My Ex Hired Me to Ruin Her Sister's Wedding novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Rehearsal

The rehearsal dinner was in the barn, at long tables under strings of lights, with eighty guests and a six-piece band.

Priya wore a blue silk dress with her hair down.

She sat at the head table between her parents, with Dylan at her left.

His hand pinned hers to the cloth.

I stood by the wall with a clipboard.

Cass stood beside me with a glass of sparkling water and her chin up.

"Two minutes," Cass murmured. "She said after the toasts."

"She said when she's ready."

"She's ready. Look at her."

Priya had put down her fork.

Dylan's father finished his toast.

It was a good one, funny and warm, about two families and one future, and the room clapped.

Dylan kissed her cheek, and then Priya stood up.

She stood so slowly that the clapping went quiet by itself.

"Thank you, sir," she said. "That was kind."

Her voice was shaking.

She put both hands on the tablecloth and stopped, and I felt my whole body lean toward her across thirty feet of barn.

She looked down the room, past the candles and eighty faces.

She looked at me.

I nodded once.

"I need to say something to all of you," Priya said. "I'm sorry to do it here."

"Babe," Dylan said, smiling. "Sit down."

"No."

"You're tired. You're nervous. Let's have dessert."

"I'm not marrying you, Dylan."

The barn went silent.

A fork rang on a plate somewhere, and rolled.

Dylan laughed, a small, tight laugh.

"You don't mean that."

"I do," Priya said. "I mean it. I've meant it for months, and I've told you five times in five different ways, and you said I didn't mean it every single time."

"Priya"

"I'm ending the engagement. The wedding's off. I'm sorry for the trouble to all of you. Please stay and eat. The food is paid for."

A woman gasped.

Dylan stood, and his chair went over backward.

"This is ridiculous. You're having a nervous breakdown in front of my family."

"I'm having a breakdown?" Priya said. "I'm the only person here who's calm."

His father rose from the far end of the table, white at the mouth.

He spoke in the quiet, silver voice I'd heard on his terrace.

"Priya. Think carefully about what you're doing."

"I have."

"The loan on your parents' third restaurant is secured against this marriage, in every way that matters. If you walk away, I'll call it in tomorrow morning."

A murmur ran through the barn.

Priya's mother put her hand over her mouth.

"Everything your family has built," Dylan's father said gently. "Gone by the end of the month."

Priya turned her head.

She looked at her father.

He was seventy, small, in a gray suit, with a mustache and reading glasses on a cord.

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