Runaway Princess Bride novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bridal Room
Clinton attacks Delaney before the wedding; she fights him off and runs, and a stranger opens his car door. Her father's text says the sale already cleared.
The zipper of my wedding dress was the first thing Clinton Stroud ruined.
I was alone in the bridal room at Birchwater Lodge, twenty minutes from walking down an aisle I had never agreed to.
I was twenty-two years old, and my parents had told me this wedding was happening whether I said yes or not.
My mother had pinned the veil to my head herself.
She had kissed my cheek and said, "Smile, Delaney. It's the best deal you'll ever get."
I should have asked her what deal she meant.
The door opened without a knock.
Clinton came in with the door key still in his hand and locked it behind him.
He was forty-one, thick through the shoulders, with a gold ring on his finger and a face that never looked sorry.
"Thought I'd see my bride before the guests do," he said.
"Get out," I said.
"Careful. I paid a lot for that mouth."
My stomach went cold.
"Paid who?"
He smiled.
Then he crossed the room fast and caught my wrist.
I tried to pull away, and he twisted my arm behind my back until my shoulder screamed.
"Your folks said you'd be shy," he said into my ear.
"They said I should take what's mine before the ceremony, so there are no surprises tonight."
His other hand grabbed the front of my dress.
The lace tore down to my ribs.
I kicked back at his shin, and he laughed and shoved me face first onto the vanity.
Perfume bottles hit the floor and shattered.
His whole weight pinned me against the mirror, and his breath was hot and sour with whiskey.
I screamed, and he slapped his palm over my mouth.
"Nobody's coming," he said. "I told the staff to leave you alone."
I bit down on his hand as hard as I could.
He yelled and jerked back, and that was all I needed.
My fingers closed around the heavy brass lamp on the vanity.
I swung it with everything I had.
It cracked against the side of his head, and Clinton dropped to his knees with blood in his hair.
He stared up at me, stunned.
"You little bitch," he said, and he tried to stand.
I hit him again, across the shoulder this time, and he went down on his side.
My hands were shaking so hard the lamp slipped out of them.
I grabbed the dress where it had torn, took the key from his fist, and unlocked the door.
I ran.
The hallway was empty and the carpet was soft under my bare feet.
Somewhere downstairs a string quartet was playing a waltz for the guests who had come to watch me get sold.
I pushed through the kitchen door.
A cook looked up from a tray of crab puffs and stepped out of my way without a word.
The back door led to a gravel lot full of delivery vans.
Rain had started, thin and cold.
I stopped in the middle of the lot, holding my ruined dress closed with both hands, because I had no phone, no shoes, no money.
Nowhere to go.
My parents' car was parked at the far end.
My mother was probably at the front, greeting people.
Behind me the kitchen door banged open, and a man shouted my name.
It was Clinton's best man, and he was running.
"Delaney! Come back! Mr. Stroud is bleeding!"
I turned to run the other way.
A black SUV was idling twenty feet from me with its passenger door already open.
A man stood beside it in a dark suit, soaked from the rain.
He looked past me at the kitchen door and the shouting man.
Then he looked at my face, my torn dress and the red marks on my wrist.
His jaw tightened.
"Get in," he said.
"I don't know you," I said.
"No. You don't," he said. "But he's coming, and I'm the only one here who isn't."
The best man was fifteen feet away.
I got in.
The man shut my door, walked around the front, and slid behind the wheel.
He drove out of the lot before the best man could reach the gravel.
I sat shaking in the leather seat.
He pulled a jacket from the back and set it in my lap without looking at me.
"Put that on," he said. "You're safe now."
I had no phone, but I knew my father's number by heart.
"Can I borrow yours?" I asked.
He took it from the cup holder and handed it over without a word.
My thumbs were shaking so hard I dialed it wrong twice.
My father picked up on the first ring.
"Who is this?" he said, in his low voice, the one he used for strangers.
"It's me, Dad."
"Delaney." His voice tightened. "Where are you? Are you hurt?"
For one second, I thought he was asking because he cared.
"Clinton attacked me," I said. "In the bridal room. I hit him with a lamp and I ran."
My father was quiet.
Then he said, "Listen to me, sweetheart. Clinton's money cleared yesterday."
"What money?"
"Four hundred thousand dollars," he said. "It's already spent. Bring yourself back right now, and apologize to him, or we are finished."
I stared at the windshield while the rain ran down it.
The man beside me kept driving.
His hands were tight on the wheel.
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