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I just stared at him. It was a tactic my mom would use to get me and Everett to tell the truth. She’d look at us, her lips in a straight line, and she’d wait until one of us cracked. It was almost always Everett; he has always been the worst liar.
It worked on Monty, though. His face crumpled, and he immediately started to cry. He told me it was just one time, months ago, and that Ava was upset with him for not telling me and wanted him to confess to me or she would tell me herself, and he’d been miserable holding it in. He begged me to forgive him.
I was shocked, but I also wasn’t (sixth sense, remember?). I asked him to leave because I needed time to think.
The next morning, when I’d emailed my boss to say I was too sick to come into work (a good reminder of why it’s not the best idea to date your boss), there was a knock on my door, and I opened it to find Jillian.
She apologized for her son and asked me to really consider what I’d be giving up by breaking things off with him. She told me there were a lot of people coming to this wedding, important people to their family. She even told me Montgomery II had cheated on her (which felt like TMI, to be honest) and that they’d worked through it. She basically begged me to go through with this wedding.
In the end, after talking it through with Abby, I decided to marry Monty. I even let a very apologetic Ava still be in the wedding. Because forgiveness. Or idiocy. Take your pick.
Monty was so thankful, he sent me ten dozen roses, each with a card on it telling me all the reasons he loved me. He promised he’d never do anything like that again, and I wanted to believe him. But I also still had this feeling that I wasn’t getting the full story.
The day of the wedding came, and my jinx issue was in full swing. I mean, besides the whole finding out three days before the wedding that the groom had cheated on me thing.
The first thing that happened was the cake didn’t show. Jillian was beside herself, and I still don’t know how she did it, but she somehow found a last-minute wedding cake that was quite stunning. Then I couldn’t find Monty’s ring. We looked everywhere, turning up couches in the bridal suite and searching under dressers and nightstands. But it was nowhere to be found. So, I sent my dad out to buy me another one.
Then Abby started throwing up. We looked at each other after the first time she ran to the bathroom, remembering her wedding fiasco (which she never found out was my doing), and worried we were going to experience round two (which would honestly feel like well-deserved payback) but as it turned out, she wasn’t sick; she was pregnant.
I don’t know if it was all the jinx-y things happening at once, or that little voice in my head that kept nagging at me, saying I wasn’t getting the full story from Monty, or if it was the picture Ava had as the wallpaper on her phone. I’d seen it while I was looking for Monty’s ring—a picture of the same B and B Monty had on his phone. Whatever the reason, I knew I needed to talk to him before the wedding.
So, I snuck out of my room, in my robe with my hair and makeup done, and found him in the groom’s suite, having some kind of video game tournament with the groomsmen.
“Hey,” I said, peeking around the door. “Can I talk to you, Monty? Really quickly.”
He came out of the room, shutting the door to the suite behind him.
“Is it about the ring?” he asked.
“No, but who told you about that?” He didn’t say, but I knew the answer already. Ava, obviously.
“Monty,” I started. “I can’t shake this feeling that you haven’t been fully honest with me about the Ava thing.”
“What?” He said, his brows pulled downward. “Are you serious right now?”
I folded my arms in front of me. “I am.”
“Mila, we’re about to get married. My family and all our important friends are out there, and you’re bringing this up now?” He shook his head while looking around the hall—anywhere but at me.
“I need to know,” I told him.
He breathed heavily out his nose, something he did when he was frustrated—a trait I’d seen mostly at work—that I’d always found super irritating. “This really isn’t something we need to talk about right now,” he said.
That was his answer, and it was also mine.
I should have called it off then and there, but I think I was kind of out of my head, because I went back to my room, got in my gown, and acted like I was going to walk down the aisle anyway. I think it was shock.
But I snapped out of it when I heard “Here Comes the Bride.” I looked at my dad, shook my head, and told him he’d need to walk down the aisle and tell Monty I wouldn’t be saying, “I do,” and I turned around and left, hailing a cab outside the hotel. A true runaway bride moment.
I do regret that I didn’t get to see the pure mayhem that ensued, but my family did and they were happy to fill me in. Turns out my parents and Everett didn’t like Monty. They really need to start being honest with me regarding the people I keep in my life.
Anyway, the story goes that when my dad told Monty I wasn’t coming, he freaked out, and Ava ran to him. Jillian, who was upset about the ruined wedding she’d planned, publicly called out Ava and Monty, who’d apparently been getting together behind my back for months, and then grabbed Ava’s bouquet out of her hand and started whacking the two of them with it.
When my mom was cleaning up my stuff from the bridal suite to bring back to me, she found Monty’s ring tucked inside Ava’s makeup bag.
The following Monday, with my family packing up my place because I’d made the easy decision to move back to Colorado, I went in to work to quit. To my surprise, Monty was there, and so was his superior, and they called me into Monty’s office and let me go. It turns out Monty’s father owned the largest percentage of LogicSphere, and so it was never a fair fight. I was told my position was being eliminated. Joke’s on them because they didn’t know I’d planned to quit, and when they let me go, they gave me a pretty decent severance package to leave quietly. So that felt a little like a win.
Before I ended contact with Abby (because in the end, she’d picked her side, and that was with the people she’d known longer than me), she told me Ava and Monty dated for about a month after the wedding before it fizzled out.
