My Fake Wedding Was the Start of Their Real Prison novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Something Blue
At a double wedding, Sadie's fiancé Spencer smashes cake in her face and her best friend and childhood love reveal it was a prank, so she texts her mother she's moving to Boston and walks out, then finds a $60 million pledge she signed at the license table without knowing.
My best friend and I got married on the same day, in the same ballroom, zipped into our gowns by the same nervous planner.
Kelsey was marrying Brett Corwin, the boy next door I had loved for ten years.
I was marrying Spencer Treadwell, the most devoted man in L.A. investing, according to everyone who'd ever done business with him.
At the license table, Kelsey pressed a pen into my hand.
It was blue, with a little pearl on the cap.
"Your something blue," she said, and kissed my cheek. "Sign the stack, babe. It's all boring."
License. Venue release. Photo release.
Spencer stood behind me and straightened the pages for me, one by one.
Brett leaned over my other shoulder and smelled like the same cologne he'd worn since junior prom.
I signed where the little yellow flags told me to.
I didn't read a word.
It was my wedding day.
Twenty minutes later, Kelsey stood under the flowered arch and tried to read her vows.
Her hands shook so hard the card rattled.
Brett reached over and folded his fingers around hers until the card held still.
They looked at each other.
The guests sighed.
Then it was my turn.
I opened my card.
Spencer lifted one hand, and the string quartet stopped mid-note.
He walked to the cake table, dug his fingers into the second tier, and came back with a fistful of buttercream.
He pushed it into my face.
The face a makeup artist had worked on for three hours.
For one second there was no sound at all.
Then two hundred guests started laughing.
Frosting slid off my chin and down the front of my bodice.
I stood there and looked at the three of them.
Brett came over and ruffled my hair, the way he had since we were six.
"When you dumped me two years ago, I figured you'd finally gotten smart."
He grinned at the room.
"We ran the same play twice, Sadie. And you fell for it twice."
Kelsey was laughing so hard she had to hold on to the arch.
"The day Brett proposed, I was only supposed to be in on the surprise," she gasped. "Then you walked in on us in bed and started sobbing about breaking up. We never got to say it was a joke!"
She wiped her eyes.
"So Spencer asked you out on purpose. We all thought you'd catch on. You never did. You took it seriously again."
My hands closed into fists at my sides.
I looked at Spencer.
He'd gone back to lean against the wall by the cake.
"Nobody betrayed you, Sadie," he said, in that soft voice of his. "You just believe everything you're told."
They were waiting for the tears.
For me to beg somebody to explain.
I didn't feel like crying.
I felt very calm, and very awake.
I took out my phone, bent my head and typed to my mother.
Mom, I've decided. I'm coming to Boston.
I pulled the pins out of my veil, dropped it on the nearest chair and walked out of the ballroom.
Behind me Kelsey called, "Uh oh, she's mad. Who's going after her this time?"
On the terrace I could hear them through the open doors.
"You're her best friend," Brett said. "You go."
"No way. She'll say I was bullying her again." A pause. "Spencer, she's your fiancée. Your problem."
"You two are the ones who set her off," Spencer said. "Why am I cleaning it up? You grew up with her, Brett. You go."
The terrace door opened.
Brett came out and reached for my hair again.
I stepped out of range.
"Okay, joke's over," he said. "We'll redo the wedding next week. You and me. That's what you've always wanted, right?"
I looked at him and didn't say anything.
The terrace went quiet.
He frowned.
He'd probably expected me to scream with joy.
But I had stopped loving Brett Corwin two years ago, on a Sunday morning, in a doorway.
Kelsey drifted out behind him with a glass of champagne.
"She's still stuck on that morning," she said. "Sadie, he had the ring and the peonies hidden under the duvet to surprise you. You found us and burst into tears and never let us explain."
She held up her left hand.
A round diamond on a thin platinum band.
I knew that ring. I'd picked it out with Brett's mother when I was twenty-six.
"So, in the end, he gave it to me."
I looked at her and said nothing.
Kelsey had enjoyed hurting me since the week we met.
Sophomore year, she posted my crush on Brett in our class group chat.
Forty people piled on, and I cried in a bathroom stall while she laughed outside the door.
When Brett and I finally got together, she started wearing his jacket.
She rode in his front seat and posted the pictures.
She'd wait until I went quiet, then hook her arm through mine and say it was a joke.
Junior year she talked me into a maid costume for a Halloween pool party.
The minute we got there, she yanked my coat off in front of everyone and ran laps around the pool with it.
Everybody laughed.
I begged her to give it back.
I set my phone on the stone railing and turned to face her.
"You hurt your best friend and got a ring for it," I said slowly. "Is that what winning feels like?"
"Sadie."
"You have no shame, Kelsey Delacorte."
Her smile fell off her face.
Her eyes went pink and shiny right on cue.
Brett's voice turned cold.
"Kels was trying to explain. And you're insulting her?"
I looked at him.
"She explained, so I'm supposed to forgive her?"
He opened his mouth.
"Does a decent person climb into bed with her best friend's boyfriend?"
He had nothing.
In twenty-three years, I had never once talked back to him.
Spencer laughed from the doorway, one short note.
"We'd known each other less than two months, Sadie, and you went to bed with me. Don't lecture anyone about boundaries."
My chest went tight.
Brett walked Kelsey back inside with his hand on the small of her back.
My fingers were ice cold on the railing.
My phone buzzed.
The apartment in Boston and your job at Lowell Capital have been waiting a long time.
But the minute you leave, every Lowell project and every guarantee comes out of Corwin Group. Are you sure?
I typed back.
I'm sure. I'm leaving.
I was halfway to the valet stand when the planner ran after me with a white folder.
"Your copies!" she panted. "Kelsey said you'd want them for the scrapbook."
I got into the back of a car with frosting drying in my hair.
I opened the folder.
The license. The venue release. The photo release.
And one more page, on cream paper, with my family's crest at the top.
The Lowell Family Trust pledged sixty million dollars behind Corwin Group's Ocean Avenue tower.
My signature sat at the bottom in blue ink, with the little hook I put on the end of the L.
I had signed it forty minutes ago.
It was dated September second.
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