The Scandal Before the Vows novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The License
Minutes after they pick up their marriage license, Trenton tells Corina he slept with Brynn and plays the bet over the car speakers; she asks why, he shoves her out into the rain, and a text shows a wedding dress on their bedroom door.
Trenton carried our marriage license to the car for me, so the rain wouldn't touch it.
He held my door, tucked my scarf in at the collar, and put a hot coffee in my hands.
Ten minutes later, he told me he had slept with Brynn.
He said it at a red light, one hand on the wheel, grinning like he couldn't help it.
"Yesterday. She came over and kissed me, and I didn't stop her."
The license was in its envelope on my lap, and I couldn't make my fingers let go of it.
Brynn was my best friend for ten years, until the day I found her in bed with my husband.
"She's wild," Trenton said. "She knows exactly how to please a man, and honestly, she's better than you."
I heard myself ask the only thing I had.
"Why?"
Why sleep with her, and why marry me anyway?
Why tell me today, of all days?
Trenton looked at me for a moment.
Then he laughed, loud and pleased, and said to the empty air, "Brynn, you win."
A voice came out of the car speakers, one I had known for ten years.
"Told you. She only asks why."
My whole body went cold.
The call had been open the entire drive.
"We made a bet," Trenton said, easy as reading a menu. "I said you'd slap me. Brynn said you'd just ask why. If I won, she'd wear the perfume I like."
He smiled at the speakers.
"And if she won, I owe her something tonight. Advanced positions, I think she called them."
Brynn laughed, low and delighted.
"Corina, honey, you haven't changed. Your husband cheats on you and you ask him why. Again." The laugh got meaner. "But you have good taste. I like this one too."
I stopped hearing the car.
The last time I asked someone that question, I was on a bedroom floor, bleeding.
I had come home early to surprise Dean on his birthday.
Brynn lit a cigarette in my bed and said she'd borrowed him because she was bored.
I lost our baby before the ambulance got to us.
Now Trenton hung up on Brynn with a cheerful, "Save my seat tonight, I'll drop Corina off first."
He turned to me with the same face he'd worn all year, soft and sure.
"Hungry? I'll feed you, then I'll take you home."
I stared at him.
"You promised you'd love me for the rest of my life."
"Yeah, I did." He shrugged. "That was before I got to know you. You're too experienced, Corina."
I thought I'd misheard.
"At the photo shoot you haggled with the salesman. You knew where to get a cheap stand-in ring for the rehearsal. Today you walked into the clerk's office knowing every form to bring."
His mouth went flat.
"Every single time, it reminded me I was marrying someone else's leftovers."
I wanted to scream, and what came out was a whisper.
"You said none of that mattered."
"It mattered," Trenton said. "I love you anyway. So you were married to Dean for a year, and now I'll run around for a year, and then I'll come home. Fair is fair."
Years ago, in college, Trenton and Dean had both wanted me.
Brynn was the one who told me Trenton had stepped back, so I said yes to Dean the same week.
Trenton had congratulated us at the engagement party and gone home early.
Five years later he was the one who came back and nursed me through the worst year of my life.
I finally understood why.
"It's not fair," I said, and my voice finally came. "If it bothered you, you could have said so, instead of rescuing me and then doing this."
I took a breath that shook all the way down.
"I'm not marrying you, Trenton. Stop the car."
He didn't stop.
He glanced at the envelope in my lap and smiled.
"The license is already pulled. You don't get to cancel now."
"Watch me," I said, and reached for the door.
He leaned across me, popped the lock and shoved the door wide with his shoulder.
Then he pushed me out.
It had rained all morning.
I landed on my hands and knees in a puddle on the shoulder of the road, and the car didn't slow down.
Through the open door I heard him say, mildly, "Go think about what you did."
The door slammed on its own as he pulled away.
Brown water ran off my chin.
My legs wouldn't hold me, and I stayed down in the mud, and I looked at my right hand.
I was still holding the license.
I'd had it in my fist when he threw me out, and I hadn't let go.
He had taken my coat, my wallet and my ride home.
He had not taken the one piece of paper he needed me to sign.
So I stood up.
It took three tries, and every try people in passing cars looked and drove on.
I stood up with the envelope against my chest, and I made myself a promise in the rain.
I was not going to that altar.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket, one bar of battery left.
It was a photo from Trenton: a white wedding dress on a hanger, hooked over the door of our bedroom.
Under it he had typed: Brynn says it fits. Be home by eight.
The screen went black before I could answer.
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