Chapter 1
Kallie
Kallie stood calmly at the center of the storm. Farther up the aisle, her mom was arguing with the woman who would have been her mother-in-law had the wedding not so spectacularly derailed. Her father and brother were shouting. At who, she hadn’t bothered to check. One of her bridesmaids was not-so-secretly sneaking drinks in the back corner, and Kallie frankly couldn’t blame her.
She looked down at her hands, a little surprised to find marks on her palms where her perfectly manicured nails had dug into the soft flesh. She hadn’t realized she was clenching her fists quite so tightly. Her knuckles ached from the tension.
How had things gone so wrong? How was it possible for her to be looking at the remnants of a life she thought she was about to live? Kallie looked down at the white dress donning her figure and smoothed her aching hands over it. The intricate beading. The pearls. The sparkles. The strapless figure that was corseted beyond reason to give her fiancé a reason to drool through the reception.
Ex-fiancé.
“My son is lucky to be rid of her anyway!”
Kallie turned, still feeling as though she was caught in some kind of dream. Everything moved slowly around her. She looked down at her shoes. The beautiful white heels one of her bridesmaids had spotted for her. They were definitely not the kind of shoes she would’ve picked for herself. She wasn’t the most graceful in heels. But with the right arch supports and a bit of coaching one drunken night during her bachelorette weekend, Kallie had gotten the hang of them.
For him.
Always for him.
Magda hadn’t raised her voice, but the words carried clearly through the high-ceilinged sanctuary. Her almost mother-in-law, with her eyes bulging and her dyed-red hair hair-sprayed within an inch of its life, was leaning into her mother’s figure. Trying to hover over her mother’s short frame. The sight was sickening because she could recall several times where James had done that to her. Had hovered over her the way his mother was doing at that very second.
It gave her a small glimpse into why James was the way he was.
“She’s always been after my son’s money. A gold digger is what you raised.”
“As though Kallie is to blame here!” her mother said. “Your son was the one fucking around!”
Her mother was livid, all five foot nothing of her radiating fury. And her mother had never been one to cuss. Her mother was never even one to raise her voice. But seeing the anger wafting behind her eyes gave Kallie a newfound respect for her mother. She watched her protective angel step up to the plate for her as she stood at the end of the aisle, looking down through the pews and up into the face of a very distraught priest.
Yelling and cussing. In a damn cathedral.
“Your son’s the one who broke his vows when he went to screw one of the bridesmaids in the closet before my daughter was supposed to walk the aisle!”
“My son never took any vows. He had no dedication to her up until the point of ‘I do,’” Magda said.
“Oh!” Kallie’s mother threw up her hands. “Because that makes it better. He wasn’t married so he can cheat and get away with it. Tell me, is that a standard you hold all rich men in your life to? Or just your spoiled, asshole of a son? Hate to tell you, Magda dear, but no one is going to have any sympathy for a man caught fucking his best man’s wife on his own wedding day!”
Magda went white. And then red. Kallie felt a laugh bubbling up somewhere in her stomach. Her mother had never been the kind of woman to beat around the bush, and watching her lay into her the terrible woman she had almost called family, was soothing to her.
A little bit.
Not that there was much of a bush to beat around when things were so open and shut. There wasn’t much of a gray area to the groom cheating on his bride-to-be half an hour before they were meant to walk down the aisle.
Kallie’s father yelled something about castration.
It was time to get things under control. That much Kallie had decided. Pretty soon, fortifications were going to be made out of the pews that held two families meant to be joined. Two families who would’ve been brought together in love instead of anger.
But anger was all that filled the church walls of the place Kallie had hoped to fill with love. With vows. With a future and the prospects of a family.
The priest had tried—was still trying. It wasn’t easy, however, making peace with two families at war. Three, technically, if Kallie counted the best man who was an inch and a half
away from beating her ex-fiancé into oblivion. The priest was scurrying from group to group in an attempt to at least convince the people who were shouting to lower their volume. To keep some sort of decorum. To understand the holy ground they were treading on.
Holy ground.
The thought made Kallie roll her eyes.
He didn’t seem to be having much success, and Kallie felt a pang of sympathy for him through the vague floating sensation that had enveloped her. She was standing in her wedding dress at the end of the aisle, looking out at all the commotion. Her father pointing his fingers in James’s father’s face. Her mother biting into the pale-red corpse who was her no longer future-mother-in-law.
She felt like she was swaying in the breeze of the voices filling up the sanctuary.
“Kallie.”
James.
What the hell did that man want?
She really didn’t want to deal with James. Kallie dragged her attention from the little knot of wedding guests, who had stayed to watch the show when the rest wisely fled, and turned to look at him. With his jet-black hair and his brown eyes that shone with absolutely no remorse. A selfish man with a selfish job and a selfish soul who thought he could have his best man’s wife before taking another woman as his wife.
Was he really that entitled?
He was still wearing his tux. Neither the bride or groom had found any time to change yet. His bow tie was crooked and there was lipstick smattered against his collar. Not surprising, given that it hadn’t even been an hour since Kallie’s maid of honor, Eris, had caught him tucked away in an alcove with his best man’s wife. A woman who had given her a beautiful crystal set of candleholders to put in their newly wedded bedroom.
For those more intimate moments shared with your husband.
Kallie could remember the card and it made her want to vomit. But more than that, it made her want to smack her fiancé.
Ex-fiancé.
Ex-almost-husband?