My Brother Put Me At The ‘Leftover’ Table At His Wedding — I Left Engaged To A Stranger
Part 2
The entire table went completely silent.
Heather went absolutely still beside me.
Tyler’s smug smile flickered and cracked.
“Fiance,” he repeated in disbelief.
“Heather didn’t mention.”
“We are keeping it quiet,” I said smoothly.
“We did not want to take anything away from Sarah’s day, you understand.”
I let my hand rest lightly on Heather’s shoulder, ready to drop it the second she pulled away.
She did not pull away.
Instead, she reached up, laid her hand over mine, and pressed down once.
“Yes, of course,” Tyler stammered, his charm turning brittle.
“Well, congratulations to you both then.”
He quickly steered Megan away toward the dance floor without looking back.
Heather let out a shaky breath she had clearly been holding since he walked up.
“You did not have to do that,” she said quietly.
“I know,” I replied.
“He is my ex, obviously,” she whispered, her hand still covering mine.
“We were supposed to get married last fall, but he left in July.”
“He is marrying her in the spring.”
She closed her eyes tightly against the tears.
“My whole family thinks I am the one who fell apart.”
“I sat here letting them pity me, and I was just about to leave.”
“Then a complete stranger called himself my fiance.”
“You can drop the act whenever you want,” I told her.
“Just say the word, and I will have been a confused man at the wrong table.”
She opened her eyes and looked right at me.
“Or,” she said slowly, “you could ask me to dance, since you are my fiance and all.”
I am not a good dancer by any means.
But I walked Heather Davis across that entire reception hall, right past my mother’s table.
We went to the very center of the floor, and we moved slowly to an old, sweet song.
For the length of that song, the woman everyone pitied was the most luminous person in the room.
“Tell me something true,” she murmured against my shoulder.
“If you are going to be my fiance, I should know one true thing.”
“My grandmother used to say the measure of a person is how they treat the one nobody is dancing with,” I said.
“She died last spring, and I have been trying to be the man she thought I was.”
I turned us slowly to the rhythm.
“Your turn,” I prompted.
She was quiet for a moment before looking up at me.
“Here is a true thing nobody at this wedding knows,” she said softly.
“I did not fall apart when Tyler left.”
“I actually left him three weeks before the wedding.”
“I found out he had been seeing Megan for a year, and I found out he was stealing money.”
Her jaw tightened with the memory.
“But his mother is dying of cancer, and she loves me.”
“If I told the truth, it would have shattered her in her final months.”
“So I let everyone believe he dumped me to protect a dying woman who did not deserve his cruelty.”
We stopped dancing right in the middle of the floor.
I stood there in the middle of the dance floor, realizing that I hadn’t rescued anyone at all.
She was the bravest woman I had ever met, and now the entire town believed we were getting married.
But how was I supposed to ask her on a real first date when the lie we just told was already spiraling completely out of our control?
