Chapter 9
Nine
Piper
The doors swing open, and three hundred people rise in one collective, terrifying motion.
Every single head in the room turns toward me.
I knew this was coming. I’ve had months to prepare for the reality of this moment, yet nothing could prepare me for the sensation of the air being sucked out of the church.
The string quartet is playing something technically beautiful, but in this particular second, it feels like being escorted to my own execution.
My father’s arm tightens under my hand. “Ready?”
“Yes,” I say.
Neither of us moves. The music loops, mocking me.
“Piper?”
“I’m ready.”
I take a step.
Okay. One step.
The floor is solid. My legs aren’t made of jelly. I can do this because I’ve already decided to. And if there is one thing a Callahan is good at, it’s following through on a bad plan.
But I stop.
A ripple of hushed whispers goes through the pews.
Halfway down the aisle, Ezra stands waiting. He looks incredible—a detail I notice with the detached clarity of someone watching a movie through a window. Next to him, his best man leans in to whisper something. Ezra doesn’t even look at him.
His eyes are on me. They aren’t the eyes of a man in love. They are the eyes of a director whose lead actress just missed her mark.
Move, his stare says. You’re embarrassing me, it says. We will be discussing this later, it promises.
I tear my gaze away and look at the flowers instead. White and cream. Perfect. Colorless. Every single one was chosen from a pre-approved list I was handed after the decisions had already been made. I said they were beautiful. They are. And they have absolutely nothing to do with me.
“Piper,” Dad implores softly.
“I’m fine. Sorry. I just—”
I take three more steps. Good, forward, bride-like steps. The dress swishes, the music swells, and for a second, I think, You’re doing it. You’re actually going to go through with it.
I stop again.
This time, the ripple is a wave. I hear a child in the front row ask, “Why does she keep stopping?”
Ezra’s smile remains, but it has changed to the one that signals I’m about to face a lecture on how my actions impact everyone else.
My father bends his head closer to mine. “You want to run, baby? You run.”
I blink at him. His face is completely serious.
“Dad—”
“I mean it.”
“I can’t. Everyone is here. The flowers, the money, the… everything.” I gesture helplessly at the room, at the three years of my life I’ve spent trying to be the exact shape Ezra wanted. “I can’t just do that.”
“You run now, and you’re miserable for a while,” Dad says, his voice steady. “Or you walk down that aisle, and you spend the rest of your life not feeling like enough.”
The lump in my throat is threatening to choke me. I haven’t said those words to anyone. I’ve been so careful to hide that exact fear, and yet my father just looked at me and read the fine print of my soul.
Not feeling like enough.
Three years spent shrinking myself. Becoming quieter. More manageable. Three years of apologizing for the space I occupy and the opinions I hold. Three years of searching for the warm version of the man at the altar, only to discover the one who judges my worth by how well I conform.
I still wake up every morning thinking I’m fixable. If I just find the right configuration of myself, everything will settle.
My father is waiting. At the altar, Ezra’s jaw is tight enough to snap. The quartet is on its fourth loop of Canon in D.
I look back down the aisle. All the way past the judgment and the expectation to the doors I just came through. They’re still cracked open. A thin, golden line of California afternoon is bleeding into the room.
Something inside me cracks.
“Dad,” I whisper.
“Yeah, baby?”
“I’m going to—”
“Yeah,” he says, a small, sad smile touching his lips. “Go.”
I don’t walk. There’s no dignified version of this. I pick up the skirt of the dress I didn’t even choose, turn around, and bolt.
A collective gasp hits the back of my head. I hear Ezra call my name in that tone that usually makes me stop and apologize, and for the first time in three years, I don’t care.
My heels clatter on the stone. The white flowers become a blur.
I thrust the doors open with my shoulder. They swing wide, and suddenly I’m in the light. I’m outside. I’m breathing. I stop at the top of the steps and realize I have absolutely no plan B.
I’m standing on a church landing in a heap of silk, staring at a driveway full of confused guests and fancy cars. My father didn’t follow me. He let me go. That’s either the most loving thing he’s ever done or the start of my complete mental collapse.
I don’t even have my phone.
Then a screech of tires grabs my attention.
A black Camaro rolls to a heavy stop at the bottom of the steps. The window is already down.
Griffin leans across the center console, sunglasses on, looking up at me like he’s been expecting this exact disaster for the last decade.
He beckons me with a tilt of his chin. “Get in, runaway.”
I stare at him. “Griffin? How did you—”
“Piper, get in the damn car.”
From inside the church, the noise is getting louder. The doors are about to burst open. Ezra is coming.
I pick up my dress, run down the steps, and holy shit, but I get in the car.
The door barely clicks shut before he’s pulling away. I sit there, thousands of dollars' worth of lace pooling at my feet, watching the church shrink in the side mirror.
Neither of us speaks for a long minute.
“You okay?” he asks eventually.
I just ghosted my own wedding. I’m a fugitive. I’m in a getaway car with my brother’s best friend, and I have no idea where we’re going.
“No,” I say.
“Fair enough.”
As the Camaro weaves through traffic, a feeling starts to settle over me. Underneath the terror, running like a quiet current, is something I haven’t felt in so long I almost don’t recognize it.
Relief. Raw, terrifying, enormous relief.
“Griffin?”
“Mm.”
“Where are we going?”
He’s quiet for a second, his eyes on the road, one hand steady on the wheel.
“I have absolutely no idea,” he admits.
And because the last twenty minutes have been a fever dream, I start laughing. A helpless, hysterical laugh that starts in my diaphragm and fills the car. Griffin looks over at me once, something unreadable in his expression, before he looks back at the road.
“Okay,” he says, and I think he’s actually smiling. “Okay, Pipes.”
Behind us, the church disappears. I don’t look back.
For once in my life, I’m not the one shrinking.