My Fiancé Let Her Ruin Our Wedding but Insisted It Was Just a Joke novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Veil
At the altar Darcy's best friend tears off her veil, her fiancé calls the wedding a prank, and the room laughs. She walks out and finds it is being streamed live to forty-one thousand strangers.
I stood at the altar of a lakeside lodge with a hundred and twenty people behind me, ready to marry Conor.
Ten years I had waited for this.
Marley fixed my veil one last time before the music stopped.
"Breathe," she whispered. "Whatever happens up there, I've got you."
I believed her.
I had believed her since we were twelve.
Conor stood across from me with the ring between two fingers, smiling at the room instead of at me.
The officiant cleared his throat and began the vows.
Then something yanked my head back so hard my eyes watered.
Marley had pulled the veil off by the comb, and half my hair came with it.
She stepped around me holding it high over her head.
"Okay, that's enough," she announced. "Your turn is over, Darcy."
I stood with my hands open, unable to speak.
My childhood friend reached out from the front row and took my bouquet.
He pushed it into the arms of the girl beside him.
It was Conor's assistant, in a cream dress I had never seen.
Her name was Jenna, and she looked down at the flowers and then at Conor.
"What are you doing?" I said. "Conor, what is happening?"
Nobody answered me.
Marley took a small black notebook out of her clutch, made a mark in it, and tucked it away again.
I had seen her do that a hundred times and had always thought it was a silly little habit.
Conor turned the ring over in his fingers and gave me his kind, easy look.
"Darce, relax," he said. "Today was never your wedding. It's Jenna's. It's a prank, that's all."
The room was silent for a moment.
Then somebody laughed.
Then more of them did.
Not all of them.
Most of them.
My aunt looked at the floor.
Two of the nurses I worked with looked at their phones.
I felt the blood go out of my face.
"Ten years," I said. "You told me you were ready."
"And you were so ready," Marley said.
She reached over and flicked the tip of my nose with one finger, the way she had since middle school.
"Come on. You've proposed to him four times. Once you did it by text from a hospital waiting room, begging him to meet you at the courthouse."
She said it loudly, so the back rows could hear.
My mother's surgery had been five weeks ago.
I had not told Marley about that text.
I had not told anyone.
I looked at Conor.
He had read it.
He had read it, and he had told her.
"We all see it, Darcy," Colt called out, still holding his phone up. "You act wounded until he caves."
Somebody in the back whooped.
Jenna stood in the aisle with my flowers and would not look at me.
Marley patted my shoulder.
"It's one more lesson in not being so soft," she said kindly. "You'll thank us. Conor will marry you after, I promise."
Conor smiled at me.
It was the warm smile I had loved for ten years.
I understood, standing there, that I had never once seen him use it on me when nobody was watching.
My hands were shaking.
I held them still anyway.
I took the ring from Conor's fingers, because it was mine.
It had cost me three months of overtime shifts, and he had let me pay half.
"Careful, Darce," he said, laughing. "You'll drop it."
I did not drop it.
I closed my hand around it.
"I'm not playing," I said.
Marley rolled her eyes.
"Oh, come on."
"Take the veil, Marley. You wanted it. Keep it."
Colt lifted the phone higher.
"Say it again, for the camera."
I looked right into the lens.
"I'm not playing," I said. "I'm done."
So I stepped out.
I walked down the aisle alone with my hair half pinned and my shoes loud on the floorboards.
Conor called after me, not angry yet, only amused.
"Darcy, don't be dramatic. Come back. We're not finished."
The man in the third row did not laugh.
I noticed him as I passed.
Tobias Hallett, who owned the lodge, who owned the hotels, who paid Conor's salary, sat with his hands folded on his knee and watched me go.
I had met him twice at company dinners.
He nodded to me, once, and said nothing.
I pushed through the heavy doors into the cold.
The lake was flat and grey.
My phone was buzzing in the pocket of the dress, where I had hidden it for pictures.
I pulled it out.
It was a message from my cousin.
*Darcy, are you okay? It's all over Colt Live.*
I opened the link.
There was my own face, sixteen minutes ago, smiling at the altar.
There was Marley's hand coming out of the frame with the veil.
Over the video, in white letters, was a caption: *ROUND 212: THE BIG ONE.*
In the corner, a small red number was counting up.
Forty-one thousand people were watching me stand in the doorway of my own wedding.
And under the video, Colt had typed one more line.
*She's walking out. Stay tuned, folks. She always comes back.*
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