Reborn to Love Mr. Right novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Second Hit
Annabel dies in a parking lot on commencement day in Wyatt's arms, wakes three weeks earlier on the formal stage with his letter in her hand, refuses Brock's ring into the microphone and gives Wyatt the letter back, and Brock whispers that she wired him $400,000 that morning.
The car hit me at 11:40 on the morning I graduated.
The last face I saw was the one I'd spent three years spitting on.
I was still in my cap and gown.
Five minutes earlier I'd been in the chapel stairwell, looking for my boyfriend.
I found him one landing down, with my best friend's hand inside his shirt.
"Six million," Brock said, laughing into Jenna's hair. "And her dad's in the ICU. That's the whole family taken care of."
"You think she'll ever figure it out?"
"Annabel? She thinks I hung the moon."
I ran.
I went out the back door into the faculty lot with my gown tangled around my legs.
I heard the engine before I saw the white SUV.
Then I was on the asphalt, looking at the sky.
Somebody was shouting my name.
Wyatt Kincannon dropped to his knees beside me in his own graduation gown.
He was the man I'd called a stalker to the dean sophomore year.
The man whose love letter I'd read out loud on a stage, in a funny voice, while three hundred people laughed.
He put his hand under my head.
"Stay with me, Annabel. Look at me."
"My dad," I said. "Who's paying for my dad?"
His jaw moved.
"I am. I have been since Tuesday."
I didn't understand.
"Why?"
"Because I'd have given you everything," he said. "You only had to look."
Behind him, the white SUV was turning around.
I tried to tell him.
I couldn't get the words out.
He looked up, and he threw himself over me.
Then there was nothing.
Then there was a chandelier.
I was standing on a stage in a pale pink satin dress, under hot lights, with a microphone six inches from my mouth.
Three hundred people in formal clothes were looking up at me, waiting for something.
There was a cream envelope in my hand.
"Annabel" was written across it in neat black ink.
I knew that envelope.
I knew this night.
The senior spring formal, twenty-two days before commencement.
Brock's arm slid around my waist.
He was warm and alive and smelled like the cologne I'd bought him for Christmas.
"Come on, babe," he murmured, tipping the microphone toward me. "Read it. Do the voice."
In the front row, Jenna had her phone up to film.
She was wearing my gold bracelet.
At the back of the room, by the doors, Wyatt stood very still in a dark suit.
He wasn't looking at the stage.
He was looking at me.
The first time, I'd torn that envelope open right here.
I'd read his letter in a dopey, lovesick voice, and the room had howled.
Then Brock had dropped to one knee with a ring, and I'd said yes.
Brock was already reaching into his jacket.
The ring box came out, black velvet, the size of a bad decision.
He went down on one knee, and the room made that soft, delighted sound.
"Annabel Townsend," he said into the mic. "Will you..."
I took the microphone out of his hand.
"No."
The room went quiet in pieces, table by table.
Brock laughed, because Brock always laughed first.
"She's kidding."
"I'm not kidding," I said. "I'm not marrying you, Brock. I'm not dating you. I'm done paying for you."
Somebody near the bar said, "Oh my God."
Brock's dimple stayed exactly where it was.
His eyes didn't.
"Babe, you've had a couple of drinks."
"I've had a glass of water."
I held up the cream envelope so the whole room could see it.
"And I'm not reading this. It isn't mine to laugh at."
I walked down the steps off the stage.
Three hundred heads turned to follow me across the ballroom floor.
My heels sounded very loud.
Wyatt didn't move as I came toward him.
Up close he was taller than I remembered, or I had never stood this close on purpose.
The thin scar through his right eyebrow.
Gray-green eyes, perfectly steady.
Alive.
My throat closed.
I held the envelope out to him.
"I'm sorry," I said. "For all of it. You never followed me. I lied."
He looked at the envelope for a long moment.
He didn't take it.
"Keep it," he said quietly. "It isn't true anymore."
Then he turned and walked out through the double doors into the night.
I stood there with his letter in my hand and every person I knew staring at my back.
A hand closed on my elbow.
Brock had followed me down, smiling wide for the room.
He leaned in and kissed my cheek.
His lips stayed against my ear.
"You wired me four hundred grand this morning, sweetheart," he whispered. "Want to tell Daddy, or should I?"
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