She was boned.
Well and truly boned.
***
Verity
Two days later
I was excited.
This was my last dress fitting before the big day in two weeks.
Which would be the day that I married the man I loved, Kenneth Lee Reacher. I would be Mrs. Kenneth Reacher, and I thought that had a mighty nice ring to it.
Giddy beyond belief, I took a hold of Randi’s hand, my best friend in the whole wide world, and started marching with purpose to the front door of the best dress shop in Mooresville, also known as my Good Grandma’s place.
“GG!” I cried as I opened the door.
I was confronted with my grandma’s most annoying employee, Tiffany, and instantly I wilted.
“Is my GG here, Tiffany?” I asked as nicely as I was able.
“No. Mrs. Cassidy is out of the office until tomorrow afternoon. What can I help you with?” Tiffany asked sweetly.
I narrowed my eyes.
My grandma wouldn’t be out of the office unless this witch of a woman hadn’t told her that I was coming. Which I most certainly relayed to Tiffany this morning on the phone when I’d called.
Fucking bitch.
“I’m here to try my wedding dress on,” I murmured.
Tiffany’s eyes moved down my body with barely disguised disdain, and I had to tighten my hand on Randi’s hand to keep her from moving forward and pummeling her fist into Tiffany’s face.
It wouldn’t do to lay a beat down on my GG’s longest standing employee, even if she was a bitch.
She was a hard worker, and she was good at her job, something in which my GG informed me of each and every time I made mention of how shitty she was.
“Okay,” Tiffany’s smile was weird.
Like she was trying to hide something.
Something that I wasn’t going to like.
A weird feeling started to filter into my thoughts, and I worried that there was something wrong with my dress…like she’d intentionally altered it too small so I wouldn’t fit into it.
And that would be embarrassing, because I already had enough trouble with my weight. I didn’t need that extra worry of having to get my dress altered again two weeks before my wedding.
“Right this way,” Tiffany waved her arm.
I glared at her back, and her tight little black dress that was painted onto her like a second skin.
She looked good in it, but I couldn’t figure out why she dressed so provocatively. She was supposed to be making brides more comfortable on one of the most important days of their lives—not making them feel inferior by showing them up with what she was wearing.
But that was just me.
Maybe other ladies didn’t have the same problem that I did.
“She’s such a bitch,” Randi grumbled under her breath. “Do you think your grandmother would hate me if I tripped her and made her break her face?”
I squeezed Randi’s hand.
“Don’t.”
Tiffany pushed into the room where I’d been fitted for the last six months, and I came to a dead halt when I saw my dress.
On another woman’s body.
“What. The. Fuck,” Randi screeched.
Most people didn’t understand Randi’s and my relationship.
They thought we were lesbians, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
We were best friends and had been since we were in pre-K.
We shared everything together, something that Kenneth hated.
He despised sharing me with Randi, and I guess that should’ve been my first indication that Kenneth wasn’t all that he was cracked up to be.
But I kept kicking things under the rug and hiding them when I should’ve been letting them out of the dark and bringing them into the light.
Because if I had, I might’ve realized sooner that things weren’t as good as I thought they were.
That there were things going on that were having an adverse effect on our relationship.
But I didn’t, and that’s why the next five minutes went over like a truck crashing into a small economy car.
I sat there, motionless, as I watched the blonde woman turn around, my dress on her body, a perfect fit, as she looked at me with a secret smile on her face.
“What the heck is going on?” I asked Tiffany.
Tiffany’s face was the picture of innocence. “I was informed by Kenneth two days ago that this dress was to be fitted to Destiny’s liking. Is that wrong?”
Is that wrong?
“What?” I asked, confusion clouding my features.
I couldn’t think straight.
Why would Kenneth care about another woman’s body fitting into my wedding dress? Unless that dress wasn’t actually my dress at all, but a nearly exact replica.
It looked to be about four sizes smaller than the one that I’d had.
Surely that wasn’t my dress.
Surely.
“That’s not my dress, is it?” I asked, relief flooding through me. “But why would Kenneth care what she wears?”
I didn’t even know her.
How did Kenneth know her?
Speaking of the devil, my phone rang, and I pulled my phone up to my ear and answered immediately.
“Kenneth,” I said. “I’m trying to get my dress fitted, and some lady is here wearing a dress that looks like mine that they say you ordered it for her to wear and to have fitted to her liking.”
“Shit,” Kenneth cursed. “V, we need to talk.”
I hated when he called me V, but that wasn’t something I could control. He did it whether I asked him to stop or not, so what was the point in correcting him?
I should’ve corrected him, because the next twenty minutes were spent with him explaining in that condescending tone of his that ‘you’re so damaged, V,’ and by the time he was finished, the only thing I wanted to do was to completely obliterate the letter V from the English language.
Oh, that and change my name of course.
Chapter 1
Let’s settle this argument like adults…in the bed…naked.
-Truth to Verity
Truth
“One man’s used up slut is another man’s brand new bride.”
I can see now that that wasn’t the best way to start my best man speech.
Then again, I was still trying to figure out why the hell Kenneth asked me to be his best man in the first place. Especially since the bride he had just married had been my girlfriend just a few short weeks ago.
But whatever.
For some reason, he’d asked me, and my own morbid curiosity had me saying yes. Why, exactly, I’d agreed was yet to be determined, but I probably should’ve at least considered not drinking before I came to this shitstorm farce of a wedding.
Outraged gasps filled the air around me, but I didn’t take my eyes off of the bride and groom, who were staring at me venomously as I grinned back at them.
What had they honestly expected me to do?
I was a biker. I was also known to be the kind of man who spoke his mind.
I hadn’t been happy about the fact that my woman had fucked some other man while being in a relationship with me. I haven’t always been happy with her, however, she would’ve still been with me had I not witnessed that.
It’d been right at three weeks since I’d caught them fucking on my bike.