The absurdity of it all still stuns me. A castle, a cast list, role cards with scripted ‘missions.’ They’ve turned matrimony into a pantomime, and everyone seems deliriously happy about it. People clapping like trained seals because a cousin they’ve never met before got announced in a velvet cape. Guests fainting on cue for ‘authenticity.’
I didn’t come here for the charade. Or the costumes. Or whatever this wedding weekend is trying to pass off as tradition. I came for Ben. For Lily. To show my face, wear the damn tights. And for…
Hayley drinks Prosecco like it’s a blood sport and talks like she’s trying to set fire to every room she enters.
She’s not my type. At all.
She’s opinionated, messy, unpredictable. She moves like she’s mid-argument with gravity and dresses like she lost a bet with a time-travelling drama teacher, and somehow still pulls it off.
But her eyes, Christ.
They’re trouble.
Not the fake, stagey kind people put on for show, the real kind. Smouldering, untamed, like she’s five seconds from throwing her shoe at someone and only holding back because it cost more than her dress. Hazel, maybe, but when the light hits them just right, they flare gold.
And then there’s her mouth, quick, cutting, unapologetic. She swears like it’s an art form, every word landing with precision.
She’s exhausting.
And I haven’t been this intrigued in a while.
I watched her trip over her dress three times, verbally abuse a suit of armour, insult the catering, flash half the Ballroom, and nearly die trying to open her bedroom door with the wrong end of the key.
So, yes. I brought her bread.
And cheese.
And a whisky, because I’m not entirely heartless.
And because I suspect if she had to survive one more moment of this weekend without proper food, she might actually burn the place to the ground.
I didn’t stay. Didn’t flirt. Didn’t push.
I just watched her eyes light up like someone had handed her the keys to a bakery and walked away.
She said, “Why are you being nice?”
And I didn’t know how to answer her.
So, I lied.
A peace offering.
But the truth is simpler:
Because I wanted to.
And that, more than anything, is the problem.
Chapter 6
Sheet Happens
Saturday Morning
Hayley
Islept like the dead, probably because I’d waged a one-woman war against my bodice, fortified by the whisky Tyler brought me, before passing out on top of the covers in my knickers, like aDownton Abbeyscandal waiting to be quietly dealt with.
