I still wake up every morning thinking I’m fixable. If I just find the right configuration of myself, everything will settle.
My father is waiting. At the altar, Ezra’s jaw is tight enough to snap. The quartet is on its fourth loop ofCanon in D.
I look back down the aisle. All the way past the judgment and the expectation to the doors I just came through. They’re still cracked open. A thin, golden line of California afternoon is bleeding into the room.
Something inside me cracks.
“Dad,” I whisper.
“Yeah, baby?”
“I’m going to—”
“Yeah,” he says, a small, sad smile touching his lips. “Go.”
I don’t walk. There’s no dignified version of this. I pick up the skirt of the dress I didn’t even choose, turn around, and bolt.
A collective gasp hits the back of my head. I hear Ezra call my name in that tone that usually makes me stop and apologize, and for the first time in three years, I don’t care.
My heels clatter on the stone. The white flowers become a blur.
I thrust the doors open with my shoulder. They swing wide, and suddenly I’m in the light. I’m outside. I’m breathing. I stop at the top of the steps and realize I have absolutely no plan B.
I’m standing on a church landing in a heap of silk, staring at a driveway full of confused guests and fancy cars. My father didn’t follow me. He let me go. That’s either the most loving thing he’s ever done or the start of my complete mental collapse.
I don’t even have my phone.
Then a screech of tires grabs my attention.
A black Camaro rolls to a heavy stop at the bottom of the steps. The window is already down.
Griffin leans across the center console, sunglasses on, looking up at me like he’s been expecting this exact disaster for the last decade.
He beckons me with a tilt of his chin. “Get in, runaway.”
I stare at him. “Griffin? How did you—”
“Piper, get in the damn car.”
From inside the church, the noise is getting louder. The doors are about to burst open. Ezra is coming.
I pick up my dress, run down the steps, and holy shit, but I get in the car.
The door barely clicks shut before he’s pulling away. I sit there, thousands of dollars' worth of lace pooling at my feet, watching the church shrink in the side mirror.
Neither of us speaks for a long minute.
“You okay?” he asks eventually.
I just ghosted my own wedding. I’m a fugitive. I’m in a getaway car with my brother’s best friend, and I have no idea where we’re going.
“No,” I say.
“Fair enough.”
As the Camaro weaves through traffic, a feeling starts to settle over me. Underneath the terror, running like a quiet current, is something I haven’t felt in so long I almost don’t recognize it.
Relief. Raw, terrifying, enormous relief.
