by Angel Devlin
WEDDED MISS
ANGEL DEVLIN
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Wedding Season
Flirt Club
About the Author
Also By The Author
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, with the exception of the use of small quotations in book reviews.
Copyright © 2019 By Angel Devlin.
Book cover design by Dandelion Designs
Formatting by Tammy
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Angel Devlin holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
SHERRY
It was just cold feet.
Cold. Feet.
Every bride got them, right?
Natural. Nerves took over, and you doubted your decision.
Cold. Feet.
Mine were encased in ice. Arctic conditions. Severe weather warning.
But it would all be okay.
It had to be. I was getting married in thirty minutes time.
I sat in front of the mirror as my bridesmaids Riley and Tasha fussed around me, along with my sister, Carey, while my mother panicked in the background like a headless chicken checking everything was in order. Then their car arrived and for a moment there was silence, until my father’s footsteps ascended the stairs.
I took a deep breath and fixing a smile on my face, I turned to face my father as he walked through the door. I heard him make a small choking sound and then he began wiping at his eyes.
“Sherry, you look so beautiful. I mean, you do to me every single day, of course, I’m your dad. But today, the first of my daughter’s gets married.” His voice broke. “To me you’ll always be my little girl, but I see in front of me the most beautiful woman. I’m so damn proud of who you’ve become.”
I stood and we hugged each other tight.
“Are you ready?” He asked me.
I nodded my head, because if I spoke, I was scared the word ‘no’ was going to come out of my mouth.
Down the stairs we went and instead of nervous excitement, I felt like I was on my way to the gallows. My ever-dramatic mind imagined a noose hanging where the ceiling light was, my head going in as I descended the stairs and then took my feet off, leaping in midair. ‘Sorry, Kade, there’s been a terrible incident. There will be no wedding.’ Jesus, Sherry. I chastised myself. Imagining your suicide to not arrive at your wedding is a bit much even for you.
Outside we went and my neighbors stood next to the car smiling, though all I could think was that really, they were annoyed I’d not invited them. Close friends and relatives only, we’d said.
And then the car had started to make its way to the hotel where the wedding was taking place, and in my mind, I was screaming, ‘take me somewhere else. Anywhere’, and I was screaming it to a guy I kept picturing in my mind. A guy whose face kept appearing.
I’d had cold feet before I’d met Tyrone Neill.
But he’d brought an arctic freeze.
“Now as a father I have to ask you…”
No. Don’t ask me, Dad. No.
“You do want to go ahead with the wedding, don’t you? Because we can drive away from here right now if you’ve changed your mind.”
I swallowed. “I have, Dad. I’ve changed my mind. I can’t marry Kade. We need to leave. Turn the car around.”
Time stood still as my father turned to me and then he laughed.
“Oh, Sherry. Always the joker. Right, it’s time.”
He looked at me with such pride that I lost my nerve. Instead I smiled and exited the car on his arm, wondering if annulments were a lot of effort, or if I’d manage to get divorced, or the courage to end my marriage before our golden wedding anniversary.
It’s cold feet.
It’s just cold feet, Sherry.
Look up. The music has started. Look up. Look at your groom.
Fuck, Kade looked petrified. Like he was going to vomit or pass out.
See, how could you think of not marrying him?
You love Kade. Have loved him for the last eight years since you met in high school.
Everyone knew you’d get married eventually.
Did your families not spell it out to you that this would be the case? Your happy ever after?
I stood still in front of my groom.
Did we ever really say it? Ourselves. That we’d marry and have children and a happy ever after? Or did we play our parts like actors on a stage?
Oh fuck.
Kade and I looked at each other with nervous smiles and turned to face the officiant.
My groom bent over and whispered in my ear. “We’re really getting married then, huh?”
I whispered back. “It looks that way.” I paused. “You want to, right?”
Kade turned back to me.
“Do you?”
I couldn’t read his expression. Was he panicking I would leave him at the altar? I was here now. Marrying the man of my…
But I’d not been dreaming about him.
I daren’t look at the people gathered to watch us because he was there. Riley dated his best friend Dante; and Tasha dated two of his other friends, the twins, Seth and Shane. I hadn’t felt like I could leave Ty out when extending the invitations, so I’d invited him and a plus one. Was he there watching me? Was he smiling at his own bride-to-be?
We’d met on Spring Break at my bachelorette and his bachelor party.
We weren’t meant for each other.
“Sherry?”
Startled, I looked up at Kade. My past, my present…
I was about to tell him that I didn’t want to get married when the officiant started the ceremony. We both turned around to look at him.
I didn’t hear a word the man said, all I could hear was ‘Run. Run. Run. Run. Run’.
Until, “If any of you has a reason why these two should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
At which point Kade and I both yelled. “I can’t do this.”
And the guests gasped in unison.
TY
“Come on, Ty. Are you not ready?” Dante asked me as he stood outside my front door.
“I’m not going.” My tie was half askew, my shirt unbuttoned at the collar. I’d spent the last thirty minutes veering between deciding to attend the wedding and staying in to mourn the loss of the love of my life.
“Ty. We’ve been through this again and again. You had plenty of opportunity to tell her how you felt. I could have let Riley tell her. We could have got Tasha to tell her. Instead you made everyone keep it a secret that you faked a bachelor party so that we wouldn’t feel lame going on Spring Break in our twenties.”
“And I’ve repeated myself again and again. If I told Sherry how I felt, like she was my soulmate, she’d have laughed in my face, then it would have become extremely awkward and none of us would have been able to hang out together anymore. She’d have said something like, ‘Hey, crazy tits, see that rock on my finger? I a
lready found my own soulmate, shit for brains’ and that would have been that.”
“Except you don’t know that, do you? Because you didn’t tell her. Riley says she’s been having cold feet about the wedding.”
“Well, it’s her wedding day today, and it’s still going ahead, so they’re not that cold, are they?” I refastened my shirt, fixed my tie and took a deep breath. “I guess the best thing I can do for myself is painfully watch while my soulmate marries another man. Then once my psyche begins to understand she is not mine, that she belongs to someone else, I can commit to a period of therapy and move on.”
Dante patted me on the back. “That’s more like it. Come on, bro. There might be a hot bridesmaid. You can’t have her, but she’s got a single sister, hasn’t she?”
I don’t think he was understanding the whole soulmate thing. It didn’t just transfer to a family member like an insidious virus.
Finally, I got in the car, riding shotgun—the twins riding in the back—and we were on our way. The guys girlfriends were bridesmaids, so we were together for the ceremony and then I’d be playing third wheel for the rest of the night, unless I got wasted and hid behind the drapes.
It was like Dante read my mind.
“So, I’ll be sober tonight. One, so I can drive home; but two, mainly because my Baby Mama can’t drink and so I’m supporting her by doing the same. I’m telling you this to let you know I’ll be watching you for pathetic behavior such as giving the new bride lovesick puppy-dog eyes, or giving burning death glares toward the groom.”
“I’ll behave.” I told him, not sure either of us believed my words.
Before I knew it, we were out of the car and making our way into the hotel where the ceremony was taking place. After explaining we were on the bride’s side, we were shown to some free seats and I reluctantly sat down. Kade, my soulmate’s groom-to-be, stood at the front with his best man. Where I was green with envy, Kade just looked green.
“Stop staring at the groom.” Seth elbowed me.
“You’re right.” I turned around. “I’ll watch the doorway instead for all the girls arriving.”
He exhaled loudly. “This wedding needs to be over, fast.”
Inside, my mind said that the marriage needed to be over fast, but I didn’t voice it out loud.
I’d met Sherry just three months before on Rockstar Beach on South Padre Island in Texas. We’d been getting wasted when we’d seen the three of them. Seth had seen a woman he liked the look of and had taken off down the beach picking her up. Dante and I had followed suit. He’d picked up Riley, and I’d lifted up Sherry. Shane had followed on and it had soon become clear that there was an attraction between the twins and Tasha. Dante and Riley had hit it off, but lost touch for a while when we’d gotten home. They’d just reunited and had discovered Riley was pregnant. I’d carried on the pretense that it was my bachelor party and had spent the rest of Spring Break when we were with the women, lying about my non-existent fiancée, and hearing about the love of Sherry’s life. That and how she was loving Spring Break, having her last hurrah as a single girl and how she’d just let a guy drink out of her bellybutton.
I wanted to be that guy.
When we’d gotten back to New York, I knew we might see them a little with the twins dating Tasha; but then Dante and Riley had reunited, and suddenly we were socializing together more. Dante had been a male stripper and we’d celebrated his last performance together. Then he’d decided to take over a bookstore of all things that was next door to a boutique belonging to two girls Tasha knew. He was just in the process of getting ready for a grand re-opening. It meant more and more time spent near Sherry, unable to touch her, but desperately trying to make conversation, listening to her every word as if they might be the last ever uttered to me.
Because next she would probably start a family, with that prick over there.
Bastard.
“You’re staring at him again. He’s gonna think you have a crush on him.”
“I’d like to crush him.” I mumbled. But then I stopped because there was movement at the door, and I saw Sherry with a dude I presumed to be her father. It felt like a heavy stone had dropped in my stomach.
My mind started yelling. It’s not too late, she’s not married yet.
Tell her.
Tell her.
TELL. HER.
Yeah, right. Let me just stand up here and announce my objection.
Oh my god. I could do that! I could.
But I wouldn’t. Instead, I looked at the stunning princess bride and watched as she walked toward the wrong prince.
A twisted fairytale where the wrong man won.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the both of them. I watched as they exchanged words together before the ceremony began. I bet it was all ‘this is the first day of the rest of our lives’ bullshit.
Maybe I should leave and not watch. Would anyone notice? Erm, yes, everyone.
Fuck, I have to stay and watch this wedding.
This. Is. A. Living. Hell.
The ceremony moved along until the person marrying off the love of my life to another man said, “If any of you has a reason why these two should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
I started to stand up and Dante at one side and Seth at the other pulled me sharply down.
But no-one heard my thud as my ass hit the chair because both the bride and groom said, “I can’t do this.”
And everyone there gasped.
SHERRY
What’s the protocol for a bride and groom standing at the altar who don’t want to marry each other anymore?
Neither of us knew. We just stood staring at each other.
“You don’t want to marry me?” Kade asked, but his face bore a look of relief which shouldn’t have adorned a loving fiancé’s features.
“I don’t. And… you don’t want to marry me either?” Hope sounded in the timbre of my voice.
“No.”
We smiled at each other. This really was the most surreal experience of my life.
As chaos broke out all around us, Kade took my hand. “Let’s go and find a room where we can talk.” I nodded. As Kade had a word with his father that we would be back shortly to address the wedding party, we walked together out of the room.
“How long have you felt this way?” I asked him.
“Honestly? Since I proposed. I felt the pressure from our families after we’d been together so many years. I did, do, love you, Sherry. I just feel like it’s not enough. That there’s something more for me out there. We’ve been together since high school. I don’t feel like I’ve seen anything of the world.”
He reached over and squeezed my hand. “I will always love you. But I can’t marry you and I think we should split up. Now, why don’t you want to marry me?”
“I felt the same way. That we were getting married because it was expected of us, not because we were head over heels in love. I thought I was getting cold feet; that’s what everyone kept saying. But I started to feel trapped, like I was going to prison, not entering a marriage. It’s why I booked Spring Break for my bachelorette. Like I needed some kind of release before I settled down.”
Kade lowered his voice. “Did you sleep with someone while you were there? I know the other girls met their new boyfriends there.”
I shook my head. “I did find their friend Ty attractive, but he was getting married himself. I just enjoyed getting wasted.”
Kade laughed. “I haven’t been with anyone else either. I wouldn’t have done that to you. So, a clean break then yes? Friends?”
“I think so. Christ, I need to find somewhere to live!” We’d been living in Kade’s house together for the last few years. “Oh! We were supposed to go on honeymoon tonight.” The realization that this really was it, the end of Kade and Sherry was beginning to filter into my mind. I pulled my veil and tiara off my head, finding it restrictive, letting my hair hang loose, as if by doing so I could drag a little n
ormality back into my life.
“How about I go on the honeymoon?” Kade suggested. “I’ll see if I can get the other ticket changed to one of my mates’ names. It should be a laugh if they make it really romantic. Then you have two weeks to look for somewhere else to live, though you know you can stay as long as you need to. I’m not going to kick you out, Sherry.”
I nodded my head. “I know. But I want to find somewhere as soon as I can. Get that fresh start.”
There was nothing else to say, but after a moments silence where we knew it was time for us to get up, leave the room, and begin to dismantle our wedding and lives, both of us began to cry. We stood and held each other for a long while as we silently said our final goodbyes.
As we walked back into the room, all our guests’ heads swiveled around to stare at us. My mom rushed forward.
“It’s okay. The delay is fine. The officiant is ready to marry you as soon as you two are ready again. It’s just nerves. Let’s get you back in your places.”
I shook my head. “No, Mom. We’re not getting married. The wedding is off.”
I could swear I heard a cheer, but I looked around and couldn’t see anyone smiling in our direction. Just lots of shocked faces and bowed heads whispering.
“I’ll deal with everything here.” Kade told me. “Go be with your friends. Riley and Tasha are ready to come kidnap you away from me at any moment.” He pointed in their direction and nodded at them. My friends began running toward me.
“What’s happening?” Tasha looked from me to Kade and back again.
“The wedding’s off. By mutual consent. Can you get me out of here?” I asked. The noise was beginning to deafen me, it felt like people in the room were crowding in, and my sister and Kade’s were on their way toward us.
