All Chapters of The Wrong Vow, My Perfect Match : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

CharlieThe moment they lifted her onto the stretcher, something broke in me that I could not name, it was all my fault, if I had never married Serena none of this would have happened, Evelyn would have driven to her parents' dinner and come home and none of us would be standing in a hospital corridor at this hour.Julian and I ran behind the stretcher as they wheeled her through the double doors, both of us keeping pace, neither of us looked at the other, and a nurse stepped directly into our path with both arms out."You cannot come through here," she said firmly."She was shot," Julian told her, trying to move around her."I understand that sir, the doctors are taking over now, you need to wait outside.""I am not waiting outside," Julian replied."Sir," the nurse said, and her voice had the particular authority of someone who had done this a hundred times and was not going to be moved, "if you follow that stretcher through those doors I will have you removed from this hospital en

CharlieI held my phone, placing a call to my driver with hands that would not stay still, "come pick me up at Evan's hospital, immediately."I did not wait inside, I stood at the entrance and breathed the night air and thought about a four year old boy who called Julian uncle and did not know my name existed, and by the time my driver pulled up I had made a decision about where I needed to go and it was not home."Take me to the nearest bar," I told him, getting in.He looked at me in the rearview mirror and said nothing, which was the correct response, and pulled into traffic.Serena, I thought, this is all your fault, every single piece of this, you selfish destructive bitch, if you had stayed out of it, if you had let things be, if you had not spent years dismantling everything around you just to keep your hands on things that were never yours to begin with.When the car stopped, I walked in and found a stool at the far end of the counter, dropping onto it without looking around.

Charlie "Serena, look what you have reduced yourself to, behind bars like a common criminal." She was on her feet the moment she saw me, crossing to the bars with her hands wrapped around them, her eyes looked red, her bandaged leg dragged slightly with every step. "Charlie," she whispered, dropping her voice to something I had not heard from her in a long time, something stripped of all the performance, "please, get me out of here, I cannot sleep here, please, just get me out." I looked at her through the bars and tried to find the woman I had married and found her and wished I had not. "Serena, are you okay?" I questioned her, quieter than I intended, "you almost killed someone, your own sister, do you understand what you did?" "I did it for us," she smiled immediately, tightening her grip on the bars, "I did it for you, so we could be together, so she would stop coming between us, so things could go back to the way they were." I looked at her for a long moment. "Can you hear

CharlieSeeing her tucked in that bed with those puffy eyes, I felt the dying urge to reach for her and kiss her and apologize for being an asshole all these years.I had raced here the moment the text came through, barely slept, barely eaten, my mind ran the entire drive on a single track. What was she thinking? What was she feeling? How did I even begin to say what needed to be said to a woman I had failed this completely?She was already awake when I pushed the door open, her eyes found me immediately, and the look in them made me want to turn around and walk straight back out.It was not anger exactly, it was something colder than anger, the particular expression of a woman who had already decided something about you and was simply waiting for you to confirm it."How do you feel?" I asked, stepping inside, keeping my voice as steady as I could manage.She stared at me. "What do you want?""Evey, I just…""Do not!" she ordered immediately, dropping her voice to something flat and

Serena Mum and dad had been trying to get me out but these stupid officers were not giving them a chance, and it was getting worse knowing that Charlie was still out there chasing after that stupid Evelyn. Twenty four hours in this place and I was still standing, no chair, no bed, nothing but a concrete floor and the company of women who smelled like they had not seen water in weeks. "Officer," I called out, wrapping both hands around the bars, "I need a chair, I have been standing for over twenty four hours, my leg is bandaged and I am in pain, get me a chair." The officer at the desk looked up briefly and looked away. "Excuse me," I said, louder, "I am speaking to you." "Ma'am, this is a holding cell, not a hotel," he replied without looking up again. From the cell beside mine a woman laughed, loud and unbothered, and another joined in, and I turned to look at them through the bars separating us. "Something is funny?" I asked. "Everything about you is funny," the first woman