The Best Man by Mariano Sam

Author:Mariano, Sam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

I stare at my reflection and see a bride, but I don’t feel like one.

My chocolate brown hair is tied up in a soft fairy-tale bun with just a few tendrils left down to frame my face. My makeup is perfect, my dress is beautiful. Charlotte hands me my flowers. It’s a lovely, delicate bouquet of pinks with a few pops of white and yellow.

I remember wondering if Joey would like this dress. If it would be good enough for him. He offered to fly me to New York and buy me an expensive one from a famous dress shop in the city, but when I saw this one in the window of a bridal shop in town, I just fell in love with it. I sway a bit and the fabric sways with me. I smile faintly, but I can’t muster much enthusiasm.

“Damn, you look pretty.”

My heart stops at the sound of that voice, and I turn, wide-eyed, toward the entrance to my bridal suite.

“No boys allowed,” Julia admonishes, preparing to kick him out. “Especially not you.”

“Wait,” I say, my heart in my throat.

Marcus looks so handsome in his tux. It’s identical to Joey’s. He was supposed to be the best man. I guess if the wedding is still on, he still is.

My heart aches at the sight of him.

I don’t know why I didn’t expect him to be here. I guess I thought… Joey said he couldn’t marry me in front of him.

But I suppose someone would have reached out and asked where he was if he hadn’t come, just like Charlotte did me.

It stings to see him here. At my wedding, in that tux.

It feels like he’s going along with this blasphemous bullshit too, and if anyone would have the balls to put a stop to it and force everyone to see how fucked up it is, I thought it would be him.

It would be him.

But he’s here in a tux, looking more handsome than ever.

Which means no one is going to save me from making the worst mistake of my life.

Marcus nods for me to join him in the hall. “Come out here. I need to talk to you.”

My heart skitters. I hand the bouquet off to Charlotte and make my way toward him.

“Make it quick,” Charlotte says. “We have to get her outside for pictures.”

Butterflies fill my stomach as Marcus puts a hand at the small of my back to guide me.

I love when he does that.

He doesn’t take me far from the bridal suite, just down the hall by a window where a table is set up with a vase of fresh flowers and a couple of chairs.

We don’t sit on them. We just stand there, him looking me over, me almost too afraid to meet his gaze.

I’m in a wedding dress ready to marry his brother, after all.

“You snuck out on me.”

I swallow. “I thought I had a wedding to cancel.”

His lips curve up faintly, but no humor reaches his eyes. If anything, he looks… hurt.

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