I Prepared For My Wedding, Only To Be Shut Out Of My Own Bridal Suite Chapter 05

I Prepared For My Wedding, Only To Be Shut Out Of My Own Bridal Suite Chapter 05

The elevator opened at the end of the hallway. I took my mother’s arm, and we walked toward it.

Bennett came after us, still holding the garment bag. “Maren, where are you going?”

“Home.”

“The wedding’s about to start!”

“Then let it.”

He reached for me.

My father slapped his hand away. “Get your hands off my daughter.”

The doors slid shut.

Through the last inch of gap, I saw him standing in the middle of that hallway holding the bag, Sloane behind him in the robe that said ‘Bride‘. They looked more like a bride and groom than we ever did.

Downstairs, the wedding march started right on time.

It wasn’t mine anymore.

My phone started buzzing and didn’t stop. Three calls from Bennett. I let them go. Then the coordinator.

My mother watched me, worried. I picked up.

Her voice was lowered. “Miss Whitlock, where are you? The music’s playing, we’re about to open the doors.”

I watched the floor numbers tick down. “I’m leaving the hotel.”

Panic crackled through the line. “What am I supposed to do with the ceremony?”

“Cancel it.”

“But Mr. Langford said you were upset. He told us you just needed a minute to cool off.”

The doors opened on the lobby. White roses and floral arrangements everywhere.

I’d picked every one of them. I’d pictured myself a hundred times crossing this lobby in my dress. Instead I walked through it in the clothes I’d arrived in, my parents on either side of me.

“Tell him he can stop waiting. There’s no bride today.”

I hung up and powered the phone off.

Tessa told me later what happened after I left. Bennett refused to cancel anything.

He had the band start the march over. He told the officiant to do the opening remarks like normal.

He still believed my parents‘ pride and our seven years would drag me back. In his head, I’d gone downstairs

to cool off.

The first time the music cued my entrance, the ballroom doors swung open on an empty hallway.

The second time, Bennett came down from the altar himself and stood waiting by the doors. Nobody came.

By the third, the whispers had started, guests asking where the real bride was, guests recognizing Sloane in the corner wearing the robe I’d had made.

That’s when Bennett finally ran.

Outside the hotel, the wind had already scattered the white petals. There was nothing else left.

The flood of apology texts and voicemails started then. Not because he’d finally understood what he’d done to me, but because he finally believed I wasn’t coming back.

Late guests were still streaming toward the entrance. One of them spotted me and stopped short.

“Maren? Why aren’t you in your dress? Is the ceremony somewhere else?”

I didn’t explain.

My father pulled the car door open. My mother folded an arm around me like a shield.

Once the hotel disappeared behind us, my body gave out. Half an hour of holding myself together, gone all at

once.

My mother took my hand. “Oh, sweetheart… are you okay?”

She kept asking. I kept shaking my head.

The tears came anyway.

Leaving Bennett wasn’t what broke me. Letting my parents down was.

My dad had quit drinking six months earlier and had lost over ten pounds, all to fit the suit I’d picked out for him. My mom had gone over the guest list every single night, right down to which wedding favors the older

relatives would like.

They’d brought me to that hotel like I was something precious.

They left it carrying the garment bag with the dress I never wore, walking me out a side door.