He Stole My Fiancée, So I Took His Wife and His Company novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Kissing Better Than You
An hour after they pick up their marriage license, Natalie smiles and tells Miles she has cheated all year; he steps out of the car on the bridge with the license and watches his best friend kiss her.
An hour after we picked up our marriage license, Natalie told me she was cheating on me.
The license was in a manila folder on my knee.
The county clerk had stamped it and wished us a long life together.
Natalie was driving us back downtown with the windows cracked and the radio low.
My phone buzzed against my leg.
It was Connor, my best friend and my business partner of nine years.
"Did you two get it? Put the fee on the firm card. My wife signs off on the expenses Friday anyway."
I typed back a thumbs up and laughed at how happy I felt.
"What's funny?" Natalie asked.
"Nothing. I'm just glad it's done."
She stopped at a red light and looked at me.
She was smiling, and it was not the smile she used on my mother.
"I cheated on you," she said.
I waited for the rest of the joke.
She pointed one red fingernail at my chest, then at the folder in my lap.
"Right there. With that license sitting on your knee. I wanted to see your face when I said it."
"Natalie, stop."
"He kisses better than you do, Miles."
Her voice was light, almost sweet.
"I think about it at red lights. I'm thinking about it now."
The light turned green.
She didn't move, and a truck behind us leaned on its horn.
"Who is he?" I said.
"Someone you'd never suspect."
She drove through the intersection and the smile stayed on her face.
"I wanted to wait until after the wedding, honestly. But watching you hold that folder with both hands was too much."
My hands had gone cold.
My mother, Joan, was in the cardiac ward at St. Luke's, waiting for a surgery date.
I had told her that morning that we were picking up the license.
She had cried and held my face.
"How long?" I asked.
"All year. Since before you proposed."
"You asked me to marry you on a Sunday, and he was in my bed that Saturday. He thought it was funny. So did I."
I looked at her hands on the wheel.
The ring I'd bought with my savings caught the light.
"Pull over," I said.
"We're almost home."
"Pull over, Natalie."
She laughed and took the next right onto the Kinnickinnic bridge.
She stopped in the lane, right in the middle of traffic, and put the hazards on.
"Go on, then," she said. "Make a scene. You love being the good guy."
Cars started to slow behind us.
A man on a bike stopped to watch.
I took the folder off my knee.
I opened it and looked at the two of us, typed in black ink above one signature line.
Then I took out the license and put the empty folder in her lap.
"Keep the folder," I said. "You'll need somewhere to put your next lie."
Her smile slipped for the first time.
"You're keeping the license? What for?"
"So no one else can sign it with your name on it."
I opened the door.
A bus driver leaned on his horn.
Natalie grabbed my sleeve. "Miles. Get back in. You're being dramatic."
"You just told me you were with someone else this whole year."
"And you're going to walk across a bridge in the middle of the day over it?"
"Yes."
I pulled my sleeve out of her hand.
So I stepped out of the car.
The man on the bike lifted his phone.
I kept walking, and I did not look back, though I heard her door open.
"You'll come crawling!" she called after me. "You have no one else!"
I walked to the end of the bridge and stood by the rail until I could breathe.
The water below was gray and moving fast.
My phone buzzed again.
Connor: "Where are you? Nat just called me crying. She says you lost it. Stay put, I'll come get you."
I read it twice.
Nat had called him crying.
Not two minutes ago, she had been laughing at red lights.
I turned around.
The hazards were off, and her red car was gone from the bridge.
I found it again in the lot of the café across the water, where she had pulled in.
Connor's gray truck was already parked beside it.
I had not told him which bridge.
He stepped out and Natalie walked straight into him.
She put both hands on his face and kissed him, long and slow, in the open lot with the sun on them.
His wedding ring was on the hand he slid into her hair.
My phone buzzed in my fist.
Connor: "I'm ten minutes out, buddy. Hang tight. I've got you."
I watched him type it with one thumb while he kissed my fiancée with the other hand.
Then my phone rang again, and it was the hospital.
"Mr. Kettering," the nurse said, "it's about your mother. You need to come now."
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