I Prepared for My Wedding, Only to Be Shut Out of My Own Bridal Suite novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: In Front of Everyone

Mason tries to laugh it off in front of 180 guests, Kelsey walks in still in the veil, and Claire's phone shows the wedding fund was emptied at dawn.

For a second the only sound in the ballroom was the cello, still playing.

Then the cellist looked up and stopped.

A hundred and eighty faces stared at me.

My aunt in the third row had her hand over her mouth.

Mason's college roommate had his phone half raised, filming.

In the front row on the groom's side, Beverly Ridgeway sat very straight in a cream suit with her pearl studs and her big diamond.

She didn't look shocked.

She looked annoyed.

The side door banged open.

Mason came in fast, tie loose, hair falling in his eyes from the stairs.

He put a smile on halfway up the aisle.

I watched him do it.

"Okay," he said, loud and warm, spreading his hands to the guests. "Okay. Somebody's got nerves."

A few people laughed, relieved.

He jogged up to me and took the microphone out of my hand.

"Seven years, folks. She's allowed one meltdown." He winked at the quartet. "Can we get a little music? Give us ten minutes."

The quartet looked at each other.

Mason put his arm around my shoulders and leaned his mouth to my ear.

"You are humiliating me," he said through the smile. "Walk out with me. Right now."

His fingers dug into my arm through the satin.

I stepped out from under it.

I took the microphone back.

He didn't expect that, so it was easy.

"It's not nerves," I said.

My voice came out of every speaker in the room, flat and clear.

"I was locked out of the bridal suite twenty minutes ago. The hotel had to open it."

Mason reached for the mic again.

I turned my shoulder to him.

"This morning I found Kelsey Dunbar asleep in my bed, in my veil."

I opened my hand.

The pearls lay in my palm under the chandelier.

Somebody in the back said, "Oh my God."

My aunt said it too, louder.

Mason laughed into the silence.

"She was trying things on. She's like my sister. Claire, come on. You know Kels."

"There were two glasses by the bed," I said. "And your other shirt was on the floor."

He stopped laughing.

That was the moment I knew.

Not when the door opened. Not when she pouted.

When he stopped laughing.

Beverly rose from her chair.

"That is enough," she said.

She didn't need a microphone. She'd been running construction meetings for twenty years.

"Claire is overwrought. Somebody get her some water. Mason, take her upstairs and let her calm down."

"I'm calm, Beverly."

"You're standing in front of my friends in a bathrobe."

"I didn't have a choice. My dress was locked in a room with your son's girlfriend."

The word went through the ballroom.

Beverly's mouth went thin.

Then the side door opened again.

Kelsey came in.

She'd pulled on a pink sundress, but her hair was still a mess from my pillow, with one of my bobby pins hanging in it.

Her eyes were already wet.

She walked straight down the side aisle to Beverly, not to Mason.

"I just fell asleep," she said, and her voice cracked right on time. "I was up all night on the flowers for them. I didn't do anything wrong. She grabbed my neck."

Beverly put an arm around her.

A woman on the groom's side said, "That poor girl."

Kelsey pressed her face into Beverly's shoulder.

Over the shoulder, for just a second, she looked at me.

She wasn't crying.

My mother came up the aisle behind me, still holding the dress in its bag.

She didn't say anything.

She stood next to me and put her free hand flat on my back.

It was the first warm thing I'd felt all day.

Mason tried one more time.

He stepped close and took both my hands, pearls and all, in front of everyone.

"Claire. I love you. Whatever you think you saw, we'll fix it after. Don't throw away seven years over a nap."

I looked down at our hands.

I'd bought him the watch on his wrist for our fifth anniversary.

I'd paid it off in four months of skipped lunches.

"Let go of me, Mason."

He didn't.

So I pulled.

My phone buzzed in the pocket of my robe.

Then again, the long buzz.

The bank.

The vendors' final payments were set to go out of our joint account at four o'clock.

They'd just bounced.

I took the phone out.

Mason saw the screen before I did, and his face changed.

I opened the account history.

Transfer completed, 6:12 a.m.

Amount: $84,000.00.

To: Dunbar Events LLC.

Available balance: $0.00.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend