Chapter 4
Series 1 Chapter 4
Ryan called seventeen times after he returned to the chapel and found me gone.
His first voicemail was angry.
“You didn’t have to make this worse.”
By the fifth, he sounded frightened.
“Where are you? Why did you turn off your location?”
The last one was an order.
“Come home, Emma. We’re settling this tonight.”
Not once did he apologize.
I changed out of my wedding dress at Adrian’s apartment and borrowed a sweater he kept folded in a guest-room drawer. The sleeves covered my hands.
Adrian drove me back to the house Ryan and I had shared for four years.
“Do you want me to wait?” he asked.
I looked at the porch light Ryan always forgot to turn on. It was glowing tonight.
“No. I need to do this myself.”
Adrian nodded.
He did not ask what I planned to do or remind me of what I had asked him at the wedding.
He simply waited until I unlocked the door before driving away.
Ryan was sitting in the living room, still wearing his wedding shirt. His tie was gone, and dark circles shadowed his eyes.
Relief crossed his face when he saw me.
“I knew you’d come home.”
My key was still in the lock.
For the first time, the familiar click behind me sounded less like coming home than entering a place I had already left.
“I came for my things.”
“You don’t mean that.”
On the coffee table sat my ring box and a brochure from a small lakeside chapel.
Ryan picked it up.
“They have an opening next Saturday. Just our parents this time. No big reception. No Harper.”
He offered the brochure as if the location had been the problem.
“I’m not rescheduling.”
“Emma, yesterday got out of control.”
“Harper kissed you.”
“And I should have pushed her away faster. I know that now.”
“Faster?”
“I didn’t kiss her back.”
“You held her.”
“For three seconds.”
Even after losing the wedding, he was still negotiating how much humiliation I was allowed to count.
I walked past him and went upstairs.
Our suitcases waited beside the bedroom wall, packed for the honeymoon we were supposed to begin tomorrow.
I opened mine and removed the clothes I had bought for the trip.
Ryan followed me.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking what belongs to me.”
His confidence finally cracked.
“I said I’d talk to Harper.”
“Talk to her about what?”
“That the jokes need to stop. That she can’t show up like that again.”
“And the late-night calls? The interrupted birthdays? The next time she decides she needs you more than I do?”
“I’ll set boundaries.”
“What boundaries?”
Ryan rubbed both hands over his face.
“I won’t see her alone for a while.”
“For a while.”
“She’s been my best friend since we were children. I can’t erase her overnight.”
“I never asked you to erase her. I asked you to stop letting her erase me.”
He flinched.
For one second, I saw the man I had expected to marry. Tired, frightened and finally close to understanding.
“I can fix this,” he said. “Just meet me halfway.”
Halfway between respecting me and letting Harper kiss him at our wedding.
Before I could answer, his phone rang.
Harper.
Ryan stared at the screen.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He answered.
Harper’s crying filled the room.
“The video is everywhere. People at the bar recognized me. Someone called me a home-wrecker.”
“Where are you?”
She named the bar.
“I drank too much,” she whispered. “I can’t drive, and I don’t want anyone else seeing me like this.”
Ryan looked at me.
I waited.
He ended the call and reached for his keys.
“Are you leaving again?”
“I’m bringing her home. That’s all.”
“You just promised to set a boundary.”
“She’s drunk, Emma.”
“She is surrounded by employees, friends and people who can call her a car.”
“She called me.”
Of course she had.
Ryan put on his coat.
“She’s alone. You’re safe here.”
The words settled over me with surprising calm.
That had always been his excuse.
I was safer. Stronger. More reasonable.
So I could be disappointed later, comforted later, loved later.
Harper only had to call.
“How long?” I asked.
“One hour.”
I looked at the half-empty suitcase on our bed.
“Go.”
Ryan’s shoulders loosened.
“Thank you.”
He leaned toward my forehead. I stepped back.
“We’ll fix this when I get home,” he said.
Then he left.
The front door closed, and the house became quiet.
Our wedding countdown still hung on the refrigerator.
TODAY.
Unopened gifts covered the dining table. A wooden sign beside them read:
MR. & MRS. CARTER
Ryan believed these things would keep me here until he returned.
I opened my phone and called an emergency moving service.
“Yes,” I told the dispatcher. “Tonight.”
She explained the rush fee.
I looked around the house I had spent four years turning into a home.
“I understand.”
Forty minutes later, the doorbell rang.
Two movers stood outside with flattened boxes and rolls of packing tape.
“Emergency move for Emma?”
“Yes.”
One of them glanced past me at the furnished rooms.
“How much is going?”
“My clothes, my desk, my mother’s dishes and everything marked with blue tape.”
“And how soon do you need it done?”
“Before midnight.”
He opened the first box across the bed Ryan still believed I would sleep in that night.
Ryan had promised to be home in an hour.
For once, I hoped he would be late.