Chapter 1: The Day She Stopped Running
The entire country club dining room went dead silent when Madison sl@pped me so hard my glasses flew off my face.
My cheek burned instantly, but the sound of the crack echoing over the jazz music was worse.
"Did you really think a whale like you was going to sit at my table?" she hissed.
She grabbed the gift box out of my hands and threw it onto the marble floor.
The heavy ceramic shattered everywhere.
"Clean it up," she said.
"And then get out before you break one of these chairs."
I dropped to my knees, my hands shaking as I reached for the jagged pieces of the expensive serving bowl I had saved up for months to buy her.
Madison kicked a piece of the broken ceramic right out from under my fingers.
Three of her bridesmaids — women I had known since middle school — giggled into their mimosas.
"You're embarrassing the family, Sarah," our mother said, stepping out from the crowd.
She didn't look at my red cheek.
She looked at my cheap, oversized sweater.
"Just go.
You're ruining your sister's aesthetic."
I stayed on my knees for a moment longer.
I could feel the stares of fifty different women burning into my back.
I had spent the last two years recovering from a severe medical condition that nearly t00k my life.
The weight gain wasn't a choice, but to my perfect, image-obsessed family, it was a contagious disease.
"I just wanted to drop off your present," I said, my voice quiet.
Madison sneered, adjusting her pearl bride-to-be sash.
"Well, you dropped it.
Now waddle out to the parking lot.
You don't belong here."
She turned her back to me, already waving a waiter over.
No one stepped in.
Not my mother, not my aunts, not the manager standing by the bar.
They all expected me to cry.
They expected me to run to my beat-up sedan and hide, just like I had done my entire life.
I stood up slowly, brushing the white dust off my black slacks.
I didn't cry.
Instead, I reached into my pocket and felt my phone vibrate.
I pulled it out.
The screen lit up with a text from my older brother, Marcus.
The same brother our family had disowned five years ago when he threatened to expose our father's fraud.
The brother they all thought was still exiled in another state.
The text was only two sentences.
"I saw that through the window.
Engine is running.
Want me to come in?"
I looked up from my cracked phone screen.
Madison was laughing with her maid of honor, holding up a glass of champagne, completely unaware of the massive, blacked-out Chevy Silverado idling directly outside the floor-to-ceiling glass doors.
Through the tinted windshield, I could just make out Marcus's silhouette.
He was already unbuckling his seatbelt.
I wiped the sting from my cheek and glanced at the immaculate, five-tier fondant cake sitting on the display table right next to me.
"Hey, Madison," I said.
She snapped her head around, her smile dropping into a furious glare.
"I told you to—"
I didn't let her finish.
---
Should Sarah let Marcus walk in — and what is she about to do to that cake?
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