My Fiancé and Brothers Left Me at the Altar for My Adopted Sister novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: His Phone

Police cuff the stranger as Victoria trembles on cue; June picks up his dropped phone and reads three years of warm texts from her sister, the last telling him where to park.

The sirens were already coming up Larkin Road.

Somebody in the doorway had called them before I had even reached the asphalt.

Two patrol cars pulled into the lot, and the officers got out with their hands on their belts.

"Let him up," the older one said. "Slowly."

Dustin let go of the jacket.

The man on the ground stood up with his palms out.

His black suit was covered in dust, and there was a scrape on his chin.

"Rafe Stender," the officer said, looking at a screen on his shoulder. "Sir, there's an order against you. You're not allowed within five hundred feet of Victoria Doherty."

"I know," Rafe said.

"Then why are you here?"

"She told me to come."

The officer didn't even look surprised.

He had the flat look of someone who has heard that sentence before.

"Turn around, please."

"Officer, he was waiting by my car," Victoria said.

She had stepped behind Kent, and she was holding his sleeve with both hands.

Her voice shook in exactly the right places.

"I was so scared. I couldn't even get out. I thought he'd been, he'd been..."

"It's okay," Kent told her. "It's okay, you're safe."

He put an arm around her.

He did not look at me.

The younger officer cuffed Rafe's hands behind him.

Rafe let him, and he kept his eyes on me over the officer's shoulder.

"Third time," he said, so quietly I almost missed it. "She always asks me to come in person."

Dustin spun around.

"Don't talk to her."

"I'm not talking to her. I'm talking to the one in the dress."

They walked him toward the car.

As the officer turned him, something slid out of his jacket and clattered on the asphalt.

It was a phone in a battered black case.

Nobody saw it fall.

Everybody was looking at Victoria, who had started to cry properly now, with her face in Kent's chest, while Ross patted her hair.

I bent down in my dress and picked it up.

The screen was cracked across one corner.

It lit up in my hand with a text preview.

"Where are you? I'm at the back of the lot," it said.

The name above it was just "T."

The patrol car door slammed on Rafe's head, gently.

I put the phone in the pocket of my skirt, and I walked away from everybody, around the corner of the chapel, behind the stone wall where the caterers had parked their vans.

My hands were shaking now.

I had held it together in the lot for the guests.

I sat down on an upturned crate and opened the thread.

It wasn't locked.

It went back three years.

The first one at the top was dated the week after Dad's funeral.

"I'm sorry I said those things," it began. "Please don't go. I need you. Come see me and I'll tell them it was a mistake."

Rafe had replied with one line.

"I'm coming, Vic. Where?"

I scrolled.

There were hundreds.

"Miss you."

"Miss you more."

"Don't tell them you called, they'll be angry."

"Don't call the house."

"I'll fix it, I promise. Just stay away until I do."

Over and over, in a hundred small ways, my sister had told this man that she missed him.

And each time, it ended the same way.

A date.

A place.

A time to come.

Then, a few days later, a screenshot of a police report from my brother Dustin in the family chat.

I knew all of those reports.

I had been at the table when Dustin read them aloud.

I had been the one who said, "Poor Victoria."

Down at the bottom of the thread, the last message was that morning.

It had come in at 7:02 a.m.

"Park in the back of the Larkin Hall lot at 11. Wait by the white car. It's the last time, I swear. Once they see you, it's done."

I read it three times.

Then I looked at the contact photo, in a tiny circle.

It was a picture of two children on a porch swing, a skinny dark-haired boy about thirteen and a small blond girl on his lap.

The girl had Victoria's eyes.

I did not let myself finish the thought.

I heard footsteps on the gravel behind the wall.

"June?" Ross called. "June, are you back here?"

I closed the phone and slid it into my bodice, under the lace.

"Coming," I said.

I stood up and smoothed my skirt.

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it against the cracked case.

I had no idea what I was going to do with it.

I only knew I was not giving it to my brothers.

← 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