He Left Our Wedding for a Sprained Ankle, So I Married My Ex-Boss novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Wrong Foot

Dillon bursts in with Chloe limping on the wrong foot. Gillian says the count aloud and marries Vaughn in front of everyone. Chloe whispers: ask him why.

Chloe wore a cream cardigan and a black orthopedic boot on her right foot.

She limped down the aisle on Dillon's arm, one hand pressed to her chest, as the quartet stumbled into silence.

Two hundred heads turned from the head table to the doorway and back.

"Gillian," Dillon said. He was out of breath. "What is this? Who is that?"

"That's Vaughn Stroud. He's standing next to me because I asked him to."

"This is insane. Chloe's ankle is broken, I took her to urgent care, and you've replaced me with your old boss?"

"You took her to urgent care and then straight here?"

"She wouldn't stay alone."

Chloe made a small, wounded sound.

"I'm so sorry, Gillian," she said. Her blue eyes filled on cue. "I didn't want to ruin anything. I told Dillon to leave me at the hospital."

"Which ankle did you break?" I asked.

"What?"

"Which one. The left or the right?"

"The left," Chloe said at once.

At table four, Dillon's cousin looked down at his phone.

"Dillon texted the family group at ten-fifteen," the cousin said, loudly enough for the whole row. "He wrote, Chloe fell, her left ankle, I'm taking her in."

Nobody said anything.

Every eye in the ballroom went to the boot.

It was on her right foot.

Chloe looked down.

Dillon looked down.

Somebody near the back laughed, one short, helpless bark, and then clapped a hand over their mouth.

"The doctor wrapped the wrong one," Chloe said faintly. "I was in so much pain."

"Urgent care," I said. "Which urgent care?"

She opened her mouth.

Dillon's mother came forward from the second row, her pearls swinging.

"This is a cruel little performance, Gillian," Sylvia said. "Security. I want her removed from the room."

The security man at the door glanced at Vaughn.

Vaughn did not move.

"She's the bride," he said. "She's staying."

I looked at Dillon, at the man I had loved for three years.

"I kept a count," I said. I said it to him and to every guest. "Ninety-nine times since Chloe came home. Dinner, movies, my birthday, our anniversary. I'd have forgiven ninety-nine. Today is the hundredth. You left my wedding to carry her, and you came back with her on your arm."

"Don't do this in front of everyone."

"You did it in front of everyone. I'm only saying it out loud."

"I was going to bring her and come straight to the dressing room," he said. "I'd have explained."

"Explain to them. They're all here."

His jaw worked.

He looked at the room, at his mother, at the cousins, at Chloe's boot.

For a second I saw something in his face that had nothing to do with embarrassment. It was fear.

"Gillian. Please. Not like this."

I took the engagement ring off my finger.

I had worn it three years.

I put it in his palm and folded his hand shut over it.

"Take it to Chloe," I said. "She can hold it with the other things you've carried."

Sylvia made a noise in her throat.

Dillon's father, a heavy, silent man in the third row, put his head in his hands.

"This isn't a wedding anymore," Sylvia hissed. "This is a funeral for a name."

"It's a wedding," I said. "Judge, we're ready."

The judge stood.

My mother stood too, in her lilac dress, and put her hand on her chest.

Then the quartet played the processional, because the planner was the only person in the room who knew her job, and Vaughn took my arm.

We walked up the aisle together between the white roses.

Dillon followed us, three steps behind, saying my name.

"Gillian. Gillian, you can't. There's no license. It isn't even legal."

"It's a promise," Vaughn said without looking back. "The paper is on Monday. You can watch."

The judge asked the guests to sit.

Only the Lowrys stayed standing.

"Vaughn Stroud," the judge said. "Do you take this woman?"

"I do," Vaughn said. "I'll turn up."

A few people laughed, then stopped.

"Gillian Ashworth. Do you take this man?"

"I do," I said. My voice shook once, then held. "He's on time."

The judge cleared his throat. "By the power vested in me, I pronounce you married in this room. Or something like it. You may kiss your bride."

Vaughn looked at me.

He asked it with his eyes, not his mouth, and I answered by stepping into him.

His hand slid up my bare back to the nape of my neck.

His mouth was warm, and sure, and in no hurry.

I had kissed a man for three years and had never once been kissed like this.

I gripped his lapel.

He kissed me until I forgot the two hundred people, until somebody in the second row whistled and my mother said "Well" very clearly, until Dillon's voice behind us broke on a single raw word.

"Gillian."

Vaughn lifted his head.

His eyes stayed on mine. "Still sober?" he murmured.

"Yes."

"Good."

The photographer's flash went off three times.

Security had finally taken Chloe's elbow, and Sylvia was talking to the planner with her teeth together.

As they steered her up the side aisle, Chloe twisted back toward me.

She had stopped crying.

Her voice came out calm and low, for me alone.

"He can't leave me, you know," she said. "Ask him why."

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