You Weren't Invited to My Wedding Ex novel Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Jacob and Luther didn’t give up that easily. After seeing the photos burn, they tried to patch things up–two lost boys grasping at a thread.

“Come on, Pearl,” Jacob said, rubbing the back of his neck like he was about to confess to a crime. “Let’s go out to dinner. Our treat.”

Luther nodded, voice softer than usual. “Yeah. Our favorite restaurant. Let’s go there. Please. Just one dinner. Let us make it right.”

I said nothing but nodded. Inside, I already knew it would be our last night together.

We rode in Jacob’s sleek black car, the silence thick and awkward like static between us. Then Luther’s phone buzzed.

He glanced at the screen and grimaced. “It’s Lavenia.”

I heard the panic in his voice as he answered. “Lavenia? What’s wrong?”

Her high–pitched voice shattered the quiet. “The power’s out… someone broke into the house. I’m so scared–there’s a thief. Please, come quick!”

Jacob’s jaw tightened. He glanced at me and then back to Luther. “Pearl, get out.”

“What?” I blinked, stunned.

“We’ll be back after we check on Lavenia,” Jacob said sharply. “You can’t come with us.”

Before I could argue, they opened the door and shoved me out onto the dark, wet street. Rain immediately soaked my hair and clothes.

They didn’t even wait for me to reach shelter before speeding off, red taillights bleeding into the storm.

I just stood there a moment, soaked to the bone, mascara bleeding like betrayal.

Then I smiled.

Bitter and clean.

Because now I knew–this wasn’t the last dinner.

This was the funeral feast. And they didn’t even realize they’d been attending their own eulogy.

***

I kicked off my heels three blocks in. They were satin, too slippery in the rain, and my toes were already blistered. I held them by the straps as I walked barefoot down the soaked pavement, dress clinging to my skin, hair stuck to my neck, every breath colder than the last. No taxi stopped. Not one.

They saw me, I know they did. Drivers slowed, took one look at the drenched girl limping through the dark, and sped up like I was a ghost they didn’t want to deal with.

I didn’t cry. Not then.

I turned into an alley I thought was a shortcut, thinking maybe if I just cut through to the

Chapter 2

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main road I’d catch a cab or a bus or even collapse near a streetlamp like some poetic wreck. But the shortcut had teeth.

He stepped out from behind a dumpster, face shadowed and hoodie soaked through. I saw the glint of the knife too late, felt the rough shove of his hand before I even registered what he said. Something about a wallet, maybe my bag, maybe my phone. I didn’t care. I fought back anyway.

I punched and clawed and screamed until my throat broke open, and that’s when he stabbed me. Once in the gut, then again lower, and a third time when I tried to crawl away. The pain was sharp and hot and then cold, so cold it stole my breath. I remember falling. I remember the way the pavement kissed my cheek like a farewell.

And then I remember headlights.

A door slamming.

Someone shouting my name.

Arms lifting me.

I tried to speak, tried to tell them to call my aunt, tell her I’m sorry, tell her I won’t be able to bring those cookies after all. But my lips didn’t move. My vision blurred into static.

Then I saw him.

That face.

Him.

The same stranger who had jumped into the ocean during Lavenia’s birthday party. The same man who pulled me out of the freezing water when Jacob pushed me from the yacht deck “by accident.” I thought I hallucinated him that night. I thought maybe the sea gave me an angel.

But he was real.

He looked down at me as I bled through his white dress shirt, cradled in his arms, soaked from rain and blood and regret.

“Stay with me, Pearl,” he said, voice deep and calm and commanding. “You’re not dying tonight. Not like this.”

“Who… are you?” I think I whispered.

He gave the ghost of a smile. “Sebastian.”

Then he vanished again.

Not in smoke or light, but in the clean, cruel way people like him do–when a secretary called his name and he slipped from the hospital room without asking for thanks.

I stayed there for a week. Tubes in my arms, stitches in my stomach, silence in my soul. No visitors. No calls. Not even my mom–I told the nurses not to tell her. What was the point? I needed to lie still and feel it. The death of whatever part of me still hoped someone would come.

And then on the day I was discharged, still pale and in a hospital gown, they appeared.

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