Behind her, one of the bridesmaids whispered.
That wasn’t in the script. Jules couldn’t tell who had said what. Their order was slightly off, and their pairs were no longer evenly matched to the groomsmen. One of her bridesmaids, Olivia, had called in sick.
Jules’s lips upturned with an apology for the whisper. To whom, she didn’t know. Mason wouldn’t care, and whatever the mishap, it could be edited out of the wedding video.
Ugh.Why was she thinking about any of this? Despite the businesslike origin story of their nuptials, they were still getting married. Even if the longer she stood next to him, the more he smelled like a whiskey bender instead of a pleasant cologne.
“Jules,” her sister Abigail whispered.
Years of media training allowed Jules to remain disturbingly composed even as an avalanche of questions begged her to turn around.
“Jules.”
The officiant faltered, half smiling with an abrupt glance toward the bridesmaids. The pause lasted a second, but her uncertainty blossomed, visible like an unruly vine clamoring and climbing for attention.
Abigail bumped the bridal bouquet against Jules’s shoulder.
Erm, what was happening? She couldn’t ignore her sister. But she couldn’t acknowledge her either.
Mason’s eyes darted to the line of bridesmaids. A faint shimmer of sweat glistened on his forehead. He swayed, not enough for anyone to notice except her but enough to reignite the surge of anxiety churning in her stomach. Was he still drunk from the bachelor party?
Impossible.
Right? That had to be impossible. He’d texted her a little before midnight to say he was in for the night, that he’d see her tomorrow and he couldn’t wait.
Even if he’d been shitfaced, that had been almost eighteen hours ago.
Abigail coughed Jules’s name.
The officiant stopped, raising her eyebrows as if asking how to proceed. How was Jules supposed to know? She couldn’t turn around. She couldn’t step off stage. A director couldn’t yell, “Cut!” This was as real as life could be. Sort of. Arranged and contrived but real enough as she stood in front of six hundred and seven people that she kinda, sorta knew.
She shifted and met Abigail’s pleading eyes. In that moment, she knew that the script had irrevocably changed.
Waves of gossipy murmurs spun over the rows of guests as though someone had thrown a boulder into a placid lake.
“What?” she mouthed, catching sight of Sloane’s cell phone with the bright phone case semihidden in the overflowing bouquet that Abigail held for her. Jules raised her eyes over the line of furious bridesmaids to Sloane.
Jules’s publicist, her friend, wordlessly pleaded for her to look at the phone.
So she did and recognized the familiar branding of the gossip blogger that had made her life a living hell on a semiregular basis. Her stomach plummeted to the flower-petal-carpeted floor, and ruining the line of her veil and her skirt, Jules inched toward Abigail as Mason hissed her name.
The panic in his voice was enough that Jules didn’t need to read the blog headline. But she did anyway.
Mason Marlow’s Last Night Single Spent With Pregnant Side Piece
Jules blinked. She read the words again, then again and checked the timestamp on the blog post. She’d stepped into the aisle at a punctual five o’clock. The headline from the ruthless yet reputable celebrity gossip site had been posted at 4:57 p.m.
No one at the wedding knew.
Every guest had signed a nondisclosure agreement, packed their belongings into security lockers, and provided their emergency contact information to Jules’s team in case anyone outside the wedding needed to reach a guest. Everyone except for their parents, Sloane, and the wedding planner.
Jules snatched the phone, wrecking the lines of her veil and train, and turned toward her sister.
“Would you like a minute?” the officiant murmured.
Jules swiped open the post. There was Mason—her heart dropped—alongside her missing bridesmaid with a baby bump. Olivia was pregnant? Mason, the father?
Every plan, every conversation, every negotiation and agreement with Mason disappeared as Jules stared at the photograph of his lips on her bridesmaid’s neck, his hand splayed across the tiny bulge on her stomach.
