Married To The Wrong Castellan.

Chapter 2

Delilah’s POV

I stood in front of the chapel doors with my hands shaking and for a second, I couldn’t bring myself to open them. I could hear the murmuring from the other side. People were wondering why I was taking so long.

My feet ached inside my heels. I’d been standing in this dress for so long the fabric had started to feel like something heavier than lace. Somewhere past those doors, two hundred people were waiting for a groom who wasn’t coming.

“You don’t have to do this,” my mother whispered, grabbing my wrist. “Let your father go out and tell them.”

“Someone has to tell them.” My voice shook. “And that someone has to be me.”

I took a deep breath and looked down at my dress. The same dress I had been so excited to wear that morning. Now, it felt like the most embarrassing thing I had ever put on.

My mother squeezed my wrist.“Delilah.”

I looked at her. Her eyes were swollen from crying.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

I nodded, even though my throat was too tight to speak. My fingers rested on the handle for a moment. And then I opened the door, and the moment I stepped inside, the noise stopped. And every head turned directly toward me.

I felt my stomach drop, and for a second, I couldn’t move or breathe.

Then someone whispered.“That’s Delilah.”

More voices rose around me, all mixed together. I could barely make out what they were saying.“Where’s Wyatt?” “Is he coming?” “What happened?”

I lowered my eyes as I walked towards the altar. My heels clicked against the floor, with each sound painfully loud in the silence. I could literally feel everyone watching me.

But I kept my eyes only on the altar. On the empty space where Wyatt should have been standing.

I stopped at the altar and turned to face them.

“ There has been a change.” The words came out calmer than I felt. “Wyatt isn’t here, I don’t know where he’s gone, so there won’t be a wedding today.”

Everyone froze for a moment, then suddenly the whispers started, the voices were low at first, then they became louder, spreading through the pews like something catching fire.

“Left her at the altar—“

“Two million dollars and he just—“

“I heard he took his passport—“

A woman near the back let out a sharp laugh. She quickly covered her mouth, but it was too late. Someone else whispered about my dress, how expensive it must have been, and how almost funny the whole thing was.

I stood there and let it happen. My face burned, but I couldn’t move. I wanted to run. I wanted to disappear. But there were too many eyes on me.

Then Richard stepped forward.

“That’s enough.” His voice was calm, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “She is still my brother’s fiancée. Whatever you think happened, she does not deserve to be laughed at.”

The room went quiet again. This time, people looked ashamed. A few lowered their heads, unable to meet my eyes.

Richard crossed the aisle and took my hands. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t argue, I just let him lead me out through the side door, away from the cameras still waiting at the front. My mother followed behind us, holding my dress in her arms. She looked like she didn’t know what else to do.

In his car, I finally broke.

It all came at once. The tears I had held back in the chapel finally broke free. My whole body shook as I cried.

Richard said nothing. He kept driving with one hand and reached for me with the other. I held onto his hand and cried into my sleeve.

That was when my phone buzzed on my lap.

I almost didn’t look but then I did.

“I’m sorry”

Two words, just two words and nothing else. I stared at them until they stopped looking like words at all.

“I can’t go home,” I suddenly said, wiping the tears off my face. “Not yet. I can’t sit in that house and watch everyone look at me with pity faces.”

Richard glanced over, “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere but there.”

He didn’t ask again. He just turned the car toward the city instead of toward my parents’ house, and I let him.

*

The bar he took me to was quiet, tucked away somewhere I didn’t recognize, the kind of place where nobody looked twice at a woman still in her wedding dress with her veil long gone. Richard ordered for both of us and barely touched his own drink.

“I keep thinking I should feel something specific,” I said, turning my glass in slow circles. “Angry, or humiliated, or something. Instead, I just feel like none of it is real yet.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense tonight.” He watched me instead of the room.“Nobody’s asking you to have it figured out.”

I drank more than I should have. Richard drank too, though I barely noticed how much. Somewhere in the second hour, I found myself telling him things I hadn’t said out loud to anyone. How I’d known something was wrong before Nora even said his name, how I’d told myself lie after lie to avoid admitting it.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Richard said softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

That was the thing about Richard that night. He didn’t try to fix it or promise me answers he didn’t have. He just stayed with me when everything else had fallen apart.

By the time we left, the city outside had gone dark and quiet, and I didn’t want to be alone. I told him that, standing outside the car, I was still too drunk to think carefully about my words.

“Take me back to the house,” I said. “Yours, not mine.”

He stared at me for a moment. It was like he was giving me one last chance to change my mind.

I didn’t.

“Okay,” he said.

I woke up the next morning and for a few seconds I stared at the ceiling, confused. This wasn’t my room. The curtains were different, the sheets smelled different, even the silence felt unfamiliar.

I shifted beneath the blanket and felt warmth beside me. I froze.

Slowly I turned my head. Richard was asleep next to me.

My heart skipped. I looked down at myself and realized I wasn’t wearing my dress anymore.

My eyes moved around the room. My dress was on the floor near the foot of the bed, crumpled and forgotten. One of my earrings lay beside it. My shoes were near the door, one of them tipped over on its side.

I stared at all of it, then looked back at Richard, and a memory came back to me. His hand holding mine in the car. The bar. My tears. His voice telling me I didn’t have to be alone.

Then another memory. Standing outside the house, looking up at him. “Take me back to the house.”

My stomach twisted. I pulled the blanket closer to my chest. No. I didn’t want to remember anymore than that. But my mind kept going anyway. The bedroom door closing behind us. His face. My own hands reaching for him. The kiss.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Richard stirred beside me. I sat up too fast, and the movement made my head spin.

He opened his eyes and looked at me. For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.

Then his gaze moved toward the floor. He saw the dress. I watched the exact moment he remembered too.

His face changed. Mine burned.

I pulled the blanket tighter around myself. “Did we—”

I couldn’t finish the sentence.

Richard sat up slowly. “Delilah.”

I looked at him, then at the dress on the floor. My heart almost stopped.“Oh my God.”