I Fled the Wedding, the Obsessed CEO Lost His Sanity novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Cake Samples
Cassia hears her fiancé tell his friends he lost a bet and will leave her at the altar, records it, and decides to leave first. At home his phone lights with Daphne's name.
I was standing in the hallway of Marlowe's Steakhouse with a box of cake samples when my fiancé told a dozen men I was a bet he had lost.
"I only went after her because I lost," Harvey said. "Now that Daphne is back, of course I'm not marrying her."
His voice was calm and bored, the voice he used on vendors who were late.
I had heard it a hundred times.
I had never heard it aimed at me.
The door of the private room was open two inches.
Warm light and cigar smoke came through the gap.
I had come to surprise him.
The bakery had finished the lemon and the salted caramel early, and I wanted him to pick the one for the wedding.
I was wearing the green dress he liked.
"Isn't that a little cruel to Cassia?" someone asked.
I knew that voice too.
It was Rhys, Harvey's best friend, who had given a toast at our engagement dinner about how Harvey had never smiled until he met me.
Someone else laughed.
"Cruel? She stole Daphne's work in school. Daphne's father shipped her off to London because of it. Cassia got her scholarship and Daphne got exiled. Tell him, Harvey."
"That's right," Harvey said.
Glass touched glass.
"The wedding is in two months," he said. "Three hundred guests. I'll let her walk down the aisle in the dress and then I'll leave her standing there. I've played along long enough. It's time to end the game."
Nobody said anything for a second.
Then a chair scraped, and the room filled with the sound of men who did not want to be the first to disagree with him.
My hands were very steady.
That surprised me.
I set the cake box on a side table and took my phone out of my bag.
I opened the voice recorder and pressed the red button.
I held the phone up to the gap in the door.
"What was the bet again?" a man asked.
"Golf," Harvey said. "Fourteenth hole. I said I'd sink it. Daphne texted the stake from London, and I agreed to it in front of all of you."
"Make the thief fall in love with you."
"Propose. Marry her. Then walk away on the day."
"And you did it all."
"I did it all. Two ring fittings, one engagement party, and I had to sit through her mother's casserole." He paused. "It was the easiest thing I've ever done."
The men laughed.
I stood in the hallway and leaned against the wall.
Last October I had slipped on wet leaves outside the library, and a man had caught my elbow and said, "You should hold on to something."
I had thought that was the kindest thing anyone had ever said to me.
It had been the first line of a plan.
I played that moment back and found nothing in it that was true.
I did not cry.
I want to be clear about that, because later people told the story as if I had.
I stood there, and I thought about the thing he had said about my work.
I had never stolen anything in my life.
I had drawn every picture myself, at a kitchen table, with a dying lamp, when I was twenty-two.
Harvey believed the opposite, and he had never once asked me.
He had just smiled and planned my wedding.
So I stepped out.
I picked up the cake box, walked down the hallway, and told the hostess I had the wrong night.
She wished me a good evening.
On the sidewalk I texted Maddie one line, "Are you off shift? I need a car and I need you not to ask why."
Then I walked eight blocks in heels and did not feel my feet.
He wanted me to walk down an aisle so he could leave me standing there.
Fine.
I would walk down it.
I just would not be the one left standing.
When I got home, the lights were on.
Harvey was in my kitchen with his sleeves rolled, stirring the pot of tomato soup I had said I was craving that morning.
"You're early," I said.
"I left dinner." He kissed my temple and took the cake box out of my hands. "I couldn't stop thinking about you."
His mouth was warm, and he smelled like cedar and cigars.
"I can't wait to marry you, Cassia," he said.
I smiled up at him, and I told him I couldn't wait either.
His phone buzzed face up on the counter beside the stove.
The screen lit.
A name, and the beginning of a message.
Daphne: Is she still buying it?
Harvey glanced at it.
Then, without any hurry at all, he turned the phone face down.
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