Chapter three

I stepped into the hallway and the world exploded.

"BELLA!"

My whole body jerked, my hand still gripping the door frame to keep myself upright.

No.

No, no, no, this couldn't be happening.

I turned my head, slow, like if I moved fast enough reality would shatter completely, and there he was.

Marcus.

My Marcus. My fiancé. The man I was supposed to marry in... I looked at my bare wrist where my watch should be, panic spiking... hours. Just hours from now.

He was standing outside, still in his clothes from last night, jeans and the blue button-down I'd bought him for his birthday. His dark hair stuck up in every direction. His eyes were wild, red-rimmed like he hadn't slept.

Behind him, Rachel. My best friend since college. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, her face pale and drawn. She was still wearing her dress from last night, the purple one we'd all picked together, but it was wrinkled now, stained with something dark down the front.

They both stopped dead when they saw me.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. I watched Marcus's eyes travel over me. Taking it in. All of it.

My tangled, matted hair. My smeared makeup, black streaks running down my cheeks. My red dress, the one Rachel had insisted made me look "sexy and confident," now hanging off me like rags, the strap torn, the zipper gaping open in the back. One foot bare, the other still in a heel, making me tilt sideways like a broken doll.

I watched his face change. Watched confusion shift to understanding, understanding shift to horror, horror shift to a cold look that I'd never seen in his eyes before.

"Marcus," I choked out. My voice came out wrong, strangled and small. "Marcus, I can..."

"What the fuck, Bella?"

I flinched. He never swore. Marcus never swore, he said it was crude, unnecessary. He was gentle, soft-spoken, the kind of man who opened doors and pulled out chairs and brought me soup when I was sick.

But his voice now was vicious.

"Where the hell have you been?" He was walking toward me again, faster now, his hands balled into fists. "We've been looking for you! Your parents are losing their minds! The wedding..."

He stopped a few feet away, and I saw the exact moment it clicked. The hotel room door behind me, still hanging open. My appearance. The time of morning. The smell probably coming off me in waves, sweat and sex and shame.

"No," he breathed. His face went white. "No, Bella, please tell me..."

"I can explain," I said, even though I couldn't. Even though there was no explanation in the world that would make this okay. "Please, Marcus, just let me..."

"YOU SLEPT WITH SOMEONE!" he screamed.

The words echoed down the hallway. Somewhere a door opened, someone peeking out to see what the commotion was.

Rachel grabbed his arm. "Marcus, wait, let's just..."

He shook her off violently. "Did you know?" He rounded on her, his face twisted with rage. "Did you fucking know about this?"

"No!" Rachel's voice was high, panicked. "I swear, I don't... we lost her at the club, we've been searching everywhere, I thought maybe she went home or..."

"Home." Marcus laughed, a bitter, broken sound. "Yeah. Home. Not in some hotel room, fucking a stranger the night before our wedding."

Each word was a knife sliding between my ribs.

"It wasn't..." I tried to step toward him, but my legs wouldn't work properly. "I didn't mean to... I don't even remember..."

"You don't remember?" His voice dropped to something dangerous, quiet and deadly. "That's your excuse? You don't remember cheating on me?"

"I'm not making excuses, I'm telling you the truth! I was at the club and then everything went black and I woke up here and I didn't know... I didn't..."

"Bella?"

Darian's voice behind me made everything a thousand times worse.

I spun around, nearly falling, and there he was in the doorway. Still shirtless. His pants unbuttoned at the top. His hair messy from sleep, from my hands running through it, even though I couldn't remember, my body remembered, the evidence was written all over both of us.

The universe was punishing me. That was the only explanation. This was hell.

Marcus made a sound,  I turned back to him and his face had crumpled, all that rage collapsing into pure agony.

"Marcus..." I reached for him.

"Don't touch me!" He jerked back like I'd burned him. "Don't you dare fucking touch me!"

Tears were running down my face, hot and endless. "Please, just listen..."

"Listen to what?" His voice cracked. "Listen to how you fucked another man? Listen to how you destroyed everything? Our wedding is in five hours, Bella! FIVE HOURS! The church is decorated. The guests are coming. Your dress is... and you were here..." He gestured wildly at Darian, at the hotel room, at me. "You were here fucking HIM!"

"Who is this?" Darian asked, and I wanted to kill him. Wanted to scream at him to shut up, to go away, to stop making everything worse.

"I'm her FIANCÉ!" Marcus shouted. "Or I was. I don't... I don't even know anymore."

He looked at me and then, I saw my future dying in his eyes.

"How could you?" he whispered. "Bella, how could you do this to me? To us? I loved you. I loved you so much. We were supposed to..."

His voice broke completely. He pressed his hands to his face, his shoulders shaking.

Rachel moved closer to him, her own tears falling now. "Marcus, maybe we should..."

"She's a whore," he said. Flat. Dead. Like he was commenting on the weather.

The word hit me so hard I actually stumbled backward.

"What?"

"You heard me." He dropped his hands, and his face was empty now. Hollowed out. "You're a fucking whore. That's the only explanation. You sold yourself. For what? Money? Thrills? Was I not enough? Was our entire relationship not enough?"

"No, Marcus, you don't understand..." I was sobbing now, could barely see through the tears. "He thought... the hotel told him... he thought I was an escort, but I'm not, I swear I'm not, something happened to me, I think someone..."

"An escort?" Marcus's laugh was horrible, jagged and cruel. "Oh, so you're a prostitute. Perfect. That's just perfect. I was going to marry a prostitute."

"I'M NOT A PROSTITUTE!" I screamed it so loud my throat felt like it was tearing. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!"

"I know what happened." His voice was cold now, the warmth I'd loved completely gone. "You have been doing this behind my back, you go to hotels with rich strangers, you fuck them, probably for money, and now you're trying to make up some story about not remembering because you got caught."

"That's not what happened!"

"Then what DID happen, Bella?" He stepped closer, his face inches from mine. I could see the red veins in his eyes, smell coffee on his breath. "Tell me. Explain to me how you ended up half-naked in a hotel room with another man's cum probably still inside you."

 My hands flew to my stomach, and I bent over, sure I was going to vomit right there in the hallway.

"Marcus, that's enough." Rachel's voice, quiet but firm. She had her hand on his arm again.

"No, it's not enough!" He shook her off. "She destroyed everything! The wedding, our life, our future! Do you know how much that wedding cost? How much my parents spent? Her parents? And for what? So she could fuck some random asshole the night before?"

"I'm sorry," I gasped out. "I'm so sorry, Marcus, please, I'm so sorry..."

"Sorry?" He stared at me like I was something he'd scraped off his shoe. "You're sorry? That's supposed to fix this? Sorry is supposed to make it okay that you cheated on me?"

"I didn't mean to! I don't know what happened! Please, you have to believe me!"

"I don't have to believe anything." He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone. His hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped it. "The wedding's off. I'm calling everyone. The church, the caterers, the... everyone."

"No!" I lunged forward, grabbing at his arm. "No, please, don't, we can fix this, we can..."

He yanked away from me with such force I fell. My bare knee cracked against the hard floor, pain shooting up my leg. I looked up at him from the ground, and he was staring down at me with such disgust I wanted to die.

"Look at yourself," he said quietly. "Just look at yourself. Is this really who you are?"

I looked down. At my torn dress. At my bare knee, bleeding now from the fall. At my hands, shaking and dirty, my engagement ring catching the fluorescent hallway light.

"I don't know," I whispered. "I don't know who I am anymore."

"Neither do I." He turned away. "Rachel, let's go."

"Wait." Rachel looked between us, her face anguished. "Marcus, maybe we should just... can we all calm down and talk about this?"

"Talk about WHAT?" He whirled on her. "She fucked another guy! What is there to talk about?"

" something did happen to her, Bella isn’t like that we both know. she's telling the truth about not remembering..."

"Oh, come on, Rachel. Don't be naive. Look at her. LOOK at her." He pointed at me like I was evidence in a trial. "She's standing outside a hotel room with some half-naked guy. You really think she was drugged or whatever story she's trying to sell? She made a choice. A really shitty choice. And now she has to live with it."

He started walking away, his phone already to his ear.

"Mom? Yeah, it's me. Cancel the wedding. Everything. Just... just cancel it all."