Chapter 15: In Front of Everyone

"Good evening," I said. "I'm Jenna Corliss. I made the flowers."

A ripple of polite applause went through the room.

At the head table, Brooke's mother lifted her glass to me with a smile.

"I'd like to say a few words about the happy couple," I said, "and then I'd like to read something."

The quartet had stopped.

From the dance floor Travis was crossing the room, quickly, with his hands out.

"Jen."

"Please stay where you are, Travis. It's your toast."

He stopped, because a hundred and forty heads had turned to look at him.

I took the folded paper out of my back pocket and opened it.

"This is a certified copy of a marriage certificate," I said. "State of Nevada. Clark County, recorded on June 14, 2023."

Nobody breathed.

"The groom is Travis James Odell."

Someone in the back row laughed uneasily, thinking it was a joke.

"The bride is Jenna Marie Corliss."

The laugh died.

"That's me," I said.

Mr. Pennell came through the green room door at the far end, with the lawyer at his elbow.

He was walking very fast.

He was too late.

"I was drunk in Las Vegas three years ago and married a man in a chapel off the Strip," I said.

"The next morning he told me it didn't count. He said he'd torn up the paperwork, and I believed him.

"It counted. It has been on file with the county the whole time. Nobody ever filed for a divorce."

A woman at table four said, "Oh my God," quite clearly.

"Last Friday," I said, "Travis married Brooke at the Franklin County courthouse. That marriage is void, because he already had a wife."

"That's a lie," Travis said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Put Our Love on Pause, Then Married Her Behind My Back from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.