I Fled the Wedding, the Obsessed CEO Lost His Sanity novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Fitting

Daphne walks into the dress fitting and calls Cassia a thief; Rhys offers Cassia proof of the bet and it shows Daphne wrote the stake.

"Who's texting you this late?" I asked, and ladled soup into two bowls.

"Rhys," Harvey said. "He wants to move Thursday's lunch."

He lied so smoothly that I almost admired it.

I ate every spoonful, and I laughed at the right places, and I let him carry the dishes to the sink.

That night I lay awake with his arm across my waist and listened to the recording four times through one earbud.

The second time, I noticed Rhys's voice.

He said "isn't that a little cruel" and then he said nothing else for the rest of the dinner.

The next afternoon I stood on a pedestal in a white shop on Oak Street with forty pins in my hem.

"You look like a movie," Maddie said from the velvet couch.

She had come straight from the kitchen and still smelled like fryer oil.

I had told her everything in the car, in about ninety seconds.

She had been quiet for exactly one red light.

Then she had said, "I'm going to kill him."

I had said, "No, I'm going to marry him."

She had looked at me.

"Just until the wedding," I had said. "Then I'm gone."

She was still deciding whether to forgive me for that.

The bell on the door rang.

"Cassia, darling!"

Harvey's mother came in first, in a camel coat, holding a coffee.

Behind her came a woman in cream silk with a glossy blonde bob and pearl earrings.

I knew her from a single photograph on the internet and six years of nightmares.

Daphne Wakefield stopped in front of my pedestal and put her hand over her heart.

"It's really you," she said. "I've heard so much."

"Daphne just flew in from London," Harvey's mother said.

"She and Harvey go all the way back. I thought she should see the dress."

"I'm sure it's beautiful," Daphne said, "on the right person."

She smiled at me and her eyes went down the dress and back up again.

She was taller than me in person, and thinner.

"Harvey told me everything about you," she said. "How hard you work. How you manage to get things for yourself."

Maddie sat up on the couch.

"She's an illustrator," Harvey's mother said. "She paints children's books."

"Oh, I know," Daphne said. "I love a woman who can take inspiration from wherever she finds it."

Nobody else in the room understood her.

I did.

The seamstress went on pinning my hem and pretended to be deaf.

I could have said any of ten things.

I could have said the Lighthouse Fox was mine, and so was the little paw print I sign every drawing with.

I could have said I had watched her sell it to a gallery with her name on the card.

That would have started a long, ugly argument I could not win yet.

I had no proof.

All I had was a recording of him laughing.

So I smiled.

"Daphne, I'm so glad you're here," I said.

"Will you come to the wedding? I'd love you to sit in the front row."

Her smile did not move, but something behind it did.

"I wouldn't miss it."

"Good," I said. "I want you close enough to see everything."

Maddie coughed into her fist.

Harvey's mother glowed, because she thought we had just made friends.

When the seamstress finished, I got down from the pedestal and went to the changing room.

I stood in front of the mirror in a stranger's dress and breathed.

I lasted four seconds before my eyes stung.

Somebody knocked on the dressing room door, very quietly.

"Cassia. It's Rhys."

I opened it a crack.

He was standing in the little hallway behind the curtain with his hands jammed in his coat pockets.

He looked like a man on the way to his own trial.

"Harvey doesn't know I'm here," he said. "I need to tell you something."

"I know about the bet," I said.

His face went grey.

"How?"

"I was outside the door."

He shut his eyes.

"God. I'm so sorry. I said it was cruel. I should have said more."

"You should have told me in February," I said. "When it still had a chance to stop."

"I thought he'd call it off. He was different with you. I really thought that."

He pulled out his phone and held it out.

"I can't stop it. But I can show you what you're up against."

It was a group chat called "Fourteenth Hole."

The screen showed a message from three months ago, from a number saved as Daphne.

Loser makes the thief fall in love and marries her. Then he walks out at the altar in front of everyone. I want it on video.

Under it, Harvey's reply: Deal.

Under that, a second message from Daphne, sent only that morning.

I'll be in the front row. Save me a seat.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend