Chapter 76

• It was supposed to be the best day of her life, the most memorable one. However, as Claire Berkeley walked down the aisle with her stand-offish father by her side and the twin daughters of her older brother bumbling and giggling ahead of them, she experienced the strongest urge to throw up she had ever had in her life.One might think she was joking or having a nervous bout, but she was not. In the makeup room, her mother told her it was alright to be scared, to feel like every inch of her skin was crawling with insects and slimy snails. Little did her mother know that it wasn’t the stress of a bride before the wedding she was undergoing; it was much more than that—more than she could put into words in such a short amount of time.
• With her pale fingers tightly curled around the bouquet of orchids and lilies, and her heart thundering inside her chest like a bolt of lightning in the dark sky, Claire was seething from the inside. Her thoughts were a place too hazardous for her own sanity. No matter how much she tried to push them down—push them back—they only grew louder, clearer, and more obvious.
• To her right, a famous musical band—the name of which she had already forgotten—played “Can’t Help Falling in Love” so passionately that every second woman in the chapel appeared to be bawling. Well, fake tears, obviously. After all, pictures were being snapped. Who wouldn’t want to put on a spectacular show at dear Claire Berkeley’s wedding? The woman who single-handedly saved Berkeley’s business empire from bankruptcy.