Page 6 of I Do, You Don’t (You Don’t #1)

Gideon. One hour ear lier...

I park across the street from our discount wedding hall, engine off, keys still in the ignition. The fan clicks once, then dies. The silence that follows is deafening.

I sit still.

Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. The clock says I’m late. The tie in my lap is half-knotted, my hands trembling too much to finish it. Another message from Connor buzzes on my phone:

Where are you? Everyone’s inside. Lara’s ready.

I know.

God, I know.

But I can’t move. Not yet.

It’s not doubt or second thoughts.

It’s the weight of everything I promised her. The man I want to be. The one who listens, bites his tongue, and takes her side, even when it’s hard. The man who doesn’t let her feel alone.

Because I love her.

I fucking love her.

I press my forehead to the steering wheel, eyes squeezed shut, breathing through the nausea twisting my gut. The leather stings my nostrils, mingling with the stale air from the AC. Sunlight slashes through the windshield. Inside, she waits. In her dress. In her perfume. In everything we’ve built.

I have no doubts. Not one. Only doubts about myself.

A knock on the window jerks me upright.

Delilah. Thank God she’s not wearing white.

She taps again, mouthing words I can’t hear. I lower the window a few inches, too raw to argue. The cool air hits my face but doesn’t help. My skin feels clammy, sweat gluing my shirt to my back.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” she says gently, her voice too soft.

“I’m going in,” I murmur, trying to steady my voice. “Just needed a second.”

Delilah leans in, too close. Her eyes hold something I can’t place. Pity? Desire? No—I shove it away.

“I wouldn’t go in just yet.”

My stomach sinks. “Don’t start.”

Her voice drops, low and soft, and something inside me shifts. Panic claws up my throat, but I choke it back.

Not yet.

She exhales slowly and pulls out her phone. I know what’s coming before she even presses it into my hand.

My breath quickens. My chest tightens. No. Not this. Not now.

“Look,” she says, her voice too calm, like she’s been rehearsing it. She turns the phone toward me.

A photo. Blurry, dim—but clear enough.

Lara. In her bridal robe. On a hotel bed. Leaning too close to someone whose face is half-shadowed. His shirt gone. Her hand gripping his thigh.

The man is Calvin.

What the hell is this?

My throat closes. The world tilts, photo and memory bleeding together. The seat of the car digs into my back as the air around me thickens.

“No. Th is can’t be real.”

Confusion crashes over me. This isn’t the woman I’m about to marry. She was in our bed last night. Not some hotel room.

The image sears into my mind, but I shake my head. No. It’s a mistake. A misunderstanding.

But it isn’t.

I lock onto the photo—Lara’s face. I try to convince myself it’s some twisted illusion. It can’t be true. Not Lara. Not the woman I love. I can’t make it fit.

“I’m sorry, Gideon. I know this hurts.”

She pauses, letting the words land.

“I wasn’t going to show you. But you deserve to know before you walk in there and promise forever to someone who only just said goodbye to another man.”

The words crash into me. My brain can’t process them.

“This isn’t what this is,” I whisper, voice tight. “She, Lara, she wouldn’t.”

She interrupts softly, her hand on my arm. Her fingers feather-light, brushing my skin. Her warmth jolts through me. She lingers just a beat too long, her thumb tracing the fabric of my sleeve.

“That was last night. While you were at your bachelor party.”

How would you know? You were with me last night.

I want to scream. To hurl the phone. To demand answers.

I try to breathe, but the car feels smaller.

“I got it this morning,” she says, too calm. “Someone at the hotel saw something. Sent it to me. I didn’t want to believe it either.”

I stare at the screen. My mind spins.

It’s wrong. It has to be.

Except …

Lara had been distant. Withdrawn. Like she was holding something back. Last week, I asked what was wrong. She said she was tired. Just tired.

No. This can’t be it. There has to be an explanation.

Delilah’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Maybe she was saying goodbye,” she whispers, her voice like cold steel. “One last time with him before locking herself away.”

No. The blow lands in my gut. I can’t breathe.

There’d been rumors about Lara and Calvin for weeks, but I ignored them all.

I open my mouth to protest, but nothing comes.

“No,” I rasp. “She wouldn’t.”

But the evidence is right in front of me.

What’s that saying? Guilt makes us project onto others. Lara’s been accusing Delilah because she’s afraid I’m sleeping with her. But why? Because deep down, she knows what I’m only now admitting, she’s been sleeping with Calvin . Projection. Guilt.

Delilah’s hand slips from my arm, and for a moment, I’m hollow. Her touch had always been a comfort, but now it feels like something else, like a push. Colder.

“I know you want to believe that. I do. But maybe… maybe she chose you because you were the better option. Not because she loved you more.”

The world tilts. I want to scream at her. To run inside and drag the truth from Lara myself.

But I don’t.

I sit frozen in the car, paralyzed by the storm inside me. I try to recall the feel of Lara’s hand in mine, the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t watching. The soft trace of her perfume still clinging to my clothes. I try to hold on to everything that matters.

But the p hoto won’t let go.

I need answers from her.

“What if it’s true?” Delilah’s words slice the air like ice. “What if you go in there and she lies to your face?”

My heart stutters, the weight of her words tightening like a vise.

“She’s not who you think she is,” Delilah adds, her voice laced with triumph. “Maybe she never was.”

My fists clench. I fight to breathe through the constriction in my chest.

Inside that building is the only woman I’ve ever wanted forever with.

And I might’ve already lost her.

Because if what Delilah says is true…

If it’s true…

I close my eyes, and for a moment I’m back on the beach, Lara’s laughter in my ears, her hand in mine, talking about forever. She whispered, I’ll always choose you.

Now I’m choking on the echo of that promise, Delilah’s words slicing through my mind. I can’t trust it anymore.

I can’t trust her anymore.

Delilah leans closer, her fingertips grazing my wrist, a touch too intimate, too personal. It feels like she’s testing a boundary, daring me to cross it.

“You deserve someone who sees you, Gideon,” she murmurs, voice a velvet whisper. “Someone who knows what you need… not what you think you want.”

What I need.

What I need is my best friend, just like I always have. Like I did when I was fourteen.

It was su pposed to be our trip. Just me and him, my dad. A weekend at the lake, the one we’d planned for months. He promised. He always promised. But this time felt different. He looked at me, eyes soft but intent, and said, “Let’s spend quality time together.”

I was fourteen, still na?ve enough to believe maybe this time the promise would mean something. Maybe this time he wouldn’t bail. That maybe he’d show up in a way that proved I mattered.

We got into his old red truck. It was a piece of junk he called “his pride and joy,” and we hit the road.

The engine rumbled like it had something to prove, and I sat in the passenger seat clutching the map, pretending I knew where we were going.

My dad didn’t need the map. He never did.

He carried a kind of confidence, like he could always figure things out, unless it involved me.

Especially if it involved picking me up every other weekend or showing up for soccer games.

An hour into the trip, he pulled off at a gas station after answering a phone call.

I didn’t think much of it at first. A few minutes earlier he’d complained about needing a snack, gas, or just a moment to stretch his legs.

All of the above, really. But then, with the truck barely in "Park," he opened his door, tossed out a haunting statement, and the heavy thud of his boots followed as he walked away.

"Call your mom to pick you up, yeah?"

That’s what he had said.

I watched through the cracked windshield as he crossed the parking lot and climbed into another car, a blue sedan I didn’t recognize.

My heart sank, but I convinced myself he was just grabbing something from the store, maybe someone needed him.

Maybe he’d be back in five minutes, and we’d laugh about how I got all worked up over nothing.

But the m inutes dragged on. The truck sat there, engine idling like it was waiting for something, anything, to happen. My phone buzzed in my pocket, but I didn’t care. I kept my eyes on the sedan. Waiting. But nothing changed.

That’s when the fear set in. That’s when I realized I was alone.

I called him. I tried a dozen times, but every call went straight to voicemail, his voice always the same: “Hey, this is Rich. Leave a message.”

I don’t remember how long I sat there, staring at the gas station sign, my hands gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.

The tears came out of nowhere, spilling fast, and felt like they belonged to someone else.

It was the feeling of being left, of realizing maybe I didn’t matter enough to be kept around.

That I wasn’t worth the time or the effort.

I felt small. Like nothing.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I called her.

“Delilah,” I said, my voice cracking before I could even form the words. “Delilah, please. I don’t know what to do. He left me. H-he left me.”

I heard the panic in my own voice, the sharp intake of breath that followed my sob. Delilah didn’t say anything at first. She just listened. Then she spoke in that soft, steady voice of hers, the one that always made me feel like I wasn’t so alone in the world.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll get an Uber. Just stay there, okay?”

I wanted to tell her it was fine, that I’d figure it out. But I couldn’t. I was fourteen, and the weight of the world felt far too heavy for me to carry on my own. I hung up before the sobs broke loose, but I could already hear her making arrangements on the other end.

And she kept her word. She came.

She arriv ed not in a car her parents owned, not with a bag packed with her own things, but with nothing except the few dollars she’d saved from two years of babysitting.

She didn’t care about the cost, not when it meant being there for me.

Delilah always showed up, even when it meant giving up something important to her.

I wasn’t just another friend; I was someone who needed her, and that was enough.

She ran to me, out of breath, eyes wide with concern, and without a moment’s hesitation pulled me into her arms, holding me like I was the most important thing in her world.

“You’re not alone,” she whispered, her words muffled against my shoulder. “You’re not alone, Gideon. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

I never asked her to make that sacrifice, to drop everything and come to my rescue. But she did. She always did.

We didn’t say much on the ride home, but I remember looking at her, really seeing her for the first time.

She was the one constant in my life, the one person who never let me down, even when my own father had.

Delilah had a way of making the world feel less unbearable.

She didn’t always say the right things, she didn’t have to. She was simply there.

And from that moment on, I knew she’d be the one to protect me. To keep me from falling apart. To remind me I wasn’t the failure I believed I was. I wasn’t the kid unworthy of anyone’s time. She made me feel like I was worth saving.

So, yeah. I trust her. I always have. If Delilah says the love of my life is cheating, I believe her.

My eyes shift to the venue doors.

Then to the photo in my hand.

Then to Delilah, my best friend, the person who’s never let me down.

My pulse hammers in my ears. The sharp mix of leather and cologne clings to the car, thick, suffocating. Every part of me wants to burst inside, to find Lara, to demand the truth. But I can’t. Uncertainty presses down on me like a weight.

The doors are only feet away. I can almost hear the whispers inside, feel the eyes of friends and family waiting. My heart pounds harder. For the first time, I wonder if everything we’ve built is about to crumble.

But what if Delilah’s right? What if all of this is a lie?

My hand hovers over the gear shift. Love, loyalty, the desperate urge to trust my heart, all of it pulls at me, fighting the doubt gnawing deep in my gut.

I freeze.

For one last moment, I sit there, my heart lodged in my throat, the choice before me yawning wide like a chasm I’m too afraid to cross. I want to go in. I want to fix this, to look into her eyes and believe everything is still whole.

But I can’t.

My heart can’t take the truth if it isn’t what I need it to be. Not now.

I shift into reverse.

Gravel crunches under the tires. The venue shrinks in the rearview, blurring with my vision.

I drive away from the altar.

From Lara.

From the truth.