The Scandal Before the Vows novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Eight O'Clock

Corina walks home in the rain for her pills and her money, finds Trenton and Brynn kissing in the window, hears him name Brynn the bride and Corina the ring-bearer, tells him she is not hurting, only disgusted, and is dragged upstairs and locked in the spare room.

The first cab that stopped for me wanted the fare in cash, before I got in.

I had no cash.

My wallet was in my coat, and my coat was in Trenton's car.

The driver looked at the mud on my face, shook his head and pulled away.

I walked.

An hour in, my phone was dead and my shoes were full of water.

I could have gone anywhere, and I knew it.

But my antidepressants were in that house, and so were my passport, my laptop and every client file I had.

My $180,000 was in that house too.

It was every dollar of the money Dean had paid me in the divorce, and eight months ago I had put all of it into Trenton's down payment.

I had said it was easier to keep the deed in his name.

I could have said it was stupid.

It was almost dark when I reached the front door and pushed it open.

Two pairs of shoes lay kicked across the hall, one pair heels.

A black dress lay over the stair rail, and under it was a man's suit jacket.

At the far window of the living room, Trenton had Brynn pressed against the glass.

He was kissing her.

Her red hair was in his hand.

For a moment I was twenty-six again, in a doorway, looking at a different bed.

Then my stomach turned over, and I bent double and threw up on the rug.

They broke apart.

"Are you out of your mind?" Trenton said. "What are you screaming about? You've seen this before."

I had not screamed.

I could not tell whether he knew that.

Brynn laughed and wiped her mouth with her thumb.

"Hi, Corina. Sorry about the phone call. I said Trenton was good, but I was being modest. He's much better than Dean."

Trenton grinned at her.

"You have good taste."

He came across the room toward me, hand out, and I shook so hard I had to grab the wall.

He stopped.

For half a second his face did something I didn't understand.

Then it closed, and he said very quietly, "Do I disgust you?"

I couldn't answer.

My throat had shut, and I was shaking with cold and with everything else.

He took my collar in both fists.

"You did this, Corina."

His voice cracked in the middle.

"I was going to let it end tonight. Now I'm going to make you feel all of it."

He let go and held out an arm, and Brynn slid under it.

"At my wedding to you," he told her, with his eyes on me, "you'll be the bride."

Brynn's whole face lit up.

"Really?"

"Really."

She turned to me with her whole mouth smiling.

"Then Corina should be my bridesmaid. Five years ago I was hers, and now it's my turn. Fair is fair."

"She'll carry the rings," Trenton said.

I shook my head.

I wanted to tell him no, and the word wouldn't come out.

The only thing that moved was my head, left and right, slowly.

Trenton watched it with a look I could only call hunger.

"It hurts," he said. "Good."

"When you married Dean, I felt exactly this. I went home and sat on my kitchen floor."

He leaned close.

"Now you know."

That was the first time he had ever said it.

All year I had thought he was the one who stayed.

All year he had counted the days to this.

I looked at his face, flushed with how much it pleased him, and something in me went completely still.

He did not want me to understand.

He wanted me to bleed where he could see it.

Every flinch, every tear I'd let him watch, he had been saving up.

So I took my hand off the wall, straightened up, and put on the smile I used at the bank when a client was lying to me.

"I'm not hurting, Trenton."

His eyebrows went up.

"I'm disgusted," I said.

"You and her, together, in that window, in my house with my rug under you. I'd have to care to hurt, and I've stopped."

For a second nobody breathed.

Brynn made a small, shocked sound.

The color left Trenton's face and came back red.

"Say that again."

"You heard me."

He crossed the room in two steps.

He caught my arm above the elbow and hauled me toward the stairs, and I dug my heels in and hit his hand and he dragged me anyway.

I was thirty pounds lighter than a year ago, and he knew exactly how much.

Behind us Brynn called up, laughing, "Don't mess her up before the photos!"

At the top of the stairs Trenton slowed outside the bedroom we had shared.

He kept going.

He kicked in the door of the spare room next to it and threw me through it.

"Disgusted, huh?" he said from the doorway.

"Then you can listen tonight."

He turned the key from outside.

"Brynn," he called down the stairs. "Come up."

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