The Bride Wore My Nightmares Chapter 07
I threw myself together in a hurry, skipping breakfast, and headed for the door.
“Maddie? Why are you up so early? Look, Vanessa specifically brought you breakfast.”
The moment I opened the door, there stood the two of them, brazen as ever.
Just my luck.
I didn’t so much as glance at them. I brushed straight past.
Vanessa put on that concerned face. “In such a hurry? Maybe eat first? It’s better for you.”
I almost laughed out loud. So she knew what was good for you?
Back when she snatched my breakfast box out of my hands, threw it on the ground, and crushed it under her heel step by step, where was that concern?
I didn’t waste a single word on her. I walked right past without looking back.
I hadn’t gone far when I heard my idiot brother soothing her behind me: “It’s fine. She’s still angry — she’ll come around. Don’t take it to heart.”
Killing me. Absolutely killing me!
I sprinted the whole way, arriving at Chloe’s as fast as I could manage.
“Took you long enough!” Chloe wasn’t satisfied — she yanked me over and turned to a girl beside her. “This is my best friend, Madison Callahan. This is my friend’s cousin, Brittany Reyes. She went to the same high school as Vanessa, was even in her class. She’s got dirt for days.”
I immediately reached out and took Brittany’s hand. “Please — anything you can remember, tell me everything.”
Brittany, a classmate of Vanessa’s and a natural-born gossip, needed no encouragement. She launched right in.
“So she’d only just transferred in, and somehow some guy started a hype train and she got nicknamed the ‘hottest girl on campus.’ The guys in the auto shop classes heard about it and would come pressing their faces to our classroom windows during every break just to stare at her. She didn’t waste a second on modesty either — put out the word that whoever ran to the window fastest each day, she’d add on Snapchat.
“She was something else. New guy every week, always the good-looking rich ones. If a boy didn’t quite make the cut, she’d hand him what she called a ‘friendship card’ — ‘we’re not compatible, we can only be friends’ — but the way she acted with them in private was way more than friends. That stretch, in our school, there wasn’t a single guy or girl who didn’t know her name.”
Chloe and I were staring wider and wider.
The stories were outrageous, but somehow, when it was Vanessa, they made a strange kind of sense.
“By senior year, she was shacked up with some rich kid. She actually seemed to like this one — supposedly she even had an abortion for him. Though, I’m not a hundred percent on that, so take it with a grain of salt.”
“How long was she with the rich kid?” I pressed.
Brittany thought about it. “For that stretch, he was the one driving her around everywhere. But maximum? Maybe a month. Then she moved out with him, and about three months later she crawled back with her tail between her legs. Rumor was they broke up. She was going around telling everyone he was a scumbag. Looked like she actually got hurt.
“But — get this — last year, maybe a few months ago, I saw her out shopping with him at the Beverly Center. Laughing, all cuddly. And oh, right — there’s this lounge in West Hollywood she goes to a lot. My uncle owns it. He told me every time Vanessa comes in, she’s on a different guy’s arm.”
“I knew that girl was trouble. Wild as they come.” Chloe smacked her thigh.
I said nothing, head down.
If everything Brittany was saying checked out, then Vanessa going after Ethan wasn’t just about love. There was another angle here.
Chloe gave my shoulder a shove. “So what are you going to do?”
I was silent for a beat, then looked up. “Agree to let her into the family.”
That stunned both Chloe and Brittany.
“Are you insane?”
“But before that —” I dropped my voice, and something cold flashed in my eyes. “Tonight, we’re going to that lounge. And we’re catching ourselves a big fish.”