Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
“Okay, lovebirds, I need to get Whit to her hair and makeup in exactly three minutes, or we’ll be running behind,” English said. Her eyes were on the Rolex on her wrist.
“Can you give us a minute?” I asked English.
She looked ready to argue with me, but there must have been something on my face that stopped her. Because she sighed and said, “Five minutes.”
English stole Gavin’s coffee, much to his displeasure, and then gave us the space we so needed.
“What did you do last night?”
“Poker,” he said. “I won.”
“That’s good. Doesn’t Sam normally win?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure he was feeding me cards. What about you?”
“Strip club,” I said with a stilted laugh.
“Yeah? Bring anyone home?” He asked it so innocently that there was no way that he’d know that I’d found Safia sitting outside my door.
I should just tell him, but fuck, how did I even begin to explain? I didn’t care about Safia anymore. Yet I couldn’t get the words out that I needed to say to make this real. Because, without them, was this all as real as we claimed it was?
“Of course not,” I forced out. “I thought we only brought someone home to share.”
His face fell slightly, and he nodded. “Right. Yeah.”
“Gavin …”
“Whitley Jo Bowen,” a voice cut across the lobby, silencing anything I’d been about to say.
I whipped around with wide eyes to see my father storming toward us. He looked furious. No, beyond that. He looked apoplectic, as if at any moment, he was going to burst from the anger coursing through him. I’d seem him look at me like that before when I was in high school, but normally, Mom yelled, and he was the calm one. What the hell had happened?
“Dad?”
He stopped in front of me with fire blazing in his eyes. “How could you do this?”
I blinked in surprise. “Do what?”
He ignored me, turning to face Gavin. My father pushed him full-on in the chest. Gavin took two steps backward, more in shock than because of the strength of the shove. Dad had always been a big man, but with his bout with cancer, he’d shrunk before my eyes. Losing weight until he was almost unrecognizable. It hadn’t been a good sign, but Mom didn’t want to talk about it until after the wedding.
“Dad!” I gasped.
“You!” he snarled in Gavin’s face.
Gavin stared at him in disbelief. “What’s going on?”
“You fucking liar.”
I shuddered at the word. My parents didn’t cuss. I’d heard words like that out of my parents’ mouths only a handful of times. Usually when they were really mad at me.
“Dad, stop!” I shouted.
He rounded on me, as if remembering where his real anger lay. He was shaking from head to toe. The exertion of the last few minutes catching up with him, but doing nothing to dispel his anger.
“You lied to me, Whitley Jo. You’re a liar.”
I shrank backward at the accusation. He wasn’t wrong. But … how did he know?
“I came to you with my entire life on the line and said I wanted to walk you down the aisle as my final wish. And you two lied and conspired to have this fake wedding,” he snarled. His shaking progressed as his breathing became labored. “I don’t care what reason you had for doing it, but you’ve made a mockery of my wish. A mockery of my illness. A mockery of me!”
He coughed violently for a few seconds.
“Dad, you need to calm down. You’re too sick …”
“Don’t talk to me … about my sickness,” he raged. “You don’t care about any of it. And this is … this is over!” He took a step away from me, as if he couldn’t stand to look at his only daughter another second.
My jaw was on the floor at the words, the horrible words filtering through my brain. The realization that he was right. That we should have come clean from the start. We’d done it all wrong, and now, there was no going back.
“I won’t be made fun of,” he spat. “This wedding is … over!”
With his final pronouncement, he collapsed onto the floor in the lobby of Percy Tower.
“Dad!” I screamed as I fell to my knees at his side.
All of my training kicked in at once. I hadn’t been in medical school in years, but that didn’t make it go away. So, I got to work.
I looked up at Gavin. “Call 911.”
My father was still breathing, but it was labored, and his heart rate was through the roof. We were going to need an ambulance.
My mom came rushing toward us and dropped down next to me with tears in her eyes. “Oh my Lord, Whitley, what are we going to do?”
“Get through this moment,” was all I said.
That was all we could do.
32
WHITLEY
When the ambulance finally showed up, I was shaking and exhausted. They put him on a stretcher with a breathing mask on his face and carted him onto the ambulance. Mom went with him, and I promised that I would be right behind them.