I Dumped My Groom and Married My Childhood Crush in 30 Minutes novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fake Wedding
Thirty minutes before the ceremony Tobias says it is a bet; Annalise calls Conway and marries him in front of the whole town; his ring is the paper one she made at nine.
Thirty minutes before my wedding, my fiancé told me the ceremony was fake.
I was in the back room of the Marlow Point church hall with half my veil pinned.
My best friend had gone to find me a bottle of water.
Tobias's mother was fixing the last pins herself, humming under her breath.
"Hold still, honey," she said. "You're shaking."
"I'm fine."
"You're a bride. You're allowed."
She was the only person who had been kind to me all week, and I told her so.
She patted my cheek and said, "You've earned a good day."
Then the door opened and Tobias came in with a paper cup of tea he had fetched for me, grinning like a boy.
He was laughing too hard to hand it over.
His best friend Reese came in behind him, and three other groomsmen behind Reese, all with their phones held up.
"Don't cry yet," Tobias said. "Save it for the camera."
"Tobias, what is this?"
"The man out there in the robe is Reese's cousin. He does community theater."
He wiped his eyes.
"There's no wedding, Annalise. We planned the whole thing. Five months. We just wanted to see how far you'd go for me."
Reese leaned toward me with his phone an inch from my face.
"Say something," he said. "The group chat has money on how long you'll cry."
Behind him a groomsman whispered, "She's not crying, pay up."
Eleanor stopped with a pin in her fingers.
"Tobias," she said, "that is enough. Go sit down. I'll handle the room."
She said it softly, and he went, because he always went when she used that voice.
The others filed out after him, still filming.
Eleanor squeezed my shoulder.
"Whatever you decide, I'll back you in front of everyone," she said. "Give me ten minutes."
She left too.
I stood there in my mother's pearl earrings.
Two years I had planned around that man.
I had paid for half the flowers myself.
I had told every kid on my ward I was getting married on Saturday.
I took out my phone and scrolled past Tobias, past Hattie, past my boss.
I stopped on a number I had never deleted.
I hadn't called it in nine years.
It rang once.
"Annalise?"
I had not heard his voice since I was nineteen, and it still sounded like the back fence of our two cottages.
"Conway," I said. "I need you at the Marlow Point church hall. Right now. I can't explain."
"I'm already in the car."
"You don't know where I am."
"Hattie called me an hour ago and said you might need someone," he said. "She found my number in your old yearbook. I was on the road before she finished."
Hattie was my best friend, and she had never trusted Reese.
I looked down at the pearls in my hands.
"Come in through the front," I said. "Wear whatever you have on."
I walked out of the back room myself.
The hall was full.
A hundred and forty people turned in their pews, and every one of them was smiling at me.
Tobias stood at the front with his hands folded, grinning.
Reese's cousin in the robe waited behind the table.
Reese held up his phone and mouthed, "Go."
I walked down the aisle all the way to Tobias.
He took my hands.
"Thought you'd cry," he whispered.
"I thought I'd say yes," I said.
I took my hands back.
"Everyone, I'm sorry to take your time," I said. My voice carried. "My fiancé just told me this wedding is a joke, and that his friends are filming me for a bet."
The hall went silent.
Tobias laughed. "Annalise, babe, come on."
"Tobias is not the groom," I said. "He never was."
Three rows back, a groomsman's phone dropped to the floor.
Tobias lunged for my arm, and the front doors of the hall swung open.
Conway Redfern stood in the doorway in a dark work jacket with sawdust still on the sleeve.
He was taller than I remembered and his hair was shorter.
He had the same gray eyes.
He looked at nobody else in the room.
He walked down the aisle, and nobody stopped him.
Halfway there Tobias's mother, Eleanor, stood up from the front pew with a water glass in her hand.
She did not move, and the glass trembled so hard it spilled onto her dress.
I figured she was just in shock, like everyone else.
Conway stopped in front of me.
"You called," he said.
"Marry me," I said.
I heard somebody gasp.
"Right now. Today. Please."
He did not ask why.
He said, "Yes."
I turned toward the third row, where a woman in a navy suit was sitting with her mouth open.
"Judge," I said. "You came as a guest. Tobias never got a real officiant, so I did. I picked up the license from the clerk myself two weeks ago."
The judge looked from me to Tobias to Conway.
"The groom line is blank," I said. "I'd like it filled."
She stood and walked to the table, and Reese's cousin stepped aside without a word.
She read the license, then lifted her eyes.
"It's valid for whoever signs it," she said. "Do you both consent?"
"I do," Conway said.
"I do," I said.
Tobias was yelling something behind me.
I did not turn around.
We said the vows in two minutes, and the judge had to repeat the first line because I could not stop my hands from shaking.
When she told Conway to give me a ring, he reached into his jacket pocket.
He pulled out something small and bent and held it up between two fingers.
It was a ring made of green paper.
I had folded it myself at nine years old, behind the fence, and told him it was a wedding ring.
He had kept it for nineteen years.
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