She Stole My Fiancé, So I Married His Enemy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Announcement
Bree announces her pregnancy into a microphone, Porter toasts her, and Millicent pushes over the champagne tower; a stranger by the pillar says her father would have liked it.
Bree tapped the microphone twice, and two hundred guests at my engagement party turned to look at her.
She was my maid of honor.
I thought she was about to give a toast.
"Before the cake," she said, smiling at the room, "Porter and I have some news."
Porter was my fiancé.
He stepped up beside me and raised his glass.
Not to me. To her.
"We're pregnant," Bree said, and laid one hand flat on her stomach.
The ballroom clapped.
A man at the back whooped.
Porter's mother pressed both hands to her chest and cried happy tears.
I stood at the front table with my champagne, and my hands did not move.
"I know the timing is awful," Bree said, laughing. "But we couldn't keep it quiet any longer."
We.
The flute tilted in my fingers.
I caught it before it spilled, and I hated myself for caring about a glass.
Porter's palm settled on my lower back. "Milly. Let's not do this here."
"Do what?" My voice came out small. "Ask how long you've been sleeping with my maid of honor?"
The clapping stopped one table at a time.
Across the room, my mother's face went white.
She wasn't scared for me. She was working something out.
"I'm so sorry you found out this way," Bree said, tilting her head. "I wanted to tell you in private."
"You're holding a microphone."
A few people laughed, then stopped.
I had known Bree since we were thirteen, when she took the seat next to mine in eighth grade and announced we were sisters.
I'd held her hair after every bad breakup.
I'd driven her to her mother's funeral.
I had told her everything.
"How long, Porter?"
He looked at the carpet.
That was my answer.
"Eight months," Bree said brightly, before he could.
Porter had proposed six months ago, on a beach, with tears on his face.
I worked the ring off my finger.
It caught on my knuckle and hurt coming off.
"Keep him," I said. "Keep all of it."
"Don't be dramatic." Her smile sharpened, and for the first time I saw what had been under it all along. "Honestly, Milly, it's kinder this way. Porter deserves a real family."
Don't, I thought.
"You told me yourself." She turned to the room, and the microphone carried every word. "The doctors said you probably can't have children."
She shrugged.
"So I'm doing everybody a favor."
Nobody breathed.
I could hear the string quartet's last note die out.
I had told her that in a hospital bathroom eleven months ago, crying so hard I couldn't stand.
She had held me and sworn it would never leave that room.
Two hundred people looked at me.
Porter's mother covered her mouth.
A man at the bar said, "Oh, that poor girl," loud enough for me to hear.
Porter finally met my eyes.
There was no guilt in them.
There was relief.
"I wanted kids, Milly," he said quietly. "You knew that."
On our third date he had told me he never wanted children.
I walked to the champagne tower in the middle of the ballroom, the one his mother had paid eleven thousand dollars for.
I dropped my engagement ring into the top glass.
Then I put both hands on the tower and pushed.
Glass broke across the marble in one long crash.
Guests screamed and jumped back.
Champagne ran over Bree's white heels.
"Congratulations," I said. "On everything."
So I stepped out.
Behind me Bree called, "Milly, come on, don't leave like this!" in her sweetest voice.
The whole room heard that too.
I didn't turn around.
My mother met my eyes across the broken glass and shook her head once, a warning.
I had ruined a night that mattered to her firm.
I kept walking.
I made it to the coat check before my vision blurred.
Porter's father was already there, holding my coat open.
Richard Winslow was the one person in that family who had never been cold to me.
"Millicent, my dear." His hand shook as he settled the coat on my shoulders. "Let me send you home in my car."
"I'm fine, Richard."
"Don't drive tonight. It's raining."
He said that every time it rained.
In three years he had never once let me drive Route 9 in the rain.
He always sent a car.
"Please," he said.
I looked at him, and for a moment I couldn't tell which of us was shaking.
"I'll take a cab," I said, and went out through the lobby doors.
A man was leaning on the last pillar by the exit.
He wore a black suit and no tie.
He was tall and dark-haired, and his pale blue eyes did not pity me.
He was the only person in that ballroom who had not clapped.
He lifted his glass an inch as I passed.
"Your father would have liked that," he said.
I stopped walking.
I had never seen this man in my life.
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