A week before her wedding, Amanda comes home early to find her fiancé kneeling before his mother, sobbing. What she hears turns everything upside down. Lies, betrayal, and a secret that could have ruined her life. Now she must make a decision: forgive the man she loves or destroy the con man who nearly turned her life upside down.
Have you ever experienced one of those moments when the ground just gives way beneath your feet? When everything you believed in, everything that seemed solid, suddenly disappears?
I experienced it. A week before my wedding.
A woman sitting at a kitchen counter | Source: Midjourney
That morning, my life still had meaning. I woke up next to Patrick, kissed him on the cheek, and began my usual whirlwind of wedding planning before rushing off to work.
I had to take care of the flowers, finally decide between roses and tulips, and decide if we wanted to add an extra tier to the cake.
“But you know how much I love peanut butter frosting, baby!” Patrick had whined. “I need the vanilla cake with the peanut butter frosting!”
Flowers at a florist | Source: Midjourney
He complained enough that I considered adding a tier to get him to give up. I just wanted my good old chocolate cake.
Patrick has always been charming and reliable. He’s the one who held my hand when my father died. He’s the one who made me grilled cheese sandwiches at 2 a.m. when my neck was stiff and I was swamped with work.
He was the man I had spent the last three years building a life with.
Grilled cheese on a plate | Source: Midjourney
So when I had a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea that afternoon (wedding nerves, probably), the last thing I expected was to get home early and walk straight into the beginning of the end of my world.
The house was quiet when I entered through the side door. This wasn’t unusual, as Patrick often worked from home, holed up in the study with his headphones on.
But that’s when I heard it.
A distinct sob.
A woman standing in a hallway | Source: Midjourney
I froze. My heart started pounding in my ears.
Then, my mother’s voice. Cold. Controlled.
“Okay, I won’t,” she said. “But only on one condition.”
A muffled sound followed. A voice thick with tears.
Patrick’s voice.
“Please, Diane,” he said. “Don’t do this to me… Please…”
Close-up of an elderly woman | Source: Midjourney
But what’s going on? I asked myself.
My stomach twisted uncomfortably. I’m used to my mom being around, especially when I’m at work. Even more so now that we were in the middle of wedding planning. But it was hearing my fiancé’s voice, so… broken , that threw me off.
I crawled forward, each step slow and silent. My pulse pounded against my ribs as I peered around the corner. I needed to stay hidden for a moment; I wanted to see what was going on before I made a move.
That’s when the shock hit me.
A shocked woman | Source: Midjourney
Patrick was on his knees. He was begging.
In fact, he was begging!
Tears streamed down his face, his hands clasped together as if in prayer.
No, seriously, what the hell is going on? I thought to myself again.
And my mother was there, in front of him, her arms crossed and her expression unreadable.
A man on his knees | Source: Midjourney
Something about that scene made me sick, and my skin turned ice cold.
“Do what?” I asked.
They both tilted their heads at me. It would have been funny if I hadn’t felt like my whole life was about to change.
Patrick’s face drained of color. My mother’s expression didn’t change at all.
A stern, elderly woman | Source: Midjourney
Then she said something that made my hair stand on end.
“He’s begging because I told him I’d tell you everything. He thinks his begging will keep me from telling you the truth, Amanda.”
I blinked away the shock and confusion.
What did she just say?
“Tell me what?” I asked simply. There was no time for niceties. I needed to know what was going on.
Patrick stood up and grabbed my hands, his grip strong and desperate.
A distraught woman | Source: Midjourney
“Amanda, please, baby, let me explain.”
Explain what?
I moved my hands away from him. I wasn’t sure if it was because of his red eyes or the fact that he looked like a drooling mess, but something had turned off inside me.
“Your fiancé lied to you, Amanda,” my mother said, without even trying to hesitate.
A frustrated man | Source: Midjourney
The air suddenly seemed too thick to breathe.
“Lie? About what?” I asked. My voice barely sounded like my own.
“About who he really is,” my mother said.
Patrick turned to me, shaking his head furiously.
“No, no! It’s not… She’s distorting everything! Stop it, Diane!”
A frustrated man | Source: Midjourney
“Shut up!” My voice was sharper than it had ever been. It was sharp. And I saw the effect it had on Patrick.
He looked hurt and betrayed.
But why? He was the one keeping the secrets.
“Mom, tell me what you know,” I said, sinking into an armchair.
A woman sitting in an armchair | Source: Midjourney
“He was engaged before, Amanda. And he did something so horrible to her. Something he admitted he was going to do to you!”
My stomach twisted even more.
“No, Diane! Amanda, it’s not like that!” Patrick shouted.
“He left her at the altar, darling. He ran off on the morning of their wedding with every dollar she’d saved for their future, including their down payment on the house they were moving into. It’s disgusting. Despicable.”
Close-up of an elderly woman | Source: Midjourney
I gripped the chair tightly to steady myself. I felt like I was going to be violently ill. The dizziness from earlier had caught up with me, and I felt weak.
“Is that true?” I whispered.
Patrick’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Then he sighed.
His silence was my answer. And suddenly, the last three years made perfect sense.
A frustrated man | Source: Midjourney
I thought back to the moments, the tiny, seemingly insignificant things. The ones I had simply brushed aside without thinking.
But now it seemed that Patrick’s every action could be called into question.
Like how he always avoided questions about money.
“Finances are stressing me out, baby. Let’s focus on us. Okay?”
A smiling man sitting at a dining table | Source: Midjourney
Or the time he convinced me to pay the wedding deposit on my credit card?
“I’ll pay you back, I swear, baby. You have better credit than me and all that.”
And what about the strange silence he had when I mentioned that I wanted to open a joint account after the wedding?
“We can cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said. “Let’s get on with our honeymoon first.”
There were also the few times I caught him looking at me, almost as if he was studying me.
A woman standing in a kitchen | Source: Midjourney
I called it love. I called it adoration. I told myself that Patrick was simply the type to live in the moment . That he wasn’t avoiding the future, but that he loved me and trusted me enough to handle it.
But now?
My God. Now I knew the truth.
This man never planned a future with me.
I forced myself to look at him while taking deep breaths to curb the nausea.
“You swindled her? You swindled a woman you claimed to love? You helped plan an entire wedding just to steal her money?”
A woman sitting in an armchair | Source: Midjourney
Tears streamed down Patrick’s face, but instead of making me feel sorry for him, he just looked like a loser.
“Amanda, I panicked. I was young! I was stupid and reckless, and I thought a decent life meant having lots of money.”
My mother cut him off with a wave of her hand.
“And guess who found it? Noelle.”
Oh my God, what now? I thought to myself.
She rummaged through her purse on the coffee table and pulled out a letter.
A handbag on a coffee table | Source: Midjourney
“Patrick’s ex-fiancée contacted me three months ago,” she said. “She thought it would be better if the truth came from me rather than some stranger on the internet. She found me on Facebook. Here’s a copy of our conversation.”
A high-pitched, bitter laugh ripped its way up my throat. For a moment, I thought of the three hyenas in The Lion King and felt like laughing again.
Pull yourself together, Amanda, I told myself.
“Three months ago, Mom? And you didn’t tell me?! You only helped me choose my wedding dress and sort through the menu? And all this time, you didn’t tell me anything?”
A shocked woman sitting in an armchair | Source: Midjourney
My mother’s jaw tightened, and for a moment, she looked guilty. But only for a moment. She quickly regained her composure and resumed command of the room.
“I needed proof first, Amanda,” she said. “I wasn’t going to blow up your life without it. Obviously.”
My hands shook.
“And now ?”
“Now,” she met my gaze, “now I have proof.”
Patrick looked at me, panicked.
An elderly woman standing in a living room | Source: Midjourney
“Amanda, I love you! I would never! Noelle just told your mother lies! She told her what Diane wanted to hear. Your mother never loved me. You know that!”
“What’s the only condition you mentioned, Mom?” I asked.
She smiled.
“Let him go. Tonight. No wedding, no explanation, just a groom who’s vanished.”
Patrick looked at me again.
Suitcases packed on a bed | Source: Midjourney
“If you’ve always believed in me, Amanda, don’t do this. We can fix this!”
I raised a hand.
“Get out of here.”
He froze.
“But…”
“Get out now!” I shouted.
And for the first time since I met him, Patrick listened to me.
A man standing in a doorway | Source: Midjourney
Three days after calling off the wedding, I stood in my bedroom, staring at the ivory lace dress hanging on the closet door.
It was supposed to be the dress. The one I was supposed to walk down the aisle in. The one Patrick would look at me in with his soft, deceptive eyes. The one I would wear as I walked, unknowingly, straight into ruin.
I walked closer, running my fingers over the fabric. That’s when I noticed it.
A hanging wedding dress | Source: Midjourney
I frowned as I tugged at it. I hadn’t noticed the tag before because the bridal shop had told me everything had been paid for in full. Patrick had insisted on covering it up.
“This is my gift to you, baby.”
But the label told another story.
Payment in progress: $3,200.
My throat tightened.
He had never paid it. Not completely. He never intended to.
A disappointed woman | Source: Midjourney
My stomach turned when I realized the truth. Patrick had led me to believe the wedding was ours , when in reality, it was just another one of his investments. A setup. A scam.
If I hadn’t found out, I would have woken up on my wedding day believing in eternity with him, while Patrick had already planned his escape.
A cold shiver ran down my spine. Imagine if I’d gotten caught in his web?
A distraught woman | Source: Midjourney
Two weeks later, I was sitting across from a woman I had never met but who knew exactly how I felt.
Noelle. Patrick’s ex-fiancée.
We clinked glasses of whiskey in a dimly lit bar, the weight of what we’d both survived sitting between us like an invisible thread.
“Did he tell you he wanted three children?” I asked.
The interior of a bar | Source: Midjourney
She let out a dry laugh.
“Of course he told me! And that he wanted to name the eldest after his father.”
“He told me his father died when he was six.”
She shook her head.
“No. Fred is alive and well. I went looking for his parents after he took all my savings.”
A woman sitting at a bar | Source: Midjourney
We both fell silent.
“You know, I thought I was stupid for falling for it. But that whole act was so… believable .”
“Me too,” I said quietly.
“But you know what?”
She met my gaze.
“We’re not stupid, Amanda. We’re just good people who believed in love. And Patrick used that against us.”
A woman sitting at a bar | Source: Midjourney
For the first time in a long time, my shoulders relaxed.
“To us. And to make sure he never does it again.”
I raised my glass, and she clinked hers against mine again.
“And karma,” she said, smiling.
A smiling woman | Source: Midjourney
If you liked this story, here’s another one for you |
On Mabel and Adam’s wedding day, they were stuck in a limousine that was dragging along the highway because of traffic. Instead of entertaining her mother’s guests, Mabel’s daughter, Amanda, takes over the wedding and steals the show. Will Mabel get her revenge at the wedding, or will she let Amanda learn her lesson another way?
This work is inspired by real events and people, but has been fictionalized for creative purposes. Names, characters, and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the story. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
The author and publisher make no claims regarding the accuracy of events or character portrayals and are not responsible for any misinterpretations. This story is provided “as is,” and the opinions expressed are those of the characters and do not reflect the views of the author or publisher.
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