Page 5 of A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors (Billionaire Sanctuary: The Heir #1)
never
LEXI BYRNE
The ice broke in my throat first, a crack like a gunshot ripping down my neck and chest to my heart, and I yelled, “No! Jimmy, I never told you that I was pregnant.”
Mutters disturbed the air, harsh tones becoming angrier by the second.
Jimmy’s eyelids retracted until I could see white all the way around his pale brown irises. He stumbled one step backward from where I stood at the altar as the bride at my own wedding. “You lied to me about being pregnant?”
I’d never told him I was pregnant. I’d saved myself all these years because that’s what Jimmy wanted, a wedding night with a virgin, in a grand suite, at a destination wedding. “No! Who is this woman? Why is she even here?”
Jimmy stumbled back another step, his hand on his heart as if he were swearing something. “I believed you.”
The trembling in my hands crawled through my body, rattling my knees and shivering in my voice. “Believed what? I never told you I was pregnant. I would never do that! You know I’m not pregnant because we’ve never —I’ve never even ? —”
“Who was it?” Jimmy demanded, stricken creases around his eyes.
“Was it Mark, the FedEx guy? My mom says you always talk to him longer than you need to when he delivers the packages. Was it that guy you secretly met with on Saturdays at the coffee shop? I saw you with him when I came home for Christmas!”
“Saturday mornings at the Java House? That’s Kathleen. She’s a girl! We have a cup of coffee on Saturday mornings and talk about books!”
“She’s awfully tall to be a girl.”
“Some girls are tall! And if you were so worried, why didn’t you come over and say hi, and I would’ve introduced you to her!”
Jimmy shook his head. “I can’t believe it’s come to this, Lexi. I can’t believe you, of all people, would betray me like this, would lie to me about something so sacred. I can’t believe it’s ending like this.”
Everybody in the crowd was talking now, not arguing but accusing.
I shouted above all those stupid voices who had an opinion about the insanity that was ripping through the wedding that I had been planning for four years.
“What the heck is going on? We’re here to get married!
I love you, and you said you love me! And I never, ever told you that I was pregnant or ever lied to you! ”
Jimmy shook his head.
No, no, he was shaking his head.
I couldn’t let this happen. “Some random woman comes in and accuses me of something crazy t hat I never did, and you just agree with her and believe her and suddenly it’s over? We’ve been planning this wedding for four years, and I never told you I was pregnant because I’m not and never have been!”
“You admit that you lied about being pregnant.” He shook his head, his maple-syrup brown hair flopping like a mushroom where it was long on top. “How can I believe you when you used to be an actress in high school? Are you acting now?”
The fist clenched around my heart. “I have never lied to you!”
“My trust in you is broken, Lexi.” He turned to the crowd who’d gathered to watch us get married. “Friends and family, my friends and family, the wedding is off.”
Jimmy Johnson walked down the three steps into the aisle between the pews, and he left me where I stood, trembling, at the altar.
My fingernails dug into my bouquet of peach carnations and baby’s breath.
He strode down the center aisle to the double doors at the back of the Las Vegas chapel, shoved the doors open to the afternoon sunlight, and was swallowed by the blinding glare outside.
The minister sauntered after him.
My bridesmaids, Jimmy’s sisters and cousins, followed him away from me.
Everyone streamed out of the pews and turned their backs on me as they exited the chapel.
Including her, who pushed through the crowd and ran after Jimmy.
The quaking in my legs bobbled me off balance, and I sank to the worn carpeting, my hands and knees smacking the thin carpeting.
I waited for them to come back because surely this was a horrible joke.
Jimmy’s family played practical jokes. Some were cruel, yes. This one must be the most awful practical joke they’d ever conceived, but they would come back.
They had to come back.
And then I would stand up and wipe my tears away as I laughed because that was what they expected and I always did what they expected, and then we’d go on with the wedding because this had to be the most terrible, horrible, awful practical joke.
They shouldn’t play jokes like this, especially not on me, who hadn’t been raised around them. I was always too gullible, they told me, falling for their practical jokes.
The chapel remained empty, silent except for the grating of the ceiling fans far above and, when I couldn’t stand the pain in my lungs anymore, my gasps for air.
The thin blue carpeting pressed against my face smelled like old shoes and rotting fibers.
Twenty minutes later, twenty minutes of me staring at the gray-blue loops of cheap carpeting under my palms and pink-manicured fingernails, waiting for them to come back, a lady came in and told me that I would have to leave because the next wedding was going to start in five minutes.
I stumbled up the aisle toward the doors, my too-high heels catching the carpet and sending me careening, fumbling to catch the backs of the pews so I wouldn’t crumple to the floor, with the swishing train of my wedding dress dragging on the worn carpeting behind me.