Page 14 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

All of California would be searching for me. It was only a matter of time before someone recognized me and posted my location. There was nowhere I could hide. They would be⁠—

Wait. There is someplace I can hide where no one will ever find me.

I’d never even told my parents about it. Only one other person alive today knew the location.

“Actually,” I said, making the decision right on the spot. “Can you take me to the airport?”

CHAPTER 7

RYAN

Maggie ran. I couldn’t say I was surprised.

Given the way she’d been acting at the bridal shower and ever since we’d arrived here in San Diego, I’d seen it coming. Frankly, the only thing that surprised me about this situation was that no one else seemed to have suspected a thing.

At least the guests were finally leaving. Soon enough, the Pembrokes and the Hawthornes would be able to process all this in private, which seemed like a good thing considering the way they were dissolving into chaos in the ballroom.

Another silver lining was that I’d managed to convince Bride Magazine that Maggie had suffered a medical emergency and that the wedding was merely postponed. The words tasted like acid, and for some reason, my insides felt that way, too.

I hated that she’d been put in that position and I definitely hated that she’d believed running was her only option.

Maggie was tough. No one who wasn’t wouldn’t bite through someone else’s finger simply because they’d had the audacity to find her, but the girl I’d seen today hadn’t been tough. She’d been terrified.

The look in her eyes when she’d been hiding under that table had reminded me of the scared little girl I’d found when we were kids. She deserved better than that. Better than being put into this position that took away her agency even as an adult to such an extent that physically hiding became her go-to response.

Any therapist worth their salt would probably have a field day with that. Fight or flight? Nah, I’d sooner crawl under the nearest table.

It was absurd.

I shook my head where I stood at the edge of the ballroom, turning to face the families once I’d watched the last of the guests disappear from the deck beyond the windows. The Pembrokes and Hawthornes were two old money families that had been allies for generations, but it looked like they were now five minutes away from becoming enemies.

It was almost like I could see the rift forming between them because of Maggie’s departure. As the only one who knew the full truth, I probably should’ve just told them what’d happened, but I felt an intense urge to protect her from these people who thought they knew what was best.

“You probably orchestrated the entire thing to humiliate us!” Daniel’s father was shouting at Cliff. “The girl couldn’t have gotten away with it if you didn’t know what she was planning.”

Cliff’s green eyes flashed, his chin held high despite the fact that he also had an arm around his sobbing wife. “That’s not⁠—”

“Someone took her!” Adelaide, Maggie’s mother, interjected tearfully. “That’s the only explanation. Someone must’ve taken her against her will. She’s been kidnapped! Help us find her. Please.”

Cliff turned his head and murmured quietly against her ear, but I doubted she was able to hear him over Daniel’s mother’s furious accusations. “Oh, nonsense. You did this. All of you. I hope you’re enjoying this laugh at the Hawthornes’ expense because we will be the last ones laughing. I guarantee it.”

She even stomped her foot at the end, throwing her hand out toward her son, who was standing by the bar, the only person involved who was keeping his cool so far. “Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my Daniel’s reputation? What people are going to say about him?”

I glanced at the man in question, but if I was being honest, he didn’t seem particularly concerned about his reputation right now. Maybe he was just letting his mother do his venting for him, but he seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing.

He just finished his drink, shaking his head at his parents before he set the glass down and walked out. As I watched him go, my mother did too, a teary whimper escaping her before she started crying too.

Meanwhile, Maggie’s mother was still pleading with anyone within earshot to help them find her daughter. “Someone has to know where she is. We have to go looking for her. Call the police! She wouldn’t just leave.”

Oh, she wouldn’t? Wow. Have you not been paying attention to her, like, at all?

Naturally, I didn’t say it, but I almost couldn’t believe that I’d heard those words coming out of her mouth. Daniel’s father was still arguing with Maggie’s, his mother backing up her husband’s every word.

My mother was now crying into a tissue, her eyes a little glazed over. As soon as I saw her narrow shoulders hunched and that look in her eyes, I’d had enough. That picture just reminded me way too much of what she’d looked like in those early days after my father’s arrest, so frail and meek even when we could get her out of bed that it was like she was trying to just… shrink into not existing at all.

Yeah. This has gone far enough.

I cleared my throat, but nobody was listening, all too busy talking and shouting over each other that I finally just spoke up. “She obviously left on her own.”