Chapter 22: The Last Table

Cecelia's POV

Preston walked up the center aisle between the tables with a man behind him carrying a camera on his shoulder.

A woman with a microphone followed them both, and she was smiling.

Preston's suit was the same grey one.

It was creased, and the front of it had a brown stain, and under his eyes his skin looked bruised.

"Everybody, hello," he said, to the whole room. "I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm the man who was left at the altar."

Nobody laughed.

A hundred phones came up anyway.

"I came to tell my side," Preston said.

"I came to ask Cecelia Cranmer, who has eleven billion dollars, why she lied to me for six years."

Rafe appeared at my shoulder.

"Don't," I said quietly.

"I wasn't going to."

"Keep your hands in your pockets."

"They're in my pockets."

I stood up.

I walked around the nurses' table and into the aisle, with my mother's pearls cold against my collarbone.

"Hello, Preston," I said.

"There she is." He swung to the camera.

"She tells everyone she's a nurse. She lets her friends hit me.

"She let her bodyguard put his hands on me."

"You married Danielle in Las Vegas on your own."

"Because she begged me to!"

"You told me Danielle dared you."

"I told you what I had to tell you!"

It rang through the ballroom, and he heard it.

He stopped, with his chest going up and down.

The woman with the microphone had lowered it an inch.

"Cecelia," he said, in the warm voice, the one for clients. "Please.

"Let's step out and I'll tell you everything. I'm the victim here."

"No, you're not."

The voice came from behind me.

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