After My Fiance Missed Our 27th Wedding, I Left Him

### Chapter 1

My fianc, Tyler Farley, missed our wedding for the twenty-seventh time.in the meantime, I got the call that my parents had been in a car crash on their way to it.

I ran for the hospital as hard as I could, tripped on my wedding gown, and blood soaked through the hem in an instant.

Miss Hughes, you were pregnant. We couldn't save the baby.

I lay on the operating table with my mind gone completely blank.

Five years of trying, and I'd finally carried a child, only to lose him before I'd had one second to be happy.

Before I could even cry out, a nurse held out a document. "Miss Hughes, this is your parents' death certificate. We need your signature."

My fingers shook so hard I could barely hold the pen. The moment I finished signing, our group chat pinged.

My best friend, Susan Henson, had written: "Queenie, something came up at the studio, I can't be your maid of honor this time. Next time, okay?"

Right after that, a cold message from Tyler.

"Something came up with a big client. Let's push the wedding again. If you insist on going through with it, you can have your parents walk you through it instead."

My vision blurred into a smear. I hurt so much I didn't even have the strength to type.

A chime. Susan's secret account had a new post.

"I keep saying the sea in a storm is a thousand times more romantic than clear skies, and this lunatic actually dragged me out on the spot."

In the video, Tyler threw away his umbrella, and the two of them stood locked together in the churning surf, laughing so freely, so brightly it burned my eyes.

In that instant it felt like I'd been burned to ash.

So the twenty-seventh time he abandoned me to "be with a big client," he'd been with her, watching the rain over the water.

The first wedding got pushed back, and I forgave him for a sudden business trip.

The second time it was pushed back, I believed he'd worked all night and overslept.

The third time, the fourth until I found this account and understood that every single time he was gone, he'd been with her: seeing the Eiffel Tower in Paris, chasing lions across the African savanna, seeing the whole world.

Now my parents were dead, my child was gone, and I couldn't lie to myself anymore.

I wiped my tears and tapped Like.

From now on, go be as romantic as you want. I don't want the wedding, and I don't want this man.

I'd barely finished liking the post when Tyler's message came through.

Two words: "Take it down!"

I clutched the cramping ache in my chest, my voice trembling.

"Being with a big client meant taking her to the beach?!"

"Susan is your best friend, and to me she's just a business partner. Are you sick? You're jealous over even this?"

I held my parents' portrait against me, tears swimming in my eyes.

This had already happened more times than I could count.

Ever since Susan came to Chicago from the country, Tyler had changed.

Back when I had a fever of a hundred and two, he'd said through the door, "Drink plenty of hot water, and don't get me sick."

Now when she caught a small cold, he took time off to sit at her bedside, cutting the apples I'd bought into little pieces and feeding them into her mouth.

He stayed up with her while she studied for her continuing-ed exams. On my birthday he took her shopping.

He put up ten million to open a high-end yoga studio for her, and every member came from the circle of wealthy wives he'd invited in.

Every holiday, he bought gifts in pairs. One for me, one for her.

The moment I questioned any of it, his face would drop.

"I'm only doing this to help you keep your friendship going. Don't be so petty."

Five years ago, at our first wedding, Tyler invited every name in Chicago.

But because Susan posted that "seeing the Eiffel Tower is the romantic dream of my life," he walked straight out.

I stood on that stage in my gown and became the whole city's joke.

After I found that account, I asked him countless times to keep his distance from her.

He'd get impatient with me, like I was a child who didn't understand anything.

"She has no one in this city. If you won't help her, fine, but then you turn around and blame me. Sometimes I wonder if you even have a heart, Queenie Hughes."

One sentence, and every hurt I felt got shoved back down my throat.

Then I yanked the cheap ring off my middle finger and hurled it out the hospital window.

The year I turned eighteen, my parents spent everything they had to send him abroad to study.

He knelt in front of them and swore he'd cherish me for the rest of his life.

"Queenie, once I've made it, I'll buy you the most beautiful diamond ring and make you the most beautiful bride."

I thought I could go on lying to myself forever.

But today that diamond ring, the one I'd chosen, was on Susan's hand.

I sent him the hospital's location.

"Come to the hospital. I have something to tell you."

"Addicted to faking sick now? You made Susan cry, and I'm here cleaning up your mess!"

Listening to that accusing tone, I wanted to tell him: my parents are gone.

But the second I opened my mouth, my chest hurt too much to breathe.

As if he'd read something into my silence, Tyler lowered his voice.

"I was just worried it wasn't safe for Susan to go to the beach in a storm. Don't blow this out of proportion."

The cold words drilled into my ear, and the pain pushed the tears up.

"Tyler, the year I was kidnapped and thrown off a cliff and nearly died, you were away on business telling me to stop making a scene. And now you tell me you're afraid it isn't safe for her to see the sea."

I laughed out loud.

"My parents are dead! There's no wedding to hold anymore."

He froze for a second, then let out a scornful laugh.

### Chapter 2

"Queenie, if you're going to lie, at least make it convincing. Your parents said this morning they were coming to the wedding."

"I run myself ragged for you every single day, and it isn't so I can listen to you throw tantrums."

Tears struck the screen and blurred the letters into smears.

His tone softened a little.

"All right, I get it, you're upset. I'll definitely come to the next wedding."

The same thing, again.

Throw me a careless line afterward, and act like nothing happened.

But Tyler, you'll never have to give me another wedding.

"Don't bother, because I'm leaving"

Before I could finish, Susan's sobbing crawled out of the earpiece.

"Queenie, there's truly nothing between me and Tyler. Going to the beach today was just a friendly thing. Please don't blame him, okay?"

My knuckles went white around the phone. I said nothing.

She added another false little line:

"We're best friends. You don't actually think I'd steal your man, do you?"

But best friends don't sit beside my fianc at the movies, laughing and chatting while they forget me in the corner.

They don't send my fianc to pick her up from work when a typhoon hits, and leave me on the street soaked to the bone.

Even on vacation, the two of you could forget to book my plane ticket.

Then, at last, feigning helplessness:

"Queenie, we didn't do it on purpose. Why didn't you say something sooner?"

But no matter how much I said, did it ever help?

"I don't blame him. And I have nothing more to do with either of you."

With that, I hung up.

I didn't have the strength to argue anymore.

I had my parents cremated, and by the time I got home it was the next night.

The lavish house held nothing I would miss.

I went upstairs to pack.

Then, without knowing why, I saw the study door open when it was always shut, and I walked in.

And something under the curtains stabbed at my eyes.

Five years ago, I was the youngest chief designer at a top-tier ad agency.

After we got engaged, Tyler said to me, his eyes rimmed red:

"Queenie, I know being a great designer is your dream. But it kills me to watch you stay up until three every morning."

"Quit. Stay home, get your health back, have a baby soon. I'll take care of you and our child for the rest of our lives."

With every word his eyes reddened more, as if he was afraid I'd break.

I left my job.

On so many sleepless nights, I would scroll through the brilliant work I'd once made.

He would wrap his arms around me from behind and promise, over and over, to be good to me.

But now those precious award certificates, those trophies, had become junk shoved in a corner.

I took out my phone and dialed a number.

"Mr. Gray, I've thought it over. I'll come on as a partner at your firm and lead the overseas team."

"But I need three days to sort out my visa."

Mr. Gray's excited voice came through:

"No problem, Queenie. The design director's chair is yours! See you in three days."

"All right."

I'd barely hung up when a large hand clamped down on my arm.

"A visa? Who's going abroad?!"

I turned. Tyler's brow was drawn tight, and there was a panic in his eyes he couldn't hide.

I lifted my gaze, numb.

"Tyler, I want"

Before I could finish, a lovely figure walked in, and he let go of my hand at once, as if he'd been burned.

The moment Susan spoke, her eyes went moist:

"Queenie, it's all my fault the wedding fell through. Let's make it up another day, okay? I'll go bring your parents myself, so they can see you happy."

Something in my chest clenched hard, and my hand flew up in a slap.

"My parents are dead. The two of you killed them!"

Susan cupped her cheek, eyes wide and innocent: "I, I didn't know"

Tyler shoved me hard and pulled her into his arms.

I hit the floor hard, and my womb, freshly cleaned out, felt like it was being churned by a dull blade. Blood soaked through my pants in an instant.

He glared at me, his eyes ice-cold:

"Queenie, cursing your own parents dead. Are you even human?"

"Look at the state of you. Desperate to get married, out of your mind for it."

I sat numb in the blood, a ringing filling my ears.

Then Tyler caught sight of a corner of paper that had fallen out of my bag.

His pupils shook.

"A miscarriage report? You had a miscarriage?!"

He had a low sperm count. We'd tried for five years, and I'd never once gotten pregnant.

### Chapter 3

"I"

"But when I asked you a few days ago, didn't you say you weren't pregnant?"

Before I could get the words out, Susan threw the accusation in my face.

"Queenie, I never imagined you hated me this much. You know how badly Tyler wants a child, and you'd fake a miscarriage just to break his heart."

"It's all my fault. I'll go. I'll never show up in front of either of you again!"

She shoved past Tyler, sobbing, and rushed for the door.

"Susan!"

Tyler turned to me with a look of pure disappointment.

"Can you stop this, please? You wear me out. Why can't you be more like Susan? When I'm with her, I can finally breathe."

"I'll go after her. It's dark out there. You need to calm down."

Watching his face crease with worry, I spoke calmly.

"Go, then. I hope this is the last time we ever see each other."

"Enough! Won't you be satisfied until you've driven Susan to her death?"

I wasn't trying to drive anyone to death.

I'd just finally understood that you weren't worth it anymore.

"I'm giving you two my blessing. Shouldn't you be happy? Go be romantic wherever you like, no more hiding, no more secret accounts. You should be thanking me."

My voice was calm in a way that felt foreign even to me. He froze, then flushed with rage.

"Then get out! And never come back!"

"Let's see how many days you last before you come crawling back on your knees, begging me to marry you!"

With that, he spun around and slammed the door behind him.

The frame was still shaking when I laughed out loud.

Tyler, you think I can't survive without you.

But there's nothing left in this world that could make me beg you for anything.

I slowly pushed myself up and opened Instagram.

Tens of thousands of photos poured out, like a five-year-old dream.

The last one was from when Susan first came to Chicago, the three of us at the amusement park. In the frame we were all laughing, eyes crinkled at the corners, as if the bond between the three of us could last forever.

But a story with three people never lasts forever.

I closed my eyes and pressed delete. Everything we'd laughed over, cried over, lied to ourselves about, all of it zeroed out in a second.

The next day, after burying my parents, I dragged my exhausted body home and there they were, Tyler's custom leather shoes, right in front of me.

The next second I was pulled, startled, into a scalding embrace.

"I'm sorry, Queenie. I was too rash yesterday."

"You have to believe me, I never wanted to hurt you. I was just so worried about Susan. She cried all night last night"

Susan. Susan again.

Every word out of his mouth was her.

The last shred of hope I had left was ground to dust, one syllable at a time.

He was about to say more when his phone suddenly rang.

The moment he answered, his face changed completely.

"Hold on, I'm coming right now!"

By the time he hung up, all that tenderness was gone without a trace. Tyler's eyes had gone terrifyingly dark. "Susan was already unstable, and then you went and deleted all those photos. Now she's convinced you'll never forgive her, and she's about to jump! Are you happy now?"

He hauled me off to Susan's apartment without another word.

As he dragged me, the wound on my knee tore open against my pants, and the pain caught my breath in my throat.

On the rooftop, Susan stood barefoot on the outer edge of the railing, swaying, ready to fall.

The moment she saw me, tears spilled from her eyes.

"Queenie, will you only be happy once I'm dead?"

Before I could say a word, Tyler was already shouting.

"Susan, don't do anything stupid! Queenie knows she was wrong, she came here specifically to beg your forgiveness."

I whipped my head around to look at him, struck by how absurd it was.

But Susan shook her head like she'd lost her mind, her voice tearing. "Impossible! If you knew I was the one who ran over your parents, you'd want me dead!"

Crack!

Thunder split open right above us.

Eyes burning red, I lunged at her, only for an arm to clamp around my waist and hold me back.

Tyler's cold voice pressed against my ear.

"Susan didn't mean it. The rain was too heavy, your parents ran the red light themselves!"

"If I hadn't taken her to the beach to clear her head, she'd never have made it through these past few days."

The blood in me went cold, inch by inch.

So he'd known everything all along.

I'd been thrashing through a nightmare, and he'd watched with cold eyes.

Susan, the murderer who killed my parents, and all he felt for her was pity.

### Chapter 4

No wonder the police said the traffic camera at the intersection had failed.

It was him. To protect Susan, he'd wiped out the evidence the moment it happened.

"The one thing I'll regret most for the rest of my life is ever knowing the two of you."

I screamed until my throat tore, thrashing, wanting only to get past him and rip that innocent face apart.

A flicker of pain crossed Tyler's face, and he opened his mouth to say something.

Then Susan let out a shrill, wretched cry and sobbed, "I'll pay with my life. Is that enough for you?"

Every trace of guilt drained from Tyler's face.

"Queenie, what's the point of any of this now? Stop clinging to the past. The living matter more."

He pushed at me, frantic. "Say it. Say you're letting it go!"

"Never!"

Tyler kicked the back of my knee without warning.

The pain drove me down, and I dropped to my knees.

"There, she's forgiven you! Now come back down!"

Tears spilled out again from the pain, and by then he'd already climbed over the railing, lunging to haul Susan back to safety.

Carrying her past me, he paused and looked down at me.

"Get up and go take care of that knee."

I watched him stride away, and I laughed until my eyes ran wet.

I took out my phone and dialed an old classmate.

A professional private investigator. He answered to money, not to people.

"Whatever it costs, get me the evidence on my parents' crash."

"I'm going to put Susan Henson in prison."

I hung up, wiped my eyes, and pushed myself up against the wall.

My knee buckled with pain. Step by step I dragged myself to the curb and caught a cab home.

Upstairs I dug out everything connected to Tyler, dumped all of it into the iron drum in the yard, and struck a match.

The flames leapt up and licked at all of it, burning away every mark of the ten years I'd loved him, from eighteen to twenty-eight.

Tyler walked into the yard and saw the blaze.

When he made out what was inside the drum, his pupils shrank, and he reached in, panicked, only to snatch his hand back, scalded by the heat.

He stared at everything the fire was destroying and spun around, shouting.

"These are the gifts I gave you. Didn't you say you'd treasure them your whole life?"

"But that was the Queenie who was eighteen."

The thousand paper cranes he'd fumbled through folding for me when we met at eighteen.

The ceramic vase he'd secretly made for my nineteenth birthday.

The Chanel bag, the dresses he gave me at our engagement when I was twenty-three... the expensive ones and the cheap ones, the heartfelt ones and the throwaway ones, they all burned the same.

He stared at me, blank, probably searching that face for some flicker of reluctance, some hint of regret.

But he found nothing.

He opened his mouth and started to explain.

"Queenie, what happened to your parents, Susan really didn't mean it. She cries every day. She's punishing herself too."

"And she and I really are just friends. Don't read into it. I swear, I'll throw you a grand wedding to make up for all of this."

I looked down at my empty stomach and thought of my parents' bodies at the funeral home, their heads broken and bloodied.

Laughable.

Was there any point left in that wedding?

Seeing how worn out I looked, Tyler softened his voice.

"You're tired. Rest for a while first."

He led me into the bedroom, watched me lie down with his own eyes, then changed into clean clothes and left.

"Something's come up at the company. I'll deal with it and come right back."

Was it really the company, or was he in a hurry to get back to Susan?

I tugged the corner of my mouth. It didn't matter anymore.

The moment the footsteps faded from the stairwell, I sat up and messaged my lawyer.

"Transfer all my shares in Farley Group to Morris Finch. Wire the money to my overseas account."

### Chapter 5

The lawyer sounded stunned, then came back quickly.

"Miss Hughes, Morris Finch is your fianc Mr. Farley's worst enemy. Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I want to sell to Morris Finch."

That thirty percent stake had come from Tyler, back when Farley Group went public.

That day he pressed the share agreement into my hands, his arm around my waist in an office a hundred meters up, murmuring against my ear.

"These shares are your security, and your engagement gift. Do you like them?"

I believe he meant it in that moment.

But barely a year later, when we moved into the new villa, he decided on his own to give the best guest room to Susan.

I stood in the doorway of that sunlit room for a long time.

He only frowned at me.

"You're jealous over me keeping a room for your best friend? I only did it so the two of you could see each other more."

Only now do I understand. His heart had already turned by then.

The next day I packed my things and pushed my suitcase into the storage room on the ground floor.

In the afternoon, the call from the consulate finally came.

"Miss Hughes, your visa has been approved. We're sending it to you by express now."

"That's wonderful. Thank you."

Two hours later the visa was in my hand.

I opened my passport, and just as I slid the visa page in, my phone buzzed. Susan's name flashed on the screen.

I answered, and there she was, at my parents' grave.

In the frame she sat on the headstone without a shred of shame, drunk, shouting at me.

"Queenie Hughes, is it wrong to love someone? In a relationship, the one who isn't loved is the real mistress!"

"If Tyler weren't so scared you'd do something to yourself, would I have needed four years of a secret affair with him?"

"Susan, you're drunk. Stop talking nonsense."

Tyler grabbed her wrist, trying to take the phone, but so careful, afraid he might hurt her.

But drunk words are the honest ones.

So through all those years I called her my best friend, through all those nights I planned my wedding with a full heart, the two of them had already been sleeping together.

Four whole years of betrayal.

The words scraped out from between my teeth.

"Susan Henson, you murderer. You'll rot for this!"

Tyler's face went dark in an instant.

"Are you never going to stop? Susan came to see your parents out of kindness, and you keep pushing. If anyone's to blame, blame your parents for having no eyes in their heads, blind old fools!"

My eyes went bloodshot.

"You two really were made for each other. A trash man and a shameless woman."

Susan burst out laughing.

The next second she pulled out a marriage certificate and slapped it up to the camera.

"Bullshit! He and I registered ages ago. Queenie Hughes, you're the one clinging to my husband. You're the shameless one!"

My whole body jerked.

Everything inside me drained away.

No wonder the wedding could never happen, time after time.

Ten years together. Five years engaged.

And in the end I was only a joke standing outside their legal marriage.

Tyler threw out one last line. "I can explain. Wait until I get back."

Then the screen went black.

It reflected my face, my eyes cold.

"Don't bother. Go explain it to the ghosts."

I dragged my luggage and walked out the front door without looking back, got into the car waiting at the curb.

"The airport."

The old scenery fell away behind me, and the international terminal drew closer and closer.

Boarding, seated, the cabin door easing shut.

It was all over.

My phone suddenly buzzed like mad. Tyler had sent dozens of messages in a row.