Page 87 of Faking It with the Firefighter

“Yes, he did!” Blair yelled, inserting herself in the middle of the fight scene. All the frustration, annoyance, and indignation she put me through this week bubbled up inside of me. I’d had just about enough of her Blairzilla crap! Maybe a punch in the face wouldn’t heal my heartbreak, but if someone could just shut her up, it might take the edge off.

I spotted a full glass of wine on the nearby bar, snatched it up, and tossed it in her face. Red wine splashed on her cheeks and smattered across the lacy fabric of her gown like a murder scene.

“Ah! My new dress!” she shrieked so loud her voice echoed off the walls. “You’ve ruined everything, Abigail! You’ve ruined everythingagain!” Her blue eyes were bloodshot with rage and her face dripping with merlot as she barreled toward me, grabbed onto my shoulders, and pushed me hard. So hard that I crashed into something…soft and creamy?

With Blair’s hands practically around my neck, I felt a mix of Styrofoam, crumbled cake, and thick frosting beneath me, sticking to me like mud to boots after a rainy day.

Oh, crap! The cake! Sophie’s beautiful tower of buttercream and deliciousness, which had been on glorious display forall the guests to admire ahead of the ceremony, was currently squashed beneath me.

So much for not messing up Sophie’s cake.

Blair screamed in my face so loud I thought my eardrum would rupture. She was the bride from hell. She was the worst houseguest I’d ever had. She’d made a fool of me by kissing the man I thought I loved.

And she made my compost explode. Basically.

I grabbed a handful of the wedding cake and smashed it in her face. She squealed, then scraped at the buttercream and went for my eyes. I dodged out of the way and took another handful of cake and smacked her across the face with it. The sound was wet and satisfying.

But instead of stopping her up, she gripped my arm, clamped her jaw over my hand, and bit the crap out of my skin. What the hell? Was she three years old?

“Aargh!” I cried. The pain shooting through my hand generated enough energy to shove her the hell off of me. Donny snatched her by the waist as she wailed her arms and legs in the air. Breaths sawed out of me. I lay in the mess of demolished cake, feeling like I’d just sprinted a hundred-yard dash.

When I tried to pick myself up off the floor, my hand slipped out from under me and I fell into the cake again. Growling in frustration, I flipped onto my front, crawled onto my hands and knees, and finally got to my feet. My head was full of static. My hands were full of buttercream. My heart—my heart was empty. Numb.

I took in the scene. Gabe and Rex were going at it—red-faced with bowties and shirt collars askew. Tammy stood by filming the whole thing. She flipped thecamera around to selfie mode. “See, y’all, Blair and Donny’s wedding part two is even crazier than part one!”

Hold on. She wasn’t just filming the whole thing. She was streaming it live. That meant everyone had seen it. Everyone would know I’d been cheated on. Again. Only this time, there was video proof. Humiliation was bitter and acrid. It was the stickiness of half-melted icing under my fingernails. It was the mush of compacted cake in every wrinkle of my clothes.

I couldn’t take any more.

She, and the rest of the world, had seen enough of me. I marched over and snatched her phone out of her hand.

“Hey! Give that back!” Tammy lunged for me, but I clutched the phone close to my chest and headed for the door. She jumped on my back, and the icing slipped and slid against my skin.

I hurled the phone, and it smashed against the closest wall with a loud crack. “Get off me!” I hollered and clawed at her arms.

“Hey, hey! Now what in the hell is going on here?” Bryce called, grabbing my arm and yanking me away from Tammy. His grip was tight and pain seared up my arm.

“Bryce, stop! You’re hurting me!”

“Shut up, Stone. I’m sick of you causing trouble around here,” he barked back, wringing his hand around my arm so hard it felt like a burn. He slapped a pair of cold metal cuffs on my wrists.

“Get off of her, Lawson,” Rex growled, and gripped him by the collar so hard that Bryce let go and pushed me at his partner. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“That’s it, Montgomery. You’re under arrest.” Bryce pinnedRex’s arm behind his back and clawed at his belt. I had his cuffs, but Bryce pulled out a pair of plastic cuffs that looked like zip ties. Rex winced as the policeman tightened them. My gaze met Rex’s, but I didn’t know how to feel. He’d saved me from Bryce, but he’d betrayed me in the biggest way.

Several other police officers stormed in and surrounded us. “Arrest all of them!” Bryce ordered the others. “Except her.” He gestured to Blair, then ran to her side. “Are you all right, Blair?”

She fluttered her hands near her face. “No! Abigail attacked me!”

“Don’t worry,” Bryce said, eyes snapping to mine. “She’s going back where she belongs. In jail.” The two glared at me. Grimacing, I could almost hear the clatter of the jail cell bars from all the way over here.

But hey. It’s not like my day could get any worse.

THIRTY-ONE

REX

So this waswhat it was like being behind bars. Depressing. And not just because my fellow inmates all hated me at the moment. Donny and Gabe sat across from me in a cell the size of a walk-in closet. In the adjoining cell, Abigail and Tammy sat across from one another. The tension seemed to mount with every second of blistering silence.

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