I Dumped My Groom and Married My Childhood Crush in 30 Minutes novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Doorstep

Tobias begs, then threatens; Annalise slaps him in front of the neighbors; Reese posts an edited clip with her crying.

I put on Conway's shirt and a pair of his sweatpants and opened the door myself.

He had been standing right beside it.

He looked at me, and I shook my head, and he stepped back.

My terms were my terms.

Tobias was on the gravel in his rented tuxedo, with the tie hanging open and his hair wrecked.

He smelled like whiskey from three feet away.

"Annalise," he said, and his voice cracked. "Baby. Thank God."

"It's midnight, Tobias."

"I made a mistake."

"You made a plan."

"It was a joke!" He threw out his arms. "It was a stupid prank. Everybody does pranks. You were supposed to laugh!"

Across the road a porch light came on.

Then another one, two houses down.

On the dock next door, two men fishing under a lantern turned their heads.

"Reese said you'd cry for five minutes and then we'd all go to the reception," Tobias said. "That's all it was."

"Reese said."

"Come home. Please. My mother says we can fix it. She says the marriage to this guy isn't even real."

I looked past him at the silver sedan.

The passenger window was down an inch.

I could see the shape of Eleanor's face, turned toward the boathouse door, toward the man standing behind me.

She had not gotten out.

"Your mother said that?"

"She said you were in shock." He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. "Annalise, I love you. I've loved you for two years."

"You told me I'd cry on camera for a bet."

"Okay, so I'm an idiot."

"You told your friends I was a joke."

His face changed.

The tears stopped, and his voice dropped, and the charm was gone.

"You know what, fine," he said. "You want to talk about a joke? Look at him."

He pointed at Conway.

"The groundskeeper's boy. He was shoveling our driveway when you were in diapers. You think he married you because he loves you? He married you because I'm a Harcourt and you were crying on a stage."

"I was crying in a back room," I said. "You were filming it."

"You'll be back by Monday."

"I won't."

"You'll be back by Monday, because I'll make sure your hospital knows what kind of woman runs out on a wedding. My mother sits on that board, Annalise. You know that."

Behind me Conway shifted his weight.

He didn't speak.

His hand was a fist at his side, and I could see the scar along his forearm go white at the edges.

I had told him not to rescue me.

I was grateful and furious that he remembered.

"Is that a threat?" I asked.

Tobias stepped closer.

"It's a fact."

I looked at his face, the one I had kissed in a hundred photographs.

Then I slapped him.

It was loud on the gravel, loud enough that one of the fishermen said, "Whoa."

Tobias's head snapped sideways.

He put a hand to his cheek and stared at me.

"You hit me."

"You told me you'd get me fired for leaving."

"You hit me!"

"Say it again," I said. "The men on that dock have their phones out."

He turned.

On the dock, one of the fishermen had lifted his phone, and his lantern lit up Tobias's face and the red shape of my hand across it.

"I'm not on camera," Tobias said, and his voice jumped. "Turn that off."

"Sorry, pal," the man said. "Free country."

Tobias looked back at the car.

The sedan window slid down the rest of the way, and Eleanor said, quietly and clearly, "Tobias. Get in."

"Mom, she hit me, she..."

"In the car."

He got in the car.

Eleanor did not look at me.

She looked past me to the doorway, and for a long second she looked at Conway, and Conway looked back.

Then the window rose and the sedan reversed up the gravel with its headlights sweeping across the hulls in the yard.

I stood in the doorway until the taillights were gone.

My hand was stinging.

"You were great," Conway said.

"You didn't say anything."

"You told me not to."

"I know." I flexed my fingers. "I was a little disappointed."

He laughed once, low and surprised.

It was the first time I had heard that laugh in nine years.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

Then it buzzed again, and kept buzzing.

Hattie had sent me a link with six exclamation points.

I opened it on the couch with Conway looking over my shoulder.

It was a video of me in the back room, in the half-pinned veil, sobbing with my hands over my face.

Reese had posted it with a caption: "Bride begs her groom not to leave her. Pray for Annalise."

Forty-one thousand views.

I had not cried once in that room.

The voice on the clip was mine, saying, "Please, Tobias, please don't go."

I had never said it.

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