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“I understand perfectly.” I pulled off my wedding rings, the engagement diamond catching the light. “I understand you’ve been fucking my sister for who fucking knows how long. I understand that, if you’ve been fucking for more than seven months, then she needs to do a damn paternity test. And I understand you told her you regretted marrying me. We’re still at our wedding, you fucking pig!”

I threw the rings at him with all the strength I had. They bounced off his forehead with a satisfying ping.

“Be careful what you wish for, asshole. You can shove those rings right up your filthy ass.”

Sophie was stirring now, her fake faint already wearing off. She looked up at me with those eyes, my eyes, our mother’s eyes, and mouthed “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I leaned into the microphone. “Sorry doesn’t unfuck my husband, Sophie. Sorry doesn’t fix this. And sorry doesn’t undo the fact that you rode him like a discount carnival ride while you begged him to tell you how much better you are. Insecure much?”

“Sam, please…” My mother reached for me.

“Congratulations, Mom. You might be getting a new son-in-law after all. Just not the way you planned.”

I looked around the room. At the horrified faces. At Garrett’s parents, who’d probably never recover from hearing their son’s sex noises at his wedding. At Joel, still frozen. He was the only one I felt bad about. I should’ve told him before exposing them like this, but I just didn’t have the patience or the right mind to do it softly. Hell, I was traumatized. I couldn’t do ‘soft’ and care about people’s feelings right now. Was I being selfish? Maybe. I didn’t care. This was supposed to be my day, my wedding, and I could destroy everything if I wanted to.

“Enjoy the open bar,” I said into the mic one last time. “I paid for it. Might as well get something out of this shitshow.”

I set the microphone down gently. Smoothed my dress. And walked out of my own reception with my head high and my heart shattered.

Behind me, the room erupted into chaos. Shouts and accusations and Sophie’s hysterical sobbing. But I didn’t look back, and sure as hell didn’t let them see me break.

I pushed through the hotel doors and kept walking.

4

— • —

Sam

The parking lot air hit my lungs and my stomach decided to revolt. Again.

I bent over, hands on my knees, sucking in oxygen that tasted wrong. The air was too warm. It smelled too much like the floral arrangements someone had set up along the hotel entrance. Everything was roses tonight. Roses at the ceremony, roses on the tables, roses in the goddamn parking lot while my marriage disintegrated behind those doors.

My phone started buzzing immediately. Calls, texts, probably some very interesting social media notifications.

Garrett calling. Of course.

Sophie calling. Apparently she’d made a miraculous recovery from her fainting spell. Funny how that worked.

Joel calling. Probably wanting answers about his maybe-baby.

Unknown numbers that were probably wedding guests wanting to know what the hell they’d just witnessed.

I was still standing there, barefoot in my reception dress, trying to figure out where a woman with no home and no family was supposed to go at 10 PM on her wedding night, when the adrenaline crash hit. My hands were shaking. My stomach was doing its best impression of a washing machine on spin cycle. The fury that had carried me through the microphone speech was fading, leaving behind something colder and more terrifying: the realization that I had absolutely nowhere to go.

The phone rang again. Mom.

I almost answered. My finger hovered over the green button because even now, even after everything, some part of me was still the good daughter who took her mother’s calls.

But then I remembered her face at the reception. That micro-expression when I’d asked about Sophie. That flicker of fear that I’d dismissed as wedding day nerves.

What if she had known?

The hotel doors burst open, and I turned to see my mother power-walking across the parking lot in her mother-of-the-bride dress. Diane Collins had never power-walked a day in her life, but apparently her daughter’s public implosion had inspired new athletic pursuits.

“Samantha! Samantha, wait!”

I could have run. Should have run. But where exactly was I going to go in a wedding dress and no shoes?