Chapter 13: The Open Door

I pulled the door wide.

"Get in here, Shelby."

She stepped onto my mother's rug and stood there dripping.

Laurence came down the stairs in his trousers with a towel from the upstairs bath.

He put it around her shoulders without a word.

"I walked from the Lakeview Motel," Shelby said. "I didn't want to take the car in case Mom saw it."

"Sit down."

She sat at the kitchen table, the same table where I had sat an hour earlier with my skirt around my waist.

I put the kettle on, because my hands needed something to do.

Laurence leaned against the counter and watched her.

"Say it," I said.

Shelby gripped the towel in both fists.

"The morning of your wedding, Mom came to my room. I was twenty."

"Go on."

"She said Brett was falling apart. He'd been drinking since breakfast. She said he asked for me."

"Did he?"

"No." Her mouth twisted. "He didn't ask for anyone. He was just drunk and scared."

"And you went."

"I went. I sat with him in the groom's room. I'd had a crush on him for a year, Delaney, and I'm not going to tell you I didn't."

I said nothing.

"He kissed me. I let him." Her voice shook. "I'm not saying I was tricked into that. I'm saying I was tricked into the door."

"What about the door?"

"It was open. I closed it when I went in. When I looked up, it was propped wide with a rubber wedge."

I felt the floor tilt a little.

"Who propped it?"

"Mom. She was the only one who had a reason to."

Laurence spoke for the first time.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Runaway Bride Is Marrying His Billionaire Boss from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.