I Fled My Wedding, Slept With a Stranger, and He's My New Boss novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Ninety Seconds
At her live-streamed wedding Maddie hears Hayes whisper that the sponsor deal closes in ninety seconds, takes off her veil and walks out in front of four hundred guests, then flies to an island with Lena; Hayes's text promises she will never work in New York again, and a stranger at the resort bar says her drink was his.
The guests stood when the music changed, and a camera on a crane swung toward me.
The cameraman wore a headset that said MACINTYRE WEDDING LIVE.
My mother squeezed my arm and whispered that I looked beautiful, and her chin shook.
I walked the whole aisle with my eyes on the man waiting under the white arch.
Hayes stood there in a cream tuxedo, two championship rings on the hand he held out to me.
A sports network was streaming this to nine million people. He had called that a gift to the fans.
That morning his agent had slid a one-page rider under my bouquet and said it was a formality for the sponsor.
I had signed it without reading, because Hayes squeezed my shoulder and said, "Handled, babe. Don't stress."
Now I took his hand, and he pulled me close and put his mouth by my ear.
"You look unreal, Mads," he murmured, warm as the man I had said yes to. "Smile at the crane. Ninety seconds and the Aldine deal closes."
I kept smiling, because the crane was swinging over us.
"What deal?" I whispered.
"The ad money clears when the vows do. That's why the stream starts at two." His thumb tapped my knuckles. "Don't make this weird. Just say it."
In the front row, his agent held up a phone and mouthed a word at Hayes: Now.
Hayes didn't look at me again. He looked at the lens.
I had spent two years planning this wedding for him.
I had planned other people's weddings for six years, and I knew a real schedule when I saw one.
There was no marriage on this one. There was a payment, and I was the signature.
The officiant cleared his throat. "Dearly beloved."
Lena sat in the second row in her yellow bridesmaid dress, her phone in her lap and her eyes on me.
She mouthed a single word, very slowly: Walk.
I thought of my mother, who had driven a school bus for thirty years and taught me never to sign what I hadn't read.
Then I took off the veil.
I put it in Hayes's hands, and he was so startled he held it.
His lapel microphone was live, and everyone heard me say, "I'm not part of your deal."
So I stepped out.
I went down the aisle with my train over my arm.
Nobody stopped me.
Every head in the pavilion turned together, and I heard the crane motor whine as it followed.
My mother caught my hand at the end of the row. "Go," she said. "I've got the cake."
Lena was behind me before I reached the doors, my carry-on in one hand and her car keys in the other.
"I booked Cay Verde for your bachelorette," she said, running. "Nobody else could come. I have two tickets and a nonrefundable week. Get in the car."
My dress filled the entire back seat of her hatchback.
We were on the highway before I stopped shaking.
By the time we reached the airport I had forty-one missed calls.
I stopped counting texts when one from Hayes came in.
I read it in the security line, while Lena pulled bobby pins out of my hair.
"You'll be back by Monday to apologize. You just made me a joke in front of nine million people. Nobody in New York will hire you after this. I'll make sure of it."
Under it, his agent had added: "Rider stands. Do not speak to press."
I had never read that rider.
"What did I sign?" I said.
Lena took my phone and put it in her bag.
"A very bad piece of paper. On Monday I'll call my lawyer cousin and we'll read it together. Tonight you have a flight."
I changed in an airport bathroom, into jeans and a sweatshirt, and stuffed the wedding dress into a duffel.
We boarded in the last group.
A man in a gray golf shirt took the aisle seat across from us.
He had a camera bag between his feet, and he read the same page of a magazine for the whole flight.
"He's stalking our snacks," Lena said, and tore open a bag of pretzels.
I laughed for the first time that day, and it came out wet and strange.
The last leg to Cay Verde was a small white ferry, and the man in the gray golf shirt rode that too.
It was dark when I reached the resort bar, barefoot, my shoulders stinging from an hour of sun on the ferry deck.
Every television above the shelves was playing the clip.
It showed me in white, taking off the veil.
I took a glass of wine from the bar and sat with my back to the screens.
My hand was still shaking.
"That one's mine," a man said behind me.
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