The next day, I took a shower and wore my simple wedding dress and stared at my phone that hadn't rang all morning.
I knew something was wrong the minute I called Liam and he didn't pick up.
Suddenly, the simple elegant white dress felt heavy. Too heavy. Like chains.
I dialed his number again and again and each time it rang but he didn't pick up.
Ring... ring... ring...
Voicemail. Again.
"Liam? Baby? Please pick up. It's our wedding day! Where are you? I'm getting worried..." My voice cracked. I sounded pathetic. Desperate.
But he didn't pick up.
I tried Dex, his best man and it went straight to voicemail. And so, I called Priya. Same thing.
it solidified what I already knew. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
There was no limo. No bridesmaids. Just me. Alone. In my stupid white dress.
I grabbed my car keys and drove myself to the church. The pretty stone church we chose.
I pushed open the heavy wooden door. But all that greeted me was... nothing. Just silence that stretched to eternity.
And it wasn't the peaceful silence...no, no, not that type, it was empty silence. The type that made me want to pee.
There were rows of polished wooden pews and they were all empty.
There were flowers at the altar and little bells on the wall...just no people.
No priest. No guests. No Liam.
My heart stopped.
Where was everyone?
Maybe... maybe at the reception? Maybe it was just a stupid mix-up. Hope, thin and fragile, fluttered in my heart.
I drove to the barn venue. Fairy lights twinkled outside in the afternoon sun. There were tables set. The Centerpieces was perfect. The bar was stocked.... yet it was empty.
Except for one figure standing near the head table with his back to me.
Liam.
He was in his sharp black tuxedo. His hair was perfect and he was holding a bottle of expensive red wine. Not a glass. The whole bottle.
I knew...that he knew.
He wasn't looking at the decorations. He was staring at a large screen mounted near the dance floor. On it a video played on repeat.
My breath left my body and I had to hold on to a chair to stay upright.
It was grainy. Secretly filmed. But clear enough.
It was me. Sitting in the plush alcove of the Aura Hotel lobby opposite a redacted face of Mr. Vale.
It was me being the girl that disgusted him.
I was accepting a key card. Accepting the instructions for the "girlfriend experience."
The caption blazed across the bottom in huge, viral-video font: **VIRGIN AUCTION SELLER UNMASKED: Rising Star HELENE JAMES!
It played again and again...and again.
Liam didn't turned around. He lifted the wine bottle and took a long, slow drink straight from it.
"Liam..." I whispered.
Then he finally moved. Slowly. He turned around and his eyes met mine.
The look in them... It wasn't anger or rage. It was worse. It was hate in a raw form.
He looked at me like I was something filthy, like something he'd found stuck to his shoe.
Something tawdry.
He didn't speak to me. He just stared at me with those eyes of his and then slowly he raised the wine bottle in a mock toast. A terrible, broken smile touched his lips.
"Congratulations, Helene," he said. His voice was quiet. "You are officially dead to me".
My mouth opened. "Liam… please…I can explain…"
He laughed. It took a minute but I realized, he laughed at me.
"Explain?" Another long pull from the bottle, wine darkening his mouth. "Explain what? How you sold yourself? How you lied to me every single day? How you let me call you pure?" He spat the word. "While you were… that?" He jerked the bottle towards the screen where my image accepted my fate.
Tears blurred the fairy lights. "It was for you!" The cry tore out of me. "You were dying and no one else would helped me save you! Nobody, Lee. And I didn't know you came from money or that you were Atticus fucking Scott's grandson. It was just me! And Doctors needed the money to save your life. I had nothing else to trade for your life!" I stumbled forward, my dress catching. "I thought… I thought it was the only way to raise 900 hundred thousand dollars to save you!"
The ice in his eyes didn't thaw. It deepened, fracturing into something jagged, something lethal. "Save me?" His voice dropped, low and venomous. "By becoming a whore?"
The word hung there. It was sharp and final. He branded me right there and then. The man I love branded me a whore. It stole the air from my lungs.
"I did what I had to, to save the man I love" I whispered more to myself than to him.
He slammed the bottle down on the head table. I jumped. He walked towards me. Not with love. Not even rage. With chilling, detached purpose. Stopped inches away. Wine on his breath. Devastation stripped bare in his gaze.
"Look at you," he whispered, his eyes raking over the white dress and the smeared makeup. "Standing here in white. Pretending to be pure...when you are filth."
My hand snapped up and I hit him across the face with my open palm.
"You were dying" I choked out. "I didn't know what else to do. You would have done the same if case was reversed. If I was the one lying on a death bed and there was an option to save you. A horrible heart breaking degrading option to save me, you do anything, Liam including sell your soul"
"Actually, no, I wouldn't. I would let you die"
His words were like a knife in my heart.
I gasped, tried to pull back but he reached out and grabbed me.
"You sold yourself!" He shoved my wrist away, sending me stumbling. "You think saving me excuses this?" He gestured wildly at the screen, then my dress. "You think I could ever touch you again? Knowing who touched you first. Knowing what you did" His eyes locked onto mine, a predator finding the kill shot. "You think I could ever love trash like you"
A whimper, that was all the sound I made.
Revulsion twisted his features. He grabbed my hand again, not to hold, but to wrench the engagement ring off. It scraped my knuckle, a sharp sting of metal and betrayal.
"We are done" His voice was deadly calm now, worse than the shout. He held the ring up, the diamond catching the light. "You are dead to me"
He turned around and he threw the ring away.
He didn't look back. Didn't hesitate. He simply picked up the wine bottle. Turned. His footsteps echoed on the wooden floor – as he walked out of my life like it was the easiest thing in the world.