tuscany that would never happen.
My sister. Gone.
My parents. Gone. They’d chosen her. Of course they’d chosen her.
They’d always chosen her, the baby, the one who needed protecting.
And now she was pregnant and scared and I was supposed to understand.
I was supposed to put my own devastation aside and think about poor Rosalie and her delicate condition.
Fuck that.
Fuck all of it.
My forehead pressed against the concrete. Cold and rough and real. A scream tore out of my throat, echoing off the walls, bouncing back at me hollow and desperate.
Pathetic.
The word circled in my head, patient and ugly and relentless.
Pathetic pathetic pathetic. The woman who didn’t see it coming.
The woman who found out she was being cheated on at her own wedding.
The woman whose own sister had been fucking her fiancé for eighteen months while she smiled and planned and believed.
A joke. That’s what I was now. A story for dinner parties. Did you hear about the Caldwell wedding? Oh my God, it was insane. The bride found out her fiancé was sleeping with her sister. She projected the photos on a screen. Can you imagine?
Yes. I could imagine. I was living it.
Time stopped meaning anything. Minutes passed, or hours, or maybe just seconds stretched into eternity.
The concrete numbed my knees. The cold seeped through the ruined fabric of my dress and settled into my bones.
My sobs quieted into something smaller, more exhausted, until I was just breathing.
Just existing. Just being nothing in a place meant for nothing.
Then the sound cut through the silence.
Heels. Clicking on concrete. Slow and deliberate. Coming down the stairs.
My head lifted. Heavy. Like it weighed a thousand pounds.
Greta Caldwell stood at the bottom of the staircase, silhouetted against the fluorescent lights. Her face was in shadow but the rigid line of her shoulders said everything. The set of her jaw. The way she held herself like she owned the world and everyone in it owed her something.
“God.” Her voice dripped with contempt, each word a slap. “You’re pathetic.”
The urge to curl up smaller warred with a heat that had been born in that church when I threw the ring at Logan’s chest.
“Fuck you.” The words came out hoarse. Wrecked. But they came out.
Greta’s laugh was a cold, brittle thing. “There it is. That spark of defiance. I wondered if you had any fight in you at all, or if you were just going to lie there in the dirt where you belong.”
My palms stung as I pushed myself up onto my knees. Blood smeared across the concrete. The dress was filthy now, gray and black with grime, torn in at least three places.
“Where I belong?” The laugh that escaped me didn’t sound like mine. “Your son is a cheater and a liar. Your family is the one that belongs in the dirt.”
Greta stepped closer. The fluorescent light caught her face now, all sharp angles and cold fury.
“I never wanted him to choose you.” The words came out casual.
Conversational. Like she was discussing the weather.
“I told him from the beginning that you weren’t good enough.
Too soft. Too desperate. Always trying so hard to make everyone like you, to smooth everything over, to be the perfect little peacekeeper. It was embarrassing to watch.”
My teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached.
“You knew.” The realization landed, hard and sudden. “You knew about the affair.”
“Of course I knew.” Greta’s lip curled. “A mother always knows. I just didn’t expect you to find out before the wedding. That was unfortunate timing.”
“Unfortunate timing.” A bitter sound clawed its way out of me. “Your son has been cheating on me for over a year. He got my sister pregnant. He said her name at the altar. And you’re calling it unfortunate timing?”
“I’m calling it a mess that you made infinitely worse with your little stunt upstairs.
” Another step closer. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?
Do you have any idea how many important people were in that church?
Business partners. Investors. Politicians.
People who could destroy my family with a single phone call.
And you showed them photos of my son in bed with another woman. ”
My legs shook as I forced myself to stand. The parking garage spun for a moment, then steadied.
“Your son put himself in that bed.” My voice came out stronger than I expected. Harder. “I didn’t take those photos. I didn’t send them to myself. Someone else did. Someone who wanted me to know exactly what I was marrying.”
Greta’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”
“No idea.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” The phone was still in my pocket somehow. Still there after everything. My fingers found it, pulled it out, showed her the screen. “Look. Anonymous sender. Random string of characters. Could be anyone. But whoever it was did me a favor.”
The phone disappeared from my hand. Greta snatched it, scrolling through the email with quick, sharp movements.
Her face got tighter with every photo, every screenshot, every piece of evidence that proved her precious son was exactly the piece of shit I’d called him in front of a church full of witnesses.
“This is a disaster.” The words came out on a hiss. “An absolute disaster. The scandal. The gossip. The business implications. Everything we’ve built could come crashing down because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“Everything you’ve built?” The phone was back in my hand before I could think about it, grabbed back with a force that surprised us both. “You’re worried about business implications? Your son destroyed my life. My sister destroyed my life. And you’re standing here talking about investors?”
“Someone has to worry about the important things.” Cold. So cold. Like talking to a statue made of ice. “Someone has to think about the future instead of wallowing in self-pity in a parking garage.”
“Get out.” The words tore out of me. “Get out and leave me alone. Go back to your precious son and his pregnant mistress and leave me the fuck alone.”
Greta didn’t move.