Chapter 1 #2
“I’ll have him meet me by the back exit, by the storage room.” The door was closest to the parking lot, but the main entrance was around the corner and would be the one all the guests entered. “Don’t tell the guys yet, okay?”
The last thing I needed was my pushy brothers starting a scene with Boyd and his uptight mom and his dad, who was probably half wasted already.
I rose and my elegant white satin gown draped into perfect place. The lace around my neck and over my chest and arms itched like crazy. I had wanted a simple gown, like what Wynter had worn, but I’d copied her already by fast-tracking a wedding mere months after she’d gotten married.
I was the oldest. I was supposed to lead by example, but my baby sister had found love and settled down. She was expecting her first kid. That was supposed to be me.
Today wasn’t the day to be competitive. I shouldn’t have let Boyd carry me away and hurry a life event I’d been dreaming about since I was a little girl.
My skirts billowed around my legs as I walked to the far door that connected to a different room that my sisters had used to change in. I kept my slippers on, leaving my heels by the veil. I stopped in the hallway and messaged Boyd.
I need to talk to you. Meet me by the exit at the south corner of the church where the big storage room is.
He’d know. His groomsmen had bitched all night about hiding all the church decorations per Corinne’s request so they didn’t contaminate photos.
Someone would have to put them all back and I doubted it’d be Boyd’s friends. My brothers would. In a heartbeat.
I put my phone in a hidden pocket deep in my skirts. My heart rate calmed, having something that was mine, that I’d picked out, on my person. As I ventured into the empty hallway, I liked that my family could reach me. I wasn’t forging ahead alone.
Tate had called me three times in the last month. He rarely called. Since I’d announced the impending nuptials, Teller and Tenor had both made more stops at the family’s distillery in Bozeman to see me.
So, yeah. My family would have my back. Boyd would understand, and if he loved me, he’d want me to be happy. He’d feel bad for pressuring me.
I scurried to the meeting spot, only the sound of my dress rustling to accompany me.
Boyd didn’t reply. I waited, shifting my weight from foot to foot, my nerves making me fidgety the longer I stood there.
I didn’t look down. I didn’t want to see the silver brIDE stitched across the tops of my slippers.
Soft piano music filtered down the hall from the chapel. The entrance was down another hallway. My sisters and I had been put in the room the farthest away. The church was large and already filled with murmurs. How many people were in attendance?
Mama would be greeting everyone who arrived. Mrs. Harrington had insisted Mama stay with me, like Mama was too unrefined to greet any of Boyd’s side. My mama might seem meek and subservient, but she did what she damn well pleased. I should’ve taken notes.
“What’s going on?” Boyd’s commanding tone cut through the quiet.
I spun, a gasp escaping my lips. Had he been in the chapel greeting folks? Or was the plan to keep me and my family locked up until it was time to perform?
The clarity I was experiencing today should’ve happened much sooner, but at least it hadn’t waited longer. “I’m—uh . . .” Turned out, canceling a wedding was hard to announce to the groom.
“Summer,” he snapped. “We have ten minutes and you look—” He made a tsking sound. He gripped the sides of my face and smoothed his thumbs under my eyes. The smeared mascara. “You’re a mess.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.
He scowled and tried to rub the black off his thumbs with his fingers. “You know what I mean.” He closed his eyes and seemed to collect himself. “You’re beautiful, but I know you want to be radiant on your wedding day.”
He did that a lot, didn’t he? Reframed a situation to be about what I wanted so I’d look foolish if I disagreed. He was saying what he wanted. He got me to do what he wanted.
I lifted my chin. “I wanted a summer wedding.”
He got a dumbfounded expression. “Okay? You’re telling me now?”
“I told you before. I wanted to wait.” I was dancing around the topic and that was unlike me. Summer Kerrigan did not pussyfoot. “I’m not going through with the wedding.” I blew out a hard breath. There. I’d done it. A spark of pride lit in my chest.
He barked out a laugh. “Good one. How did you know I was getting tense and that I needed to lighten up?” His eyes twinkled, but there was an aura around him, an accumulation of ominous energy.
The feeling wasn’t new. I usually acquiesced when I sensed he was displeased.
Boyd was a catch—on paper. In person, I was no longer sure.
“I’m not kidding, Boyd. I don’t want to get married right now.
” I squared my shoulders. I wasn’t just canceling a wedding.
The last few minutes had been more than enlightening.
I was ending the whole thing. “I don’t want to marry you. ”
His features went deathly still and that vibe grew stifling. I didn’t see him move his arm until the slap rang through the hallway. My head snapped to the side, but even then, I needed an extra second to figure out why.
He’d slapped me. I put my hand to my face. Stinging heat spread through my cheek, and he crowded close.
“We’re not playing this game today,” he said in a low, threatening voice.
“You hit me.”
“That was not a hit. Now, go back to your room. Clean that shit off your face and don’t come out until you’re my gorgeous bride.”
Thoughts tumbled through my head. He was pressing me against the wall and looming over me. Menace dripped from his voice while he talked to me like I was a child. Like I was a lifelike doll that was his to position the way he wanted.
I’d been letting him do just that all this time.
Humiliation spread through my body where shock had just been. How had I not seen it?
“You’re not embarrassing me like this.” He snapped the lapels of his tux jacket. “I’ll buy some extra time while you get presentable.”
A shard of steel lined my spine. “I’m in a wedding dress with pretty ringlets cascading from my head like an icy waterfall. Isn’t that presentable enough for you?”
He shoved my shoulders and the back of my head thunked against the wall. “I’ll deal with that mouth tonight.”
“I don’t want what you have planned for it.”
He pulled his arm back and too late I saw the fist aiming for my gut. My lungs turned to ice. I couldn’t breathe.
Then, he was yanked away from me and slammed into the wall across from me. A pair of wide, familiar shoulders blocked my vision, longish dark brown hair with a slight curl touching the collar. The curved wooden handle of a cane stuck out from between the men, horizontal to the floor.
Boyd was pinned to the wall by a cane.
I straightened. He’d almost punched me, and I had cowered.
I had cowered in front of the man I was supposed to marry. The man who had just slapped me. How could I have not seen Boyd for what he was? His parents were awful. Why’d I think he’d be different?
“You keep your goddamn hands off her,” the new arrival snarled in a deep voice that wiped away cobwebs from memories I’d rather forget forever.
It couldn’t be him.
I’d invited him because Mama had put his and his parents’ names on the list, and I’d been too busy to protest.
I crept around to see his face. Boyd was struggling, but he was no match for the man with the cane who had his knee to Boyd’s groin. One swift shift upward, and Boyd would be swallowing his balls.
I caught sight of the enraged face of my protector and my pulse fluttered. Jonah Dunn. The older brother of the boy I’d dated in high school, the one whose mom had crocheted my favorite blanket.
The boy who’d been killed in a car crash.
The scar bisecting his face was more prominent thanks to the angry flush. His dark eyes were no less deadly than Boyd’s, and Jonah had his polished walking cane pressed across Boyd’s chest. Yet I didn’t fear Jonah.
“Stay out of this, asshole.” Boyd’s handsome but plain face was turning red.
I inspected my now ex-fiancé like he was an ant. There was nothing exemplary about him and the effect wasn’t from his looks. He had to work hard not to be ordinary, and he stepped on other people to get to the next level, be it through perceived charm or his manipulative personality.
What had I seen in him? Why had I stayed?
I was so stupid.
My sisters had been so ready to help me ditch my nuptials. They’d seen it.
Had everyone been able to discern the dim future I was sprinting into but me?
I’d seen what Boyd wanted me to see. A nice smile, a good job, and a mellow attitude. All false but the smile, thanks to Invisalign.
Boyd tried smacking Jonah, but Jonah batted his hands away while keeping Boyd pinned to the wall like a bug in a display. Accurate.
Boyd bared his teeth. He tried to kick, but Jonah’s knee twitched and Boyd was so damn proud of his freshly shaven balls he instantly went still.
“I’ll call the cops,” Boyd huffed.
I stiffened. Boyd had connections. He had power. Jonah wasn’t known in Bozeman. He was barely known in Bourbon Canyon anymore.
I couldn’t let Boyd walk away from hitting me. I couldn’t let more than me be humiliated by this man. “Boyd, you’re going to go into the chapel and announce that today is canceled. You’re not going to trash my name or I’ll march right out and tell them how I got the red spot on my cheek.”
I didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that my left cheek was blazing.
Jonah jerked and smacked Boyd’s head against the wall, like the reminder infuriated him. I . . . didn’t mind.
“My family isn’t dealing with the fallout,” I continued, secure in Jonah’s hold on him. I’d let Boyd bulldoze me enough. “If you give them any shit whatsoever, I will tell my brothers—all of them,” I stressed so he’d know I meant Myles and, by extension, his brothers too. “And I’ll be their alibi.”
Boyd’s face was now magenta.