Page 22 of Her Shameful Wedding Night (Corporate Correction)

“In the meantime the refinery closes?”

Bradley felt his eyes widen a little. He hadn’t known she had put that together. It wasn’t inevitable that Selecta would, through its subsidiary, close down the refinery, and he hadn’t wanted to worry her because he had felt so certain they would get a settlement to keep it open.

He nodded. “Yeah, probably.”

She responded with a nod of her own. “But this is justice. We can’t let them get away with making people sick.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling widely at her use ofwe.

Chapter Thirteen

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The day of the rehearsaland the rehearsal dinner passed in a flash, and the rehearsal itself seemed to go by in the blink of an eye. The wedding party was a small one—the wedding itself had a very limited budget given the difficult times all over. Zoe’s parents hadn’t wanted to let Bradley pay for a thing, and really she knew he had stretched his means to make sure they could have a three-night honeymoon at an inexpensive Caribbean resort. So the rehearsal, too, felt intimate, with Bradley’s handsome blond stepbrother John and his best friend Tony to stand up on his side, and Cindy and Kim, her closest friends, on Zoe’s.

Zoe had dreamt of a big wedding in a big church, of course, as a girl, but she hadn’t really minded scaling those dreams back. Her dad hugged her once the brief rehearsal at the tiny church had finished, and said, “I wish we could have made it fancier for you, Zoe—especially since you’re so sweet about it all.”

“Don’t worry, Dad,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “I have my guy, and that’s all that matters.”

She hugged him, glad he couldn’t see the pinkness in her cheeks as she thought of Bradley, standing talking to his best man and his lone usher near the altar rail. Zoe had felt sore, between her thighs, most of the day, and it meant that every step reminded her of the night before, and of how her life had changed because of the state’s traditional marriage program.

Subsidized housing!her brain tried to shout at her, in hope of drowning out the other, hot-blush-making parts of the program.

Her dad moved away to talk to the preacher, and Zoe stood by herself for a moment, just looking at Bradley and thinking about the way he had already claimed her as his bride, before they had the preacher’s seal on it. How he had decided she would become a woman last night, and how he had punished her for disobedience. How he had told her that she must not touch herself, must not put her hand to the place where he had opened her for his pleasure, or he would have to bare her bottom for discipline.

He stood in a ray of slanting light from the sinking sun that came in through a stained glass window, blue and red. Tall and broad-chested, he had to bend a little to talk to Tony Stallini, black-haired and built a little like a fireplug. John rose in the middle, lanky and smiling. Zoe felt her brow furrow, for her thoughts—already not suited, according to her ideas of what kind of thing belonged where, for church—had suddenly become a good deal more wayward.

As she looked at the little group, Bradley turned his attention from the conversation to look at her with a warm smile. Zoe tried to return it, but she bit her lip as the vision that had seemed to fill both her mind and her body a moment before returned to her:Bradley, John, and Tony. What might her husband do, what might he say to his friends, about... about traditional marriage, and what might happen then?

Zoe looked around at everyone, forcing a smile onto her face—the sort of smile a girl puts on when she feels the call of nature—and then she turned and walked quietly out of the sanctuary to the tiny bathroom she knew so well from years and years of Sunday mornings. She closed the door and pressed the button lock, terribly distracted.

I just need a moment, she told herself.To compose myself.

She regarded her reflection in the mirror. She still held the practice bouquet made of the paper plate and the ribbons from her shower last week, made by Cindy. She put it on the counter, trying to look at it and to make herself count the ribbons, but she couldn’t seem to see it. And her eyes went back to the bride in the mirror, in her best blue dress.

Best, except for my wedding gown. The one Bradley’s going to order me out of, so that he can make me his in the traditional way that’s also not traditional at all.

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