The Bride He Left At The Altar

CHAPTER 3

SABINE'S POV

I don't know how long I sat in that parking lot. Long enough for my tears to dry. Long enough for the shaking in my hands to finally slow down.

I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve and pulled out my phone.

I hadn't called this number in seven years. My thumb hovered over it for a long moment, old habits telling me to put the phone down, to handle this the way I'd handled everything else since I left, alone, quietly, without asking anyone for help.

I pressed call anyway.

It rang twice before he picked up.

"Sabine?"

He said my name carefully, like he was afraid saying too much too fast might scare me off the line. I hadn't expected the sound of his voice to undo me the way it did. Fresh tears burned in my eyes.

"Dad," I said, my voice breaking on the word. "I need you."

There was a pause, brief, and then his voice came back steadier, sharper, the voice of the man that had missed his daughter for seven years. "Where are you? Tell me where you are."

I told him. I heard him say something to someone else in the background, and then his voice returned to me, softer again.

"I'm sending a car," he said. "Sabine, sweetheart, I'm sending a car right now. Just stay where you are."

"Okay," I whispered.

"I'm glad you called," he said quietly, before I could hang up. "I've been waiting seven years for you to call."

I cried the whole way home.

The Calloway estate hadn't changed. I'd forgotten how big it actually was until I saw it again, the long, drive way and lawn past the guesthouse where my grandmother used to keep her roses, past three separate homes that all technically belonged to different branches of the family, until the car finally stopped in front of the smallest of them, tucked at the far end of the property behind a line of old oak trees.

My house. I hadn't set foot inside it in seven years.

My father was waiting on the front steps.

He looked older than I remembered, more grey at his temples, deeper lines around his eyes, but the moment he saw me get out of the car, his whole face changed, softened, like something in him had been holding its breath for seven years and had only just been allowed to let it go.

"Sabine." He crossed the distance between us fast, pulling me into a hug before I could say anything at all. I let myself sink into it, into the smell of him, cedar and old paper, exactly the same as it always used to be.

"I'm sorry," I said into his shoulder. "I'm sorry I stayed away so long."

"Don't," he said, his voice rough. "Don't apologize to me. Not tonight."

He pulled back to look at me, his eyes scanning my face, taking in whatever was left of the wreck I'd been an hour earlier.

"Tell me what happened."

I told him everything. The wedding. About Marcus and Ivy. The chapel, the lies, the two hundred faces watching me get pushed toward the door. He listened without interrupting, his jaw tightening more with every word, until I finally ran out of things to say.

"You're staying here," he said, once I'd finished. It wasn't a question. "As long as you want. Longer, if I have anything to say about it."

"I don't want to be a burden."

"You could never be a burden," he said, cupping my face in his hands the way he used to when I was small. "You are the only thing in this family I have ever done right."

I was still wiping my eyes when I heard footsteps behind him, unhurried, almost lazy, coming down the front steps of the main house.

"Well, well," a voice said. "Look who finally decided to come home."

I turned to find a man leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, a familiar smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. It took me a second to place him, and then it hit me all at once.

"Theo?"

"In the flesh," he said, pushing off the doorframe and walking toward us. He'd grown taller since I last saw him, more sure of himself than the awkward teenager I remembered trailing after me around this estate when we were kids.

"You're my stepbrother," I said slowly. "I forgot you actually lived here now."

"Moved in two years ago," Theo said, stopping in front of me, studying my face with something that looked like genuine relief hiding under his grin. "Dad kept saying you'd come around eventually. I was starting to think he was wrong."

"I wasn't ready before," I said quietly.

"And now?"

I thought about the scene at the chapel. Marcus's cold, empty expression, watching me get walked out like I was the one who'd done something wrong.

"Now I'm ready," I said.

Theo's smile faded slightly, replaced by something more serious, more careful.

"I've been waiting for you to come to your senses, Sabine. This family needed you. I needed you. It's not the same around here without you."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Just—" He glanced at my father, then back at me. "Just stay this time. Okay?"

"I'm going to stay," I said. "I mean it."

"Good," he said, some of the easy grin returning. "Because this place has been unbearably boring without someone to actually talk to. Dad just wanders around the gardens looking sad. It's depressing."

Despite everything, I laughed, a small, exhausted sound, but it was real. My father rolled his eyes at Theo, though I caught the corner of his mouth moving into a small smile.

"Hope you're here to stay," Theo said again, quieter this time, like he needed to hear me say it twice to really believe it.

"I am," I said. "I'm not running from this family anymore."

He nodded, satisfied, and clapped a hand briefly on my shoulder before heading back toward the main house, leaving my father and me alone again in the fading evening light.

My father studied me for a long moment.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

I looked past him, toward the small house that had been waiting for me for seven years, toward the estate that held more history and more money than most of the guests at that wedding could probably imagine.

None of them had any idea who I really was.

None of them had any idea what was coming.

"I'm going to make them pay," I said.