CHAPTER ONE
You’re going to hell, Bethany.Straight up, Lucifer shoving pokers up your ass, hell.
“You had to go for the ball gown wedding dress, didn’t you?”Bethany tutted to herself.
To be fair, at the time, she had no idea she would be trying to cram four layers of tulle out the bathroom window.In hindsight, a simple A-line would have been more suitable for this kind of thing.
Are you seriously thinking about runaway bride attire right now?
She was.Anything was better than thinking about what she was actually doing.
Finally free of the much smaller than she’d thought, bathroom window, she felt her heels sink into the freshly cut grass.
“Okay.Now what?Call an Uber?”she muttered to herself as her eyes darted around the church yard.Thank God everyone was inside.Well.Almost everyone.
Shit!
Before she’d even had a chance to gather her dress and realize that her heart was in her throat, the man in the black fitted suit was walking toward her.Their gazes locked.
Shit.Shit.Shit.
“What the hell are you doing?”the man hollered as he continued in her direction.
The nerve.He, of all people, had no right to be angry.
“You’re still smoking?”was her haughty reply.
Those familiar green eyes narrowed.“What?”
“You’re still smoking?”she repeated.“Don’t you know those things will kill you?”
Way to pull off self-righteousness mid-way through ditching your wedding, Bethany.
“That’s what you wanna talk about?”he scoffed, stopping just close enough for the sharp edge of his forest scent to wrap around her.“Not the fact that you just climbed out of that window behind you?”Benny pointed to the cloudy, rippled glass over her shoulder.
“Did you bring your truck?”she asked with a tilt of her head.
He blinked.“What?”
“Your truck, Benny, did you bring it?”She let out an exasperated sigh.
His look was beyond suspicious.“Of course, I brought my truck, B, I didn’t fucking fly here.”
Fucking smartass.Some things never change.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
“Well, what are we waiting for?Let’s go!”Her hand was in his seconds later as she hurriedly dragged him across the abandoned courtyard.Dodging uneven cobbles and century-old tree roots as she went.
Just when she didn’t think this day could get more fucked up, she was gathering four layers of tulle again and cramming it into her ex-boyfriend’s old pickup truck.
Fuck you too, universe.
Benny climbed in next to her, not hiding the dirty looks he was casting as he started the old banger.And itwasan old banger.He’d been driving the faded red beast for going on thirteen years.She even remembered when he’d first gotten it, the paint was still shiny then, and you could make out the two-tone design on the bench seat fabric.Now, not so much.
Her eyes darted to the threadbare cloth, then to the cracked dashboard as the truck rumbled to life.“Nice to know your fear of commitment doesn’t extend to everything in your life,” she muttered under her breath.
Benny’s head snapped her way.Dark green orbs narrowing on her.“You got something you wanna say?”
