Page 32 of Knot Your Bridezilla (High Fructose Corn Syrup Verse #2)

AVRIL

“I OBJECT!”

For a moment, I thought that my ex had snuck back in. The last thing that I expected was for a brand new objection.

…Seriously? Not this again.

I wanted to slap my palm to my forehead—it was a good thing I had enough control not to, because that would ruin my bridal makeup.

Oh God, what now? Or who now? And where were all these men desperate to marry me like a couple of months ago?

Reluctantly, I wrenched my gaze away from the handsome face of the man who I most definitely wanted to marry to see the second guy who dared interrupt the most important day in my life.

But did it matter who they were? If they were of the opinion that I shouldn’t be with David, than their opinion was basically trash…

I almost recognized the semi-handsome-if-you-squint man standing in the middle of my wedding aisle.

“Avril! You can’t marry him.” This scrawny guy…

who was screaming at the top of his lungs in the middle of my wedding.

He looked vaguely familiar, but it was slightly hard to place him —now with that look of wild desperation in his eyes.

“I was stupid. So stupid. I was just listening to people who I thought knew best, when I should have been listening to my heart the entire time.” His voice was passionate, and raw with much more emotion than our one short date called for.

Oh, shit.

That was Charlie… and it wasn’t just any old person who thought that they knew best—it was his mother who knew best.

What the hell was he doing here? How did he even know that I was getting married today?

I would be a little proud of him for rebelling against mother-dearest—if this hadn’t been the most mortifying experience in my entire life.

“You can’t marry him!” Charlie jerked one finger at the man who felt more perfect for me than anything else in my entire life. “He isn’t right for you. I will do whatever it takes to make you happy. If you want your fifteen children, then I want it too.”

Oh, God…

He needed to stop before I flushed so red that all the hundreds of dollars of bridal makeup completely melted off my face.

Nope, there he went again. Charlie was not stopping.

“I’ll do anything to make it up to you, whatever it takes. I’ll work three jobs! Four jobs! I’ll give you the trad-wife life you’ve always dreamed of. Just please give me another chance!” Charlie’s eyes were red with all the tears threatening to flow, and I was totally over all this shit.

Could someone like—

Ugh, none of my dads could take care of this guy. My fathers were all taking care of Dylan in the other room—by the occasional sound of yelling coming from whatever room they took him to, they were not quite finished with whatever they were doing.

Did all of them need to go to intimidate my ex?

Really?

An angry vein was pulsing in David’s forehead. He turned as if he were going to make a move to stop the wedding crasher.

Oh, hell no.

Quickly, I put my hand on David’s elbow to stop him. I had to nip this in the bud.

There was no way in damnation that I was going to have David defend me.

David looked at me wide-eyed, with a flash of hurt in his ocean blue eyes—wait, no. Not that either. He didn’t need to feel hurt about this. There wasn’t anything to feel hurt about. I wanted Charlie as much as I wanted head lice… but also, was there not anyone else who could defend me?

If David and Charlie started fighting, and David’s perfectly tailored suit got torn, or heaven forbid—what if Charlie managed to land a blow or something on that glorious face?

Does anyone realize how much it would cost to edit the tears and bruises off of him?

We hadn’t even finished taking all the wedding pictures with the bridal party.

How much was it? Thirty dollars per edited photo? And how many did our photographer say that he was going to take? Like eight-hundred at least.

How did it make sense to ruin David’s suit when he was going to be featured in all the fucking photos? Was I the asshole for not wanting to spend the tens of thousands of dollars it would cost to erase the cosmetic damage if my soon-to-be-husband ended up beating down the guy I dated one time?

No, I refuse to say that I was the asshole here. Literally, there were so many other alphas free to give Charlie a whooping—if he even needed all that. If I glared and threatened to call his mother, that would probably take care of this, anyway.

“Darling,” I hissed through tightly clenched teeth, “for the sake of my sanity, please, don’t go down there.”

Fierce determination flashed through his eyes as David clenched his jaw. “I’m not letting anyone take you from me.”

What?

“Take me—no. Yeah, that’s not happening. But what will happen if you get blood and wrinkles on your suit, is I’m going to have to spend the entire honeymoon budget on photo editing. Then you can kiss getting laid on a tropical island goodbye.”

David stared at me like he couldn’t compute… as if he were a loading screen and the simple words that I had said were not buffering.

David cleared his throat. “So… to be clear, you don’t want to marry someone else.”

I nearly rolled my eyes.

What did he think!? That I would really take any guy who would slap a ring on it?

Did David think that marriage to Avril Stryker was first-come, first-serve or something?

He was acting like the only reason I was standing here today, planning to marry him was because Charlie and his dear momma hadn’t gotten to me first.

“ No. I love you. ”

Dumbass.

Obviously, I wanted to marry him. What did David think that we were even doing here?

…Did David think I would have just married anybody?

Alright. In all fairness, he was a first-hand witness to the world’s worst dates.

So I can kind of see how it might kind of look like that.

But really, if I hadn’t found someone that I really wanted to marry, I would have actually cancelled the wedding.

I might be delusional, but I’m not crazy. At least not fully.

At least this wasn’t one of those religious ceremonies, where if someone objected to the wedding, the whole thing would have to be rescheduled.

Could you imagine? That would be the biggest pain in the ass.

Even the thought of having to redo all the planning over this stupid shit was about to give me hives.

I hadn’t even wanted to redo the wedding to marry a whole-ass different man. Now that a guy or two wanted to crash my party and steal me away from the person I actually wanted to spend the rest of my life with—No. Just no.

The show would go on.