by Lexy Timms
Kallie could remember the card and it made her want to vomit. But more than that, it made her want to smack her fiancé.
Ex-fiancé.
Ex-almost-husband?
“What do you want, James?”
The words came out steadier than she had expected. In a clipped, strictly business tone she used with her most obnoxious clients. But it shouldn’t have shocked anyone. Kallie was a professional at organization. At helping people get their lives together. At taking frazzled individuals and helping them turn their lives around. She’d built a career out of it. Out of organization and building schedules and setting marks for unorganized people to reach.
Yet her wedding was crumbling around her. A chaotic mess of angry shouts, pointed fingers, and lipstick-smudged tuxedo collars.
Of course she was poised.
It was her job to be.
It still didn’t hurt yet, though. Kallie knew the numb shock wasn’t going to last. That sooner or later—and most likely sooner—the full reality of her ex-fiancé’s betrayal would hit her. Sink her. Pull her into the depths it did every bride-to-be who’d had her future ripped out from underneath her. It was like a terrible magic trick. Like a small boy ripping the tablecloth from the table and hoping all the dishes would stay put.
But the dishes didn’t stay put.
They were crashing to the ground, and Kallie was watching it happen.
However, she was going to take advantage of the time she had before it did hit her. Before she realized all the broken glass on the floor and went about cutting herself to clean it up. Because, deep down, she knew he never would. James was an entitled rich bitch who never picked up a finger unless he had to. He’d leave her to clean up the mess, deal with the catering, cancel the honeymoon.
The honeymoon.
She was really looking forward to that honeymoon.
James was looking at her with the hangdog expression he’d always used to get out of trouble, all wide brown eyes and contrition. That lower lip of his jutted out just far enough for Kallie to want to suck on it. She had fallen for it in the past. Given into it hoping and praying things would be different. Believing the best in her boyfriend. The love of her life. Her fiancé.
But not this time, she promised herself. It didn’t matter how many apologies he offered. It didn’t matter what he said he could do to fix it. It didn’t matter what excuse he gave for being balls deep in another woman thirty minutes before they were due to say their vows.
Because if there was one woman she’d caught him with, there were others she hadn’t.
And she knew that rule always rang true.
“I’m sorry,” James said.
He took a step toward her, hands outstretched. Like he was trying to play peacemaker.
It made her sick
“I really am, Kallie. It was a moment of weakness. She came onto me, and—”
“Seriously?” Kallie asked. “You think I want to hear your voice right now?”
“I’m telling you, sweetheart. She came onto me.”
“Shut. Up,” Eris said.
Kallie wasn’t sure when her best friend had joined them. Her maid of honor. The other two bridesmaids were standing behind her, arms crossed over their chests. Minus the one he fucked, of course. She was probably holed up in a bathroom somewhere fixing her lipstick. They looked as if they were two seconds away from clawing James’s eyes from his face with their manicured wedding-day nails. Kallie could feel their angry heat behind her and it fueled her strength. Her inner goddess. It helped her to rise up over the overbearing man she knew she was about to get.
The man who was going to drop the puppy dog look and try to intimidate her like one of his investors.
“Excuse me?” he asked Eris.
James was staring down Kallie’s maid of honor with narrowed eyes, a predatory look settling over his face.
What the hell was he angry about?
“Do I need to repeat myself?” Eris snapped.
“Kallie,” James said sharply.
She stared at him. Blankly. Her mind swirling with a thousand things that would never fall from the tip of her tongue. She looked up into the eyes of the man she had allowed herself to trust. Allowed herself to love. Allowed herself to enjoy. A man she had promised her world to and, in exchange, had gotten down onto one knee and promised her happiness. Children. A life without monetary worry or the stresses of everyday life. A life with butlers and maids and a chef, so she could spend her time cultivating her career or running around with children. A life spent being whisked around the world and shown all the sights while eating the most decadent foods.
She wanted nothing to do with it any longer.
She was done with selfish, spoiled little rich bitches.
The other conversations had stopped. Everyone was silent, waiting on her response. Waiting for her to jump when he called. Magda was already taking a step in their direction, ready at the slightest provocation to step in and rescue her darling son. Her beloved son. The rich, cheating fucker who could do no wrong.
But Kallie’s mother caught her by the elbow, ripping her from her trance.
Twenty-four hours ago, Kallie would have let James get away with that tone. She would’ve backed down and written it off as one of his downfalls. Because she had them too. Everyone had downfalls, and marriage was about compromise. Any relationship was, really. But standing in the church where she was supposed to have been married, looking at the man who’d had his hands up another woman’s skirt while she’d been lacing up her wedding dress.
Kallie shook her head as anger bubbled in her gut.
“No,” she said.
James’s eyebrows drew together.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” he asked.
“I mean no,” Kallie said, her voice rising with her words. “No, I won’t accept your bullshit excuses for why you couldn’t keep it in your pants on your own fucking wedding day. No, I won’t take your hand in marriage. No, I won’t try this again. No, you can’t take that tone with me any longer. And no, I won’t forgive you.”
She swallowed a sob. He wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of seeing her cry. That was a time for another day, when she was buried in the sheets of her bed and grieving over the life she thought she could’ve had with the man she thought she knew. A man she loved and had lost. A man she had dreamed about ever since she was a little girl, riding in on his white horse with his sword drawn with a duty and a passion to carry her away from all of life’s woeful sorrows.
A man who really had never existed at all.
Maybe that was what happened. Maybe they were simply ghosts of who they wished to be with. Maybe James was nothing but a failed attempt at a man she tried to change him into and maybe she was the phantom spirit of a woman James wished her to be.
Either way, she was done looking at him.
“Get out of my sight.”
James didn’t move, and she didn’t wait for him to. She gathered up the long skirt of her dress and swept past him without another glance in his direction. Eris and the other two girls followed in her wake, their eyes staring him down until they were around the corner and out of sight. They followed her up the steps and back into the bridal suite where she would unzip her wedding dress, watch it pile to the floor, and take with it the life she was no longer going to live.
And behind them all, someone started up a round of applause.
Chapter 2
Kallie
There were marks in Kallie’s palms where her nails had dug into them as she walked up the steps. She forced them to uncurl, stretching her fingers out at her sides and working the ache of tension from the muscle. The anger that kept her upright in the church had drained away, leaving her hollow where it had been. And she could hear the echoing of applause before the doors of the cathedral slammed open.
Her empty eyes gazed out the window, watching as James and his family poured out into the streets.
“Maybe they’ll get hit by oncom
ing traffic,” Eris said.
All the wedding gifts would have to be returned, she realized suddenly. Thank goodness she and James hadn’t shared an apartment lease. At least that wasn’t something she would have to deal with. Although, in retrospect, she found herself wondering if his reluctance to move in together had anything to do with his extracurricular activities.
More red flags she should’ve seen.
More excuses she made for him she never realized.
Was there some kind of sign she’d missed? Was she really that thickheaded? Or had the indiscretion at the church been a one-off? A manifestation of temporary insanity?
She supposed it didn’t matter in the end. The result was the same. Her life had come to an abrupt halt and he walked away, somehow still the victor in it all.
Her eyes watched as he got into the limo across the street. The limo that had been waiting to whisk them off to the reception, then the airport. She watched James and Magda and others pile into the car. She even watched that bitch of a woman get in as well. Where the hell was her husband? That was the wife of his best man.
Was this something they had planned?
What were they going to do if the two of them had married? Continued to screw each other behind her back?
One hand reached up to slip the sleeves of the gown from her shoulders, and she shimmed out of it. She allowed it to crumple against the floor in a forlorn little puddle of silk and beaded lace. It wasn’t exactly the way she’d planned undressing on her wedding night to go.
Her eyes turned to the mirror as the limo drove off and she saw the lingerie underneath everything. The corset that cinched her waist and the stockings attached to her lacy underwear. It was supposed to be her and James. He was supposed to be undressing her. He was supposed to be the one looking upon all this lingerie.
Not Eris.
Not her bridesmaids.
“I can hire you a hitman,” Eris suggested.
She flung herself onto Kallie’s bed, a half-empty glass of wine in one hand. Her bridesmaid’s dress had already been discarded in favor of a pair of ratty sweats and an old Harvard T-shirt. Kallie knew she was supposed to laugh at the comment, but she couldn’t really find it in herself to be amused. Her heart was heavy and the mess she still had to clean up was too much to bear at the moment.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said.
“A mime to follow him around all day and make ‘you’re a piece of shit’ gestures in front of important people?”
“Eris.”
But a giggle did leave Kallie’s lips and it pulled a smile across her best friend’s face.
“Ugh. Fine. You’re no fun anyway.”
Her best friend took a sip of wine from the glass in her hand and walked up behind Kallie. She wrapped her free hand around Kallie’s waist and held her wineglass up to her lips. Kallie took a long pull from the glass before Eris kissed her cheek, then her fingers began to undo the tight lacing in the back of the corset.
“I just don’t think he should be allowed to get away with it without some kind of retribution. Preferably of the divine sort, but the kind I have to pay for will do in a pinch.”
“The scandal will, undoubtedly, be at least local news,” Kallie said as the corset fell from her body. “That’s probably punishment enough for a man who bases his entire personality on what other people think of him.”
Eris looked up at her, contemplative, before passing her best friend an old, ratty college shirt.
“You know, the last time I said that you told me I was wrong,” Eris said.
“The last time you said that, I hadn’t realized what an absolute tool he was.”
There was no accusation in the words, but they still stung. Eris had been entirely right about James, and Kallie had been too smitten to listen to her. So many times when her best friend had tried to, metaphorically and literally, talk some sense into her. So many signs she looked back on now that Eris had seen that she simply refused to see. She sighed heavily as she unhooked the connections holding up her innocent white stockings.
“We all make mistakes” Eris said. “I’m only glad this surfaced on the right side of ‘I do.’”
Kallie slid the stockings from her skin and reached out to Eris. Her friend tossed her a pair of jeans while her two other bridesmaids fielded people who were coming to the door. Kallie knew people wanted to talk. Wanted to see how she was doing. Her parents. Her cousins. Uncles and aunts. But her bridesmaids knew how she worked and they knew she wasn’t ready to talk.
Kallie was grateful for it all as Eris wrapped her up in a hug.
“It’s easier to kick the asshole to the curb when you’re not legally bound to him.”
“It doesn’t make it hurt any less, though,” Kallie said.
“I know.”
“Maybe the limo will get into a car accident.”
“That’s the spirit,” Eris said.
“You know, I saw her get in there with him.”
“What?” Eris asked.
“Yeah. James, his mother, his father, and her. They all got in together.”
Kallie walked over and sank down to sit at the end of the bed. Eris sat beside her, pulling pins from the fancy updo it had taken an overpriced hairdresser an hour to put together that morning. Her hair-sprayed tresses fell past her shoulders and trickled down her back, and somehow Kallie felt a weight lift off her shoulders. As Eris pulled pin after pin from her hair and allowed it to tumble down, Kallie ran her fingers through it to smooth out all the knots and the teasing that had gone into making her look way too much like Magda.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now. We had everything planned out,” Kallie said. “Where do I go from here?”
Eris took the little collection of pins, rising to set them on the dresser. She grabbed a paddle brush and sat back down, taking to the knots Kallie couldn’t get out with her fingertips. The brush moved slowly through her hair. Like molasses. Catching on every string and pulling and popping at every pass of the brush through her long copper hair.
“Take it one step at a time,” Eris said. “Your mom will be back with the takeout any minute.”
“My mom’s getting takeout?” Kallie asked.
“Did you not hear Rachel stick her head in and say your mother was bringing tikka masala?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Kallie’s eyes focused on a moot point on the wall. Even in her poised state, she was losing control. Losing grip on her surroundings. Losing out on the reality cascading around her. Kallie’s stomach grumbled with hunger. She hadn’t eaten all day so as to not risk bloating in her wedding dress.
Bloating.
Like that was the biggest worry of her day.
“So, we eat. We have a drink. Or five. We watch some terrible reality television. Make fun of their lives for a little while. And we worry about everything else in the morning when you’ve had some rest and time to think about and process things. And don’t discount that mime idea.”
It was good advice. Minus the mime. But Kallie’s thoughts spun in restless circles. For a long moment, they sat together in silence as her mind screamed at her.
Then, her best friend voiced what she was thinking.
“The honeymoon was already paid for, you know,” Eris said suddenly.
“I have no idea if it can even be refunded at this point,” Kallie said, more to herself than to her best friend. “I was really looking forward to that thing too. Two weeks in St. Barts. All-expenses paid villa on a private beach with drinks, a chef, a hot tub, and an infinity pool.”
She sighed again. It had been a long time since she had been on a vacation, and she had been looking forward to a break from the constant grind of work. James always told her she needed to slow down. Joked too often about how when she was his wife she wouldn’t have to lift a finger except to shop. It hadn’t been a joke Kallie particularly appreciated, but the sentiment behind it was nice at times. No worries. Weekend getaways. Travelin
g with the love of her life to see the limitless wonders the world had to offer.
“Hey. Now there’s a novel idea,” Eris said
She flopped down on the bed and sprawled across the mattress like she owned it, her glass of wine empty and abandoned. And Kallie, pulled from her thoughts, looked behind at her best friend.
“What’s an idea?”
“The honeymoon.” Eris didn’t call her an idiot, but going by the tone she might as well have. “It’s already paid for. So go on it.”
“Go on my honeymoon,” Kallie said. “With who, exactly? My cheating ex-fiancé?”
“By yourself,” Eris said with a breathless giggle. “Are you that thick? Come on.”
She fluttered a languid hand in the air, and Kallie knew what was coming next.
“Or with some random hot guy. I’m sure you could find one who’d be interested in two weeks of sun, sand, and you in a bikini. I mean, I’d offer to go—make it a girls’ trip or something—but unfortunately, I’ve got a major project in eight days and if I disappeared this close to a deadline, it’s entirely likely that my boss would have me drawn and quartered.”
Two weeks of sun and sand did sound tempting. And sticking it to James by going on the honeymoon he’d paid for without him didn’t sound half bad either. Really, it was the least he deserved. And two weeks of drinks, a professional chef, and the setting sun over the water was exactly what she deserved after the mess he had left her to clean up.
And he wouldn’t stop her. Not by a long shot.
The more she considered the idea, the better it sounded. She’d get that break she wanted—no, needed—after the fiasco of the wedding. Eris could be a bit of a loose cannon, but she had her moments. And this seemed to be one of them.
“Maybe I will,” Kallie said. “There’s still time. The plane doesn’t leave until morning. And my bag’s already packed.”
“Still time for what?”
Her mother’s voice trailed in from down the hall accompanied by the sound of the door shutting behind her. Kallie and Eris levered themselves up from the bed and headed for the kitchen, where the rustling of bags being emptied promised food. Kallie’s mother was leaning over the table, setting cartons out, but she looked up when they came in, eyebrows raised in question as her two other bridesmaids grabbed forks and sodas from the refrigerator.
