“Now, Layla. Please don’t make a scene,” she tells me.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have told me you’re closing my store at my sister’s rehearsal dinner!” I shout.
“Layla.” Brad grabs my elbow to pull me away from the crowd, but I shrug him off.
“Don’t touch me.” I’m fuming. Enraged. Angrier than I ever remember being in my entire life. “Why in the hell are you doing this?”
“Layla, dear. We can’t have someone of such immoral character running a store here. What would that tell people who come to visit?”
“Immoral character? For God’s sake. It’s clothing and lingerie. I’m not selling devil worshipping accessories.”
Mrs. Bush gasps in shock. Apparently that’s what she equates lingerie to being.
“More to do with you lying to everyone,” Brad says.
“What?”
That stops me.
“It’s come to my attention that your relationship status might not be what you say it is.”
My mouth goes dry. How in the world could Brad possibly know that Simon isn’t actually my fiancé?
“Did you really think you’d get away with it? Hiring someone to be your fiancé?” Mrs. Bush chimes in. “Really, Layla. It’s a disgrace to the entire town.”
It’s a punch to the stomach. I’ve done nothing but try to be the perfect person that these people want. An upstanding store owner. Someone the town would be proud to have as part of their business community.
But it makes absolutely no difference. I now realize that no matter what I did, they were going to close down my store. They never wanted it, and what the mayor wants, the mayor gets.
“You’ll have until the end of—”
I cut Mrs. Bush off. I don’t want to hear whatever she has to say. It’s only going to stoke the anger that is now swirling in my gut.
“Save it. I don’t want to hear any of it.” As my anger grows, so does my voice. I ignore all the eyes I feel on me.
“Layla, keep your voice down.” Brad looks around. He was never one for being in the center of conflict.
Why he chose to go into politics, I don’t know.
“I will not keep my voice down. I am sick and tired of everyone in this town dictating what I do and don’t do. I’m done. Take my store. You were never going to let me keep it anyway.”
I shove the paper back in Brad’s chest.
“See? This is why we can’t have someone so dramatic running a store,” Mrs. Bush whispers to Brad.
As I turn to leave, it’s then I notice no one is speaking. Every single eye in the barn is focused on me.
A burning humiliation creeps through me.
No one was supposed to find out about this. How Brad did, I don’t know. Harsh stares and disapproving looks face me.
I can’t take this. Pushing through the crowds in the barn, I burst out the doors. I find the well-trod path into the woods behind the lodge and leave the party behind me.
Everything is coming undone. In the blink of an eye, everything I’ve been working for is gone. All because of a few people who don’t approve of what I do.
My chest is tight, thinking about what happened back there. I don’t know how I’m going to face all those people, my family—Gemma—when I have to go back.
I lied, and there’s no other way around it.
