After He Gave My Wedding Away, I Built My Empire novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Ten Minutes
Cassandra listens to Colin give her aisle to Rowena over a livestream, walks in and hands Rowena her ring. Her shop is padlocked before she leaves the chapel.
"Rowena has been my best friend for nine years," Colin said into the microphone, and he was smiling. "Cassandra was kind enough to give us ten minutes for a photo."
The guests in the livestream laughed.
I heard every word from the back seat of the bridal car.
We were parked at the curb outside the chapel, forty feet from the doors.
My maid of honor held her phone between us, and her hand was shaking.
On the little screen, Rowena stood beside my fiancé at the altar in an ivory gown with a cathedral train.
She held a bouquet of white ranunculus.
Mine was in my lap, the same flowers, and Rowena had sent it to my hotel room herself that morning.
The card said: Be happy. You earned it.
"It's a bit," she said. "It has to be a bit. He wouldn't."
My phone buzzed.
Colin: Photo thing for my mother, two minutes. Stay in the car. You're perfect. Love you.
He had typed it while standing next to her.
The camera caught him slide the phone into his pocket and take Rowena's hand.
"Is this the part where I panic?" I asked.
"Cassie, don't do anything yet," Hattie said.
The officiant, an old man in a gray robe, looked at Colin and then at the guests.
He said, "I was told the bride is arriving."
"She is," Colin said smoothly. "This is a tribute. Rowena was my first love, and she has waited nine years for a day like this."
Rowena pressed a hand to her chest and smiled at the camera.
Two hundred people applauded.
Colin's mother, in the front pew, wiped her eyes.
My own mother was in the third row, and she was clapping too.
I looked at the ring on my left hand.
Colin had proposed with it eleven months ago, on a Sunday, in the middle of my workshop.
He stood up that night when his phone lit with Rowena's name, and he stood up every time after that.
I had always thought it was good manners.
Rowena Sayre ran the firm Colin worked for, and she was his oldest friend, and she had paid for half of this wedding as a gift.
I had thanked her for that in writing.
On the screen, the organist started the wedding march.
Colin offered Rowena his arm.
They started down the aisle together, toward the doors, toward us.
"Okay, no," Hattie said. "Driver. Drive."
"Stay here," I said.
I opened the car door.
My dress caught on the seat and I pulled it free and heard something tear.
"Cassandra."
"I'm going to walk in my own wedding."
The chapel doors were propped open.
A groomsman saw me and his face went slack.
I walked past him, past the guest book, past the ushers who stood with their hands out and did not touch me.
The organ stumbled and stopped.
Colin and Rowena were halfway down the aisle, and they both stopped too.
Two hundred heads turned.
Every phone in the room turned with them.
"Cassandra," Colin said. His voice was low and quick. "You were supposed to wait in the car."
"For what?"
"For the photo. It was a surprise. It was supposed to be a kind thing."
Rowena didn't say anything.
She looked at me with her head tipped, and for the first time since I had known her, she did not smile.
I walked up to her and held out my bouquet.
She took it out of habit.
Then I pulled off the ring and put it in her free palm, on top of her flowers.
"You can keep the aisle," I said. "Ten minutes was generous."
Someone in the back said, "Oh my God."
Colin grabbed my wrist.
"Don't do this in front of everyone," he said into my ear. "Think about your shop. Think about what happens to the lease."
I looked at his hand until he let go.
Then I turned and walked back up the aisle alone.
My mother stood up in the third row and said my name.
I kept going.
Outside, the sun was bright and Hattie was waiting by the car with my phone, which I had left on the seat.
It was lit with eight missed calls from the woman who managed my shop.
I called her back.
"Cassandra, thank God. There are men here with a notice." Her voice broke. "They say Thackeray Row is closing us today, and they're changing the locks right now."
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