Ditched_A Left at the Altar Romance

by Holly Hart

  “What’s with the smug look?”

  He grins. “You and Max, huh?”

  “No!” Really. No. The attraction’s still there—oh, boy, is it ever—but...no. It can’t be more than that. “We’re not together. Just, y’know....united against a common foe.” I can’t fight the smile tugging at my lips. “We still work well together.”

  “If you say so.” Wes is giving me a funny look. Amusement, maybe. No—exasperation. Something between the two.

  “Anyway....” Almost five o’clock already. Time’s running out. “Don’t suppose you came up with anything?”

  Wes huffs into his drink. “Yeah. That’s why I’m drinking at four-forty on a weekday.”

  Shit—he’s actually upset. Breaking out the sarcasm and everything. I shoot him a look. He seems worn—by his standards, at least. His tie’s slightly crooked, and there’s a tightness around his lips I rarely see. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” He shakes his head. “Actually, no. I can’t believe—”

  “What?”

  He takes a long suck on his straw. “This is going to sound awful.”

  “Hey—hey! It’s me.” I flick a speck of lint off his shoulder. “You know I won’t judge.”

  “No? ‘Cause I’m judging myself pretty hard right now.” The ice rattles in his glass, and I realize he’s shaking. “It’s just...I can’t stop thinking, two days from now, we’ll be watching our clients turn on us, the public, our families, and for what? All this, for Matt fucking Danbury?” He turns away sharply. “Sorry. Sorry. I told you it was horrible. I haven’t slept....”

  I reach for him again, a steadying hand on his back. “I’m sure it’s crossed all our minds. On some level.”

  “Yeah? Because I—” He catches himself. Lowers his voice. “Because I’ve been cursing his name. Hating him for...y’know, when I first heard he died, before the guilt set in, first thing I felt was relief. Tried to pretend I didn’t, but when I thought of him not being there, in the halls, in the locker room....” Wes plucks out his straw and gulps down the rest of his drink. “I felt it. I did. Like this huge weight sliding off my shoulders.”

  “No one could blame you for that.”

  “You remember the memorial assembly at school?” He’s twisting his straw around his finger. Vibrating like a nervous Chihuahua.

  “Yeah.” Sitting through that, knowing I’d killed him....

  “The whole time, I—I.... His friends were telling those stories, all their best memories, and I was in the back, crying my eyes out. Because all I could think was...well, fuck. If I could’ve known that Matt Danbury, even met him just once, he’d still be alive. And you guys wouldn’t... We wouldn’t be....”

  “Ssh.” I stroke his back, slow and rhythmic. “Even if we’d all been best friends, who’s to say we wouldn’t have pranked him?”

  Wes sniffs.

  “We were kids. You were, what, fourteen?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “You can’t take it all on yourself.” I exhale unsteadily. “We all hated Matt. Max almost quit football when he made the team. And Rachel spat on him in the stairwell—remember?”

  He manages something that’s almost a laugh. “And when he looked up, all the cheerleaders were waving.”

  “Never did figure out who it was.” If only we’d left it at that. But a loogie down the neck hardly seemed punishment enough. Not for the hell he put Wes through. Even ruining his end-of-summer rager would’ve been a drop in the bucket, if it hadn’t been for the fire. And we couldn’t have anticipated that.

  Could we?

  Wes straightens up and scrubs at his face with his sleeve. It’s such a childish gesture I’m seized with instant déjà vu. It’s disorienting when he turns around and I’m looking at an adult, red-faced and pinched, the beginnings of crow’s feet around his eyes.

  He coughs into his fist. “We should get going.”

  “Already?”

  “I want to arrive early. In case—I don’t want to miss anything.”

  He has a point. Tempers were fraying a week ago. Now, on the verge of calamity, we need every voice of reason we can get.

  And it’d be good to talk to Max before the inevitable firestorm. One more moment of calm. One more glimpse of what might have been. What could still be, if only...if only....

  I wave for the bill. Time to get this show on the road.

  Chapter 15

  Max

  * * *

  They’re early. All of them. The office isn’t even closed when Carson comes bulling in, Kyle and Rachel hot on his heels. Kate and Wes get off the elevator as my assistant’s getting on. And it’s not even six. One of them better have something, because I’ve come up empty.

  I wrap up my business and join them as the shadows start to lengthen. Any hope I had of a last-minute miracle drains away as I walk in the door. The atmosphere’s leaden. Subdued. No one’s talking, not even Carson. Kyle’s holding Rachel. Kate’s stroking the back of Wes’s hand. I look away from that, swallowing jealousy. They’re friends. And she’s... We’re not together.

  I stand at the head of the table, leaning on the back of my chair. Carson’s avoiding my eye. Kate’s studying Wes with concern. The rest of them are watching me dumbly, lambs to the slaughter. “So—”

  “We need to blame Dev.”

  I blink in surprise. Of everyone I’d have expected to come out with something heinous, Rachel would’ve bottomed the list. But she’s the one sitting pale and stiff, lips set in a mutinous line.

  “He’s dead. It’s too late for him. But we can still save ourselves.” She lifts her head in challenge. “The prank was his idea, anyway. If we’re talking responsibility—”

  “Bullshit.” Carson’s on his feet. “First of all, fuck you for thinking that, much less saying it out loud. Second, what good’s blaming Dev going to do? I’m on that video, and Max and Kate—probably the rest of us, too.”

  “So there’s proof we were at the party. So was half the school. That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “And at the beach, after that? You don’t think you said anything incriminating? I know I did.”

  Rachel buries her hands in her hair like she’s trying to keep her head from exploding. “I don’t know. I don’t know. But we could still say.... We could downplay our parts. Kate—you could say Dev bought the rats. And Max—what?”

  I’m glowering. Hovering over the table like a vulture. I pull back, forcing myself to relax. “It doesn’t matter who did what, or when.”

  Rachel grits her teeth. She looks like she’s about to scream.

  “Fact is, we were all there.” I pull out my chair and sit down. “We didn’t leave that cigarette burning. We didn’t get Matt so drunk he couldn’t run out with the rest. But we all had answers that family would’ve killed for. And we’ve been sitting on them for a decade. And if we hadn’t, Dev might still...might not have....”

  “Oh, God....” Rachel whines high in her throat. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  “I understand. Really. But blaming Dev... That’s not going to change anything. We have two choices. No, three. We can come forward—tell the whole truth. We’ll be free of Matt Danbury...but there’s no guarantee the rest of our files won’t be exposed. And even if they’re not, there’ll be consequences. Hard ones. Ones we might well deserve, but we should be prepared to lose everything.”

  “Fuck.” Carson tugs at his dogtags and tucks them under his shirt.

  “Next option: go through with the demands. There’s a lot we can do, in terms of damage control. We won’t come through unscathed, but we’ll live to fight another day.”

  “And the last option?” Kyle’s slumped over the table, head bowed.

  “Do nothing. Call his bluff.” My guts twist into a tight knot at the thought of giving up that kind of control. But we need to decide together. This is all our lives.

  Wes digs his hands into his pockets. “Should we take a vote?”

  Kate nods. “I know what
I want to do.”

  “All for confessing?” Carson glares round the table. Rachel sticks up her hand, but she’s the only one. “Going through with the demands?” Carson’s hand’s already raised. Kate’s and mine go up next, then Wes’s.

  Kyle looks at Rachel. “Sorry, hon. I just don’t....” He raises his hand, too.

  “That’s all of us. No one’s for ignoring the problem.”

  I heave a sigh of relief. Thank fuck for that.

  “What if it doesn’t stop?”

  Everyone turns to look at Rachel.

  “I mean...what if I tell my six-year-old son we picked his father out of a baby-blue binder in a fertility clinic, and the demands keep coming? What if he keeps pushing us till, one by one, we—till we’re all—” She sobs harshly, hands fluttering at her chest, her face, her hair.

  I don’t have an answer for that. Neither, it seems, does anyone else.

  “We’ll keep looking,” says Kate at last. “He has to have slipped up somewhere. We’ll catch him, and—”

  “How?” Rachel’s nearly wailing. “And what then? We can’t turn him in. He’ll ruin us all. We’ll have to kill him. Don’t you see? There’s no end to it. Doesn’t matter what we do, where we turn—it’s hopeless, and—”

  “No.” Kyle pulls her into a tight embrace. She struggles at first, beating at his chest, but Kyle hugs her tight. “Ssh—we’ve got this. Soon as we know who he is, we can dig up our own dirt. Throw it in his face: mutually assured destruction. It’ll be like the Cold War. He’s got his nukes. We’ve got ours. None of us can use ‘em.”

  Dig up our own dirt. I turn to Wes. “How’s it coming with Dev’s computer? Find anything interesting?”

  His gaze flicks to me, then to Carson. He shifts to the edge of his seat. “I, uh...his appointments, his expenses—they were mostly work-related. Except—”

  Carson tenses visibly.

  “Except, Carson, you....”

  “He loaned me some money. That what you’re tiptoeing around?”

  Wes nods miserably. “I wasn’t going to say it in front of everyone.”

  “No. Let’s get it out in the open.” He beetles his brows. “My wife kicked me out, okay? Money wasn’t our only problem, but it was a big one. And Dev—he wanted to help, and he could, so he did. I don’t know. Maybe he wanted me off his couch. I’m a pain to live with. But I wasn’t fucking blackmailing him.”

  Rachel laughs, a high, brittle sound. “So you’ve got nothing. That’s what you’re saying. You hit the same dead end Kyle did, the same one we all did, with those stupid lists, and now we’re fucked.”

  “Rachel....” Carson leans in, tone uncharacteristically soft. “It doesn’t have to be so bad. We got each other’s backs.”

  She buries her face in Kyle’s neck and says nothing.

  “Look, we got through senior year, didn’t we? And ten more years after that? We’ll get through this. All of us, together.”

  Rachel pushes Kyle away. She sits up, eyes slitted. I get a sudden, unpleasant glimpse of how she’ll look in twenty years—furrowed and careworn, a deep line between her brows. She glares around the table, flinching when Carson meets her gaze. “Fine. Do what you want. I’m outvoted, right?”

  I open my mouth to say no, of course not, nothing happens without her—but the words won’t come.

  “You know....” Wes speaks slowly, like he’s reluctant to say what he’s thinking. “He probably won’t bust out the big guns just for her.”

  “What?” I’m not sure I like where this is headed.

  “I mean, he’s got pages of dirt on all of us. Good dirt, if mine’s anything to go by. If Rachel’s the only one to hold off, he’ll probably spill one of her secrets. But the rest of us should be safe.”

  “We don’t know that.” Kyle’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “We don’t know that at all.”

  “Not for sure, but it makes sense. Those threats were aimed at each of us individually. It doesn’t say we all have to be on board. He won’t unload on all of us if one of us craps out.”

  Rachel sits up straighter, eyes fever-bright. “My secrets aren’t that bad, if you don’t count Matt. And I’m just a wife. A congressman’s wife, but still. No one’ll care. One news cycle, I’ll be forgotten.”

  Kyle’s looking at her with something like horror. “Rachel—you’re not—”

  “I’ve decided. I’ll take my chances.”

  I don’t like this. But who am I—who are any of us—to force her to blow up her kid’s world? “We still have two days. Let’s concentrate on what we were doing back then. On who’d have been filming us, and why, before anyone knew Matt was going to die. That might get us somewhere.” I bite back a sigh. “But in case it doesn’t...it’s time to think about damage control.”

  Kyle takes off his glasses, revealing tired, watery eyes. “There’s a couple of questionable riders on that education bill. I could frame my vote as a conscience thing. It’ll still raise plenty of hackles, but....”

  Carson’s nodding, but for once, he doesn’t have anything to add. Wes looks like he could cry. Kate fills his water glass and pushes it toward him.

  I let my gaze drift to the window, to the aircraft warning light on the building across the way. It pulses dull red. Normally, I find it calming. Tonight, it’s like staring at a visual representation of a headache. I frown and drag my attention back to the room. “If there’s anything I can do, in the interests of keeping the fallout to a minimum...call me. Any of you. Day or night.”

  Wes fixes me with a shellshocked stare. No one else looks my way. I get it. They’re doing the same thing I’ve been doing all day: running over nightmare scenarios in their heads. Casting about for answers, anything they’ve overlooked.

  Carson gets up and goes when no one’s said anything noteworthy for five minutes. Kyle’s next out the door, supporting Rachel. Kate gives me a regretful look, but it’s Wes she leaves with. Wes, who actually is crying, now. Can’t hold that against her—or him—but I needed her here. Needed to hear her say we’re doing the right thing.

  I’ll see her at Dev’s tomorrow. But my office has never felt so desolate. Neither have I—not in a long time.

  Kate....

  Chapter 16

  Kate

  * * *

  I honestly believed it, when I held Wes in my arms and swore it wouldn’t come to this. Bought right into my own bullshit, and even now, I keep checking my phone, expecting some eleventh-hour reprieve.

  Got him!

  Abort mission!

  You’re off the hook!

  Come on. Come on. Come on....

  My phone roosts in its charger, still and silent.

  I feel vulnerable. Alone. Max went into battle mode after the meeting, readying his disaster plan. Kyle and Rachel disappeared to DC, and Wes, reluctantly, to London. Carson’s been incommunicado, and me, well...this is why I never wanted to be a model. At least, it would’ve been, if I’d known what the job entailed. I’m parched, my shoes are pinching, and I can’t even smile under all this makeup. And I’ve been fending off a sneeze since my false eyelashes went on—a fight I don’t dare lose. Not with a small army of pins arrayed across my bust, ready to let the air out of my tits.

  I shouldn’t complain, not when I’m already making a nuisance of myself, but.... “How much longer?”

  The seamstress—Marie, I think—looks up. “Five minutes, ma’am.” She plucks a pin out of my hem and clenches it between her teeth. “It’s just, you’ve got two inches on Katya, and you’re, ah...you’re quite....”

  “Bosomy?”

  “That’d be the one.” Her needle flies, and my hem brushes my ankle. I am taller than Katya, which is weird, because my note said—what was it? Poor, dumpy Kate Miller. At five ten, no one would call me dumpy. No one who knew me well enough to have collected all that dirt. Guess they were going for humiliation over accuracy.

  Humiliation. Ten minutes from now, I’m going to be tottering down the runwa
y in six-inch heels, falling out of a dress made for a woman with the silhouette of a hat stand.

  “Are there any, like...big necklaces back here?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “To cover....” I fan the tops of my breasts, already beaded with sweat. The fabric barely covers my nipples. It’s obscene.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Marie gets to her feet. I hold my breath as her needle weaves across my chest. She tugs the bodice up. I take a sip of air and it slides back down, fabric straining. “Yeah...we’re going to need some tape.”

  Perfect.

  Three minutes later, I’m as ready as I’m going to be: tucked, taped, pinned, and primped, a cascade of onyx beads drawing attention to my chest more than concealing it. With my luck, I’ll end up with an indecent exposure charge to go with whatever I get for pushing someone into the crowd. Assault, probably. I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s quite a fall—three feet, maybe four. Add heels to the equation, and...fuck. Am I about to hurt someone?

  A spotlight flares to life, and the first wave of models lines up.

  “Your cue, ma’am.”

  I take my place at the end, feeling faint. If I only go through with half of this—the non-violent half—will he only reveal half a secret?

  The line starts to move.

  I so can’t do this.

  They’re not walking—they’re gliding. A pack of gliding teenaged swans, and me bringing up the rear, and now I do feel dumpy, chest like a pigeon, feet like a Clydesdale—I look like a farmer. An absolute rube. I can see them walking as the line moves up, hips swaying effortlessly, feet barely skimming the ground. I can’t do that. Wouldn’t know how. Their heads don’t even bob.

  The girl in front of me straightens her skirt. Her—she’s the one I’ll have to push. She can’t be more than eighteen. A slip of a thing. She strides forth, gown billowing.