To take me back to my place.
“Oh, did he?” I say. Softly.
A blunt, iron ball of anger sinks through all the hurt, through all the embarrassment and vulnerability, sinks right into the pit of my stomach. My anger will anchor me to the earth, it will keep me from floating away, and so I hold on to it with eager hands. Because Church doesn’t get to have this. He doesn’t get to have helping me, he doesn’t get to have agesture, no matter how pitifully small it is. He doesn’t get to feel good about a single damn part of today, he doesn’t get the satisfaction of looking back on the day he left a bride alone to be humiliated and heartbroken and thinkbut at least I took care of her.
No.
He doesn’t get that. Especially when it’s coupled with waving his family’s obscene wealth in my face at the same time.
I take a drink of the water the planner brought and then hand it back to her. I take Jax’s hand in mine and meet the vicar’s concerned stare. “So is there a side door?”
* * *
It turnsout that I used the last of my pride on turning down the driver. I gathered my things into a holdall and left the church without bothering to change, which meant shoving my fluffy white skirt and petticoats through the narrow turnstiles at the Tube station, and having my little brother hold the train of my gown on the escalator so it wouldn’t catch at the bottom. And then we rode the Tube home in silence, me trying not to cry and Jax practically vibrating with confused adolescent worry.
He was going to walk me down the aisle.
Now he’s helping me jam my wedding dress in and out of Tube-car doors and turnstiles.
Of course he’s worried.
What comes next?I have no idea. All my plans for the last few months started and ended with Church, with the dark-haired god in suits so crisp they made the rest of the world seem soft. Compared to those sapphire eyes and that hungry mouth, nothing else seemed to matter: not my terrible, barely there dad, not my little brother growing increasingly lost and uninterested in school, not the bills piling up on our kitchen table. With Church, I’d been able to pretend that everything would be okay, because howwouldn’tit be okay in the arms of a man like him?
Jesus. What a fool I’ve been.
Not for the first time, I wish I had friends. Real friends, not just a handful of people who know my name and vaguely wish me well.
I’d ask them if I’d been oblivious. Naïve .
After all, in what world did Charley Tenpenny—a destitute college student with an American accent—have to offer a man like him? Other than hours and hours of dark, delicious sex?
I blow out a long breath as Jax and I climb the stairs to our dank, tiny flat.
I won’t think of the sex. I won’t think of the way Church’s fingers felt wrapped around my hips or curling inside me. I won’t think of how wild those blue eyes would look when they lit on me, as if the mere sight of me turned him into an animal.My angry god,I’d whisper in his ear, leaning in close so he could feel my lips brush against his skin.My temple. My Church. And then I’d be seized and dragged to the nearest appropriate place for fucking. Sometimes even not that appropriate, because he could never wait.
You are my church,he’d growl in response as he pinned me against the first convenient surface and took me. His voice would be smoky and carnal.You are all I see. All I pray.
Unholy obsession. Hard sex. When he proposed, it felt like a fairy tale.
How could I have been so stupid? Men like him don’t marry the girls they fuck in corners.
But then why did he buy me a ring? A dress? Why did he call me Charlotte Cason, as if I were already his wife?
The flat’s door is hanging open when we reach it, and I’m jerked out of my thoughts so fast I nearly lose my breath. Dust swirls in the weak light coming in through the kitchen window, and from here I can detect the stale beer-and-cigarettes smell that suffuses our home. Our life. Our nasty, tattered life.
How did I ever think I could be Mrs. Cason?
“Charley?” Jax asks uncertainly.
Jax. You have to focus for your brother.
“Wait here, buddy,” I tell him, handing him my phone. “Call 999 if I’m not back out in just a minute, okay?”
He nods, scared, and it’s for his sake, all for him, that I muster up a wobbly smile and then push through the opened door, my wedding dress brushing against the old, stained carpet as I do.
“Dad?” I call out, expecting to see him asleep on the sofa or perhaps stumbling out of the back bedroom, stoned and bleary.
There’s only silence.