Married To The Wrong Castellan.

Chapter 3

Wyatt’s POV

Twelve years, twelve f*****g years of me convincing myself it was an accident, and nobody would ever find out. But one message and now everything has gone sour.

I kept my eyes on the road, I knew I would turn the car around if I looked back one more time. So I kept driving.

Two hours ago, I was standing in front of a mirror, buttoning my shirt. My hands were steadier then. I had a whole speech ready to say to her at the altar, but now I couldn’t remember a single word of it.

My phone lit up on the seat next to me again and again and I watched her name flash. But I never touched it until it stopped for good.

A small icon popped up where the last call had been. A voicemail from Delilah.

I told myself not to listen to it. I said it out loud, actually, alone in the car like a crazy person. Then I picked up the phone anyway and pressed play.

I braced myself before her voice even came through, like bracing does anything.

“Wyatt, baby please. Where are you? I don’t care about the wedding or any of it. Just tell me you’re fine please.”

“Fuck.” Her voice cracked halfway through please, like she was fighting to get the word out at all.

I pulled over because I couldn’t see the road anymore.

I couldn’t stop thinking about last night, her body curled up in my arms, and the promises I had made to her as we made love.

I sat there with the engine still running and pressed both hands over my face. My shoulders shook before I even understood I was crying. A sound came out of me, low and broken, one I didn’t recognize as mine.

“I don’t care about the wedding,” she’d said. Like the wedding was the only thing I’d taken from her. She had no idea.

“s**t! s**t! s**t!” I slammed my fist on my steering wheel.

I thought about the ring still sitting in my jacket pocket, the one I never got to put on her finger. I thought about her face this morning in that mirror, how happy she must have looked, how none of it had anything to do with what I was about to do to her.

I wanted to call her so badly, my thumb hovered over her name for three or four seconds. I put the phone down without dialing.

'I'm sorry’ were the only words I ended up texting.

*

Twenty minutes away from the airport, a new message came in, but it wasn’t from Delilah this time.

“Good boy, now don’t ever come back or she finds out.”

I read it three times. I could feel my blood boiling. My grip tightened around the phone until my knuckles hurt.

“Who the f**k are you?” I gripped the phone so hard my thumb slipped off the screen. “What do you want from me? What the f**k do you want?”

I threw the phone on the seat. It hit the door and bounced.

“Say something!” I hit the wheel again. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Nothing answered. Just the empty road and my own breathing filling up my car.

I sat there for a while, staring at the phone where it landed, the screen still lit up on the floor.

I drove the rest of the way with the radio off and my hands too tight on the wheel. Streets I knew by heart passed by like they belonged to someone else’s life. I passed the restaurant where I’d told her I wanted forever, no more sneaking around behind.

Richard’s or our family’s back, no more hiding what we were. I didn’t slow down. I couldn’t afford to look at it too long.

For a second I thought about the lake. Just a flash, gone as fast as it came. I hadn’t let myself think about that place in years, and now it was the only thing anyone seemed to remember.

By the time I got to the airport, my tie was gone. I didn’t even remember taking it off. A woman at security looked at me a beat too long.

“Sir, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” I said, but I didn’t believe it myself.

She let me through anyway.

The gate was full of people with somewhere normal to be. A woman laughed into her phone a few seats down. A kid ran circles around his mother’s legs while she tried to catch him, both of them smiling like nothing in the world was wrong. None of them looked at me twice. None of them knew they were sitting three feet from a man who’d just destroyed the one good thing in his life.

I sat near my gate and put my head back against the window. My reflection stared back at me, still in my suit, no wedding to show for it.

I thought about Theo, probably still there telling everyone I’d just gotten cold feet. I thought about her father pacing down some hallway, not saying a word to anyone. I thought about two hundred people watching her walk that aisle alone.

Then I thought about her voice again. ‘Just tell me you’re fine.’

I put my face in my hands right there at the gate. I didn’t care who saw me.

“Now boarding first class passengers.”

I didn’t move. I sat there with the boarding pass crushed in my fist. In my head I kept replaying a different version of today, the one where I didn’t get on this plane. Where I walked back into that chapel. Told Delilah everything, and let her decide for herself if she still wanted me.

I couldn’t do it.

Not because I didn’t love her enough. But because I couldn’t stand the thought of her hating me.

I sat there another minute, just breathing, letting the weight of it settle into my chest like something that was never going to leave.

I stood up when they called it again. My legs didn’t feel like mine.

“If she ever finds out,” I said quietly, “she’ll never forgive me.”