Chapter 3 - THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING
I used to think the night before my wedding was mostly a blur.
After Ryan’s confession, I remembered it differently.
My bridesmaids and I were in a hotel near the venue. My mother was downstairs fussing over welcome bags. Chloe was my maid of honor because of course she was. She had insisted on being one since the day I got engaged.
That evening, she disappeared for nearly an hour.
When she came back, she said she’d been outside taking a call from some guy she was “absolutely done with.”
I believed her because at that point Chloe was always absolutely done with some guy.
Ryan told me later what really happened.
He had gone out to the parking lot to grab his garment bag from his truck. Chloe was sitting on the curb crying, drunker than I realized.
She told him she couldn’t watch him marry me.
At first he thought she meant because weddings made her emotional.
Then she kissed him.
He should have walked away.
He didn’t.
That sentence sits at the center of everything.
He should have walked away.
He didn’t.
They slept together in his truck behind the hotel, with my rehearsal-dinner flowers still in the back seat.
The next morning, according to Ryan, he panicked. He recorded a voice message on his phone telling me the wedding had to stop—that he had done something unforgivable and I needed to hear it before I walked down the aisle.
Then he went into the chapel to find my father.
He left his phone in the bridal suite because he didn’t want me seeing him before photos.
Chloe was the only person in that room who knew the passcode.
She heard the message alert. She listened to it. Then she deleted it.
And when Ryan came back looking sick and trying to find a quiet second with me, Chloe cornered him in the hallway and begged him not to ruin my life, ruin hers, humiliate our parents, embarrass the family, destroy the wedding.
According to Ryan, she also said something else.
“If you’re going to choose her, at least don’t make me watch it burn.”
He married me three hours later.
I said vows in a white dress while my sister held my bouquet and my future husband knew both of them had already betrayed me.
The affair should have ended there.
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That would have been cruel enough.
It didn’t.
