Page 3

Stella

Joint bachelor and bachelorette parties should be illegal.

The Canadians call them buck and doe parties , but as an American, I just call them a waste of my fucking time . I must have been drunk when I agreed to this, because in no world would I soberly choose to subject myself to sitting on a party bus with a bunch of leering men and screeching women, watching the bride- and groom-to-be paw at each other while leaning against a stripper pole.

I’m barely keeping the grimace off my face as I take it all in, upper lip twitching every few seconds before I press it firmly against my bottom one. I’d be worried about my lipstick smudging if I didn’t already know it’s practically bombproof, put to the test through rounds of recipe development and tastings. If it can withstand buttercream frosting dolloped on top of a cupcake that you practically have to unhinge your jaw to take a bite of, it can hold up to my sneering.

God, I shouldn’t be here. I should have been just stepping off a flight from my honeymoon, glowing after days spent in a Maldives over-water bungalow and getting my back blown out by the love of my life, but that plan went to shit when he left me at the altar. The man literally ran away when it came time to say his vows while I stood there like a mannequin, watching him burst out of the church like a bat out of hell.

Instead, I’m here: on a party bus in Las Vegas, surrounded by forty-odd people I barely know and wishing I could throw myself out the doors and into the street—wishing I’d never brightly agreed when my favorite cousin convinced me to come along to get my mind off my runaway fiancé.

Yeah, I was definitely drunk when I agreed to this. For the first few days after my failed wedding, wine was my best friend. I haven’t been much of a drinker lately, so those bold pinot noirs and piss-adjacent chardonnays went straight to my head.

Who knows what else I agreed to during that time. It’s a good thing I don’t handle the day-to-day business at my company, or else I might be staring down the face of financial ruin. Although, shit, I think I do remember emailing my head chef at an ungodly hour to ask if we could put a red wine–flavored macaron on the menu at Stella Margaux’s.

And then there was that little viral video…

“Stella!” a high-pitched voice crows from across the bus, dragging me out of my sulking.

It’s Daphne, another of my cousins, a woman I wish I could physically remove from our family tree. Her blunt chin-length bob barely shifts when she reaches forward to grab my hand, her bloodred nails perfectly done. She looks like a Black Stepford Wife whose hobbies include witchcraft and eating the souls of children, and if she didn’t annoy the ever-loving shit out of me, I’d adore her vibe.

Unfortunately, she’s a gossip-hungry monster who I’m pretty sure leaked all the gory details of my wedding-gone-wrong to the press. I would have thought a thirty-five-year-old mother of two and renowned plastic surgeon would have better things to do with her time than talk shit about a jilted bride seven years her junior, but hey, I guess we all have our vices.

“It’s so good you made it!” Daphne gushes, dark eyes boring into me. “How are you feeling? Doing okay after…everything?”

That seems to be everyone’s favorite question these days. I’d love to say that in the two weeks since my fiancé left I’ve been the best ever. It’s what they’d rather hear. But I can’t lie, considering the evidence of my despair is splashed all over the internet.

Someone should have taken my phone from me, or at least changed the passwords to my social media accounts. Maybe that would have stopped me from going live on Instagram and drunkenly raving to the world that love isn’t real, men are trash, and the French can get fucked.

“I’m getting through the days,” I shout over the music. “Super glad to be here, though! So happy for Janelle and Ron!”

She stares at me like she doesn’t believe me for a second, but then she flashes a wide, fake smile. Her teeth are so startlingly white and straight that they have to be veneers. God, they look amazing. “Good for you, being out tonight. Gotta get back on that horse!”

“That’s right! Just call me a cowgirl!” I quip back, and I immediately want to shoot myself.

She drops my hand when the bus shudders to a stop and excited shrieks go up around us. At the front, Janelle taps on a microphone, trying to get everyone’s attention. The sound makes me wince, and I’m tempted to cover my ears, but I don’t want to look like that much of a party pooper this early in the night.

“What’s up, wedding squad!” Janelle shouts into the mic. “How we doing tonight?”

There are hoots and hollers, and I have to dodge getting elbowed in the face by the woman sitting next to me, who has already gone a little too hard on the champagne. In comparison, I’m still nursing my first glass, despite wanting to grab the nearest bottle and chug it.

“Well, now that I know y’all are enjoying yourselves,” Janelle continues, “I thought we’d go over the itinerary for the night.”

The timeline of events is gambling, an eight-course dinner, a strip club where we ladies have the opportunity to get lap dance lessons from the professionals, and then dancing the night away. Normally, I’d be on board for all of those things. I’ll hustle anyone at a poker table, I love good food, and the idea of learning how to give a proper lap dance sounds like a hell of a time. But I can’t work up the necessary enthusiasm for any of it. I haven’t been able to for ages. And it fucking sucks .

I miss feeling like myself. I miss being joyful instead of bitter. I miss being the life of the party and the first person to accept a dare, consequences be damned. I miss who I was before the man I loved and trusted left me high and dry.

I miss being me —Stella goddamn Baldwin. But who knows when she’ll be back.

Tonight, I’ll take solace in the fact that I don’t seem to be the only one having a shit time. As we disembark from the bus, I fall in line behind a dark-haired man who heaves a weary sigh as we shuffle toward the door, his broad shoulders hunched.

Yeah, bud, I feel you.

I scowl when Daphne bumps my shoulder, stepping in front of me and dragging another woman along with her. I’m tempted to “accidentally” slosh the last of my champagne on them, but considering we’re all wearing white at Janelle’s behest, it would only make the fabric see-through and lead to me being in trouble. Tragic.

I won’t deny that I look good in tonight’s dress—a short, silky number with a feathered hem. I always look amazing in white by virtue of being a darker-skinned Black woman. But I also can’t deny that the ex-bride inside me is triggered by the sight.

An all too familiar pang of hurt shoots through my chest. I try to drown it by finishing off my champagne, praying Janelle and Ron have paid for open bars in all the places we’re hitting. I need to get shit-faced to make it through this. As long as someone stops me from pulling out my phone and recording another rant, I should be fine.

I draw in a steeling breath as we step off the bus, grateful my ankle doesn’t roll in my insensible strappy stilettos with little glitter stars on them. They make my legs look a mile long, but they were made for sitting more than walking. Or for throwing over the shoulders of a very attractive man. Not that I’ve done that recently or have any plans to. Who knew getting my heart broken would throw my libido into the gutter?

“We’re gonna have so much fun tonight!” Sydney, one of the bridesmaids, screeches from behind me as we make our way into the lavish casino. “Do any of us even know how to, like, play cards, though?”

“Who cares,” Rachel, another bridesmaid, replies before cackling. “It’s an excuse to watch hot guys in tuxes lose a bunch of money!”

They rush past me in a fit of laughter, nearly toppling over as they attempt to move around the man who was briefly in front of me on the bus.

“Shit, sorry!” Sydney blurts, grabbing at his arm as she stumbles.

The man turns, his hand going to her elbow and holding firm. “You’re all right,” he says, and I swear I catch a hint of an English accent. It’s unsurprising, considering the groom grew up in London and most of his groomsmen are his childhood friends or Premier League footballers. “Careful, though, yeah? Don’t think Ron and Janelle want anyone to end up in hospital tonight.”

The accent is obvious now, even over the din of trilling slot machines, and the phrasing of his sentence confirms it. But it’s his expression that really drives it home. He’s smiling in that stereotypical tight-lipped white British way that looks closer to a grimace than an expression of joy. It’s polite and deferential but somehow patronizing at the same time. He’d make a great member of parliament with a smile like that.

But speaking of lips…the man’s got nice ones, the kind where there’s actually something to kiss, and I can tell he knows what lip balm is. Not that I’m—not that I’m thinking about kissing him. Patronizing men who look too good in tuxes aren’t my type. At least, they shouldn’t be, because that’s exactly who fucked up my entire life.

But I can’t deny that this one’s handsome.

Under the warm casino lights, his hair is a deep shade of chestnut. A wavy lock of it, perfectly disheveled, sweeps across his forehead, though I have no doubt he styled it that way with some sort of expensive pomade. His eyes, a piercing blue, are framed by thick lashes, the kind I’d be jealous of if I didn’t have the best lash tech in the world on speed dial. And while his skin can probably verge on Snow White levels of paleness, he has just enough of a golden undertone that I’m sure he spent the summer letting the sun beat down on him.

If all of that wasn’t enough, his features are so perfectly chiseled it’s like some classical sculptor birthed him from a slab of marble. Straight nose, high cheekbones, ungodly sharp jaw. He looks…regal. The man might as well be out of a fairy tale.

I keep staring as the women titter and giggle and bat their lashes some more. I can’t blame them. If I had the opportunity to get that close to him, I might be doing the same. The old Stella—back when I was single, wild, and carefree—wouldn’t have missed a beat. But the current version…

“God, they’re embarrassing.”

I glance to my right to find Daphne beside me, sneering at the same scene I’m looking at. Except her focus is on the two women pawing at Prince Charming, not the man himself.

“Rachel and Sydney can never keep it in their pants,” she complains, shaking her head like she’s witnessing a true shame. “That man better be ready to get mauled.”

I won’t fault a woman for her desire to maul a man—been there, done that—so I don’t deign to answer Daphne’s chiding. I do , however, let my gaze linger on him. No harm in admiring a little eye candy.

One thing about no longer being in a relationship is that I can look at whoever the hell I want whenever I want. I’m a single woman for the first time in five years. I’m free . It’s just a shame that free means I want to break down about every ten minutes.

As determined as I am to move on, I’m still mourning the loss of my relationship and the life we built together, and I know I will be for a while. But I also know that this could have been so much worse if I’d been just a little more in love with him.

That’s not to say I didn’t love étienne. God, far from it. But over the past year, our relationship had been…strained. I blamed it on wedding planning and being busy with work, the typical things that could tax a couple, but something else was going on. I ignored it at the time, blamed his emotional distance on everything in the book other than him losing interest in me. But in the end, that’s what it came down to.

I just don’t want to be with you anymore, Stella.

I really should have seen it coming. We hadn’t had sex in four months. Every kiss was barely a peck. Once he even pulled his hand away when I tried to hold it, making the excuse that he was just shocked by how cold my fingers were. It would have been a perfect moment to grab my hand and warm it between his palms, maybe even press a kiss to my freezing knuckles. But no. He’d just shoved his hands into his pockets and let me trail behind him as we walked on. I should have known we were doomed. I just wish I’d opened my eyes to it sooner.

They’re open now, though, and they’re staring straight at a man who I wouldn’t have looked twice at a couple of weeks ago.

“I’m so glad you’re not like them,” Daphne says, pulling me out of my thoughts. There’s a saccharine note to her words that I do not like. “You’ve been so graceful and dignified throughout all of… you know . You could have been out in the streets, doing the absolute most to make up for those years you lost to étienne, but you’re not. Those two could really learn something from you instead of acting like nasty little sluts.”

I nearly trip at the insult, my heel catching on some invisible bump in the carpet, but I manage to keep my footing. “Excuse me?”

Daphne waves a hand, brushing off her awful comment. “I know it’s crude, but women like that are truly a breed of their own. I have no respect for them.”

“Are you saying you wouldn’t respect me if I’d done that?” I challenge, unable to resist cupping that little spark of anger and fanning the flame. If I have to give Daphne credit for anything, this is the first time I’ve felt more than bone-crushing despair or numbness since my wedding day.

“Of course not,” she scolds, looping her arm through mine and pulling me close. “But I might have viewed you a little differently. Besides, you never would have. That’s so out of character for you.”

“Oh, really?” We may be family, but it’s clear she doesn’t know me. Or maybe she’s just forgotten what I was like before an intense career and a crumbling relationship slowly sapped away my energy and personality.

She seems to think I’ve been graceful and dignified after having my entire life blown up. Last I checked those weren’t synonyms for grieving and depressed . If she’s under the impression that any of that is who I really am, then she’s sorely mistaken.

“Yeah,” Daphne confirms, giving my arm a little squeeze that makes me want to punch her in return. “It’s just not you, Stella.”

Something snaps in my chest, opening the floodgates of every emotion I’ve kept locked away and refused to feel lately. Who the hell is she to tell me who I am? How could she possibly know me better than I know myself? And why does she think she has the right to judge how I or anyone else lives their life? It’s not like it affects hers.

But okay. All right. If that’s what she thinks, then fuck it. Fuck her . I’ll show her who I really am underneath it all. I’ll show her the chaos I can inspire now that I have no one to answer to.

The old Stella’s coming back tonight. And she’s going to cause a riot.