I Was in My Wedding Dress When My Groom Dragged Me Out—Then I Saw My Dad’s Text: “Thorne Is Impatient.”
I was sitting in the bridal room in my wedding dress, hands folded carefully in my lap so I wouldn’t smudge the lace.
The satin pooled around my feet like a quiet ocean, heavy and bright under the vanity lights, and every breath I took felt too loud in a room full of soft hairspray and whispered excitement.
The venue staff kept popping in with cheerful urgency—“Five minutes,” “Your father’s ready,” “Everyone’s seated.”
My bridesmaids hovered around me like a gentle storm, fixing the edge of my veil, smoothing invisible wrinkles, laughing softly as they took photos and adjusted their lipstick in the mirror.
Everything was exactly as planned.
The kind of perfect that makes you feel like you’re standing in a carefully built dream, where nothing can touch you as long as you keep smiling.
I could hear faint music through the wall, a string quartet playing something that sounded expensive and sentimental.
Outside, guests were settling into chairs, programs rustling, the little polite sounds of anticipation, all of it blending into one steady hum.
My phone was face-down on the counter, vibrating now and then with last-minute messages.
My mother had texted twice already about flowers and seating, my aunt had sent a heart emoji and a blurry photo of the cake, and I kept telling myself to breathe and let it all happen.
Then the door slammed open.
The sound wasn’t just loud—it was wrong, violent against all the careful softness in the room.
Every head snapped toward the doorway at once, and my bridesmaids froze with hands mid-air, like mannequins caught mid-pose.
Logan Pierce burst in like he’d been running.
His suit jacket was half off his shoulders, one sleeve twisted, his tie loosened like someone had grabbed him, and his hair was damp with sweat in a way that didn’t belong to a groom five minutes from the altar.
The look on his face didn’t belong at a wedding either.
His eyes were wide but focused, the way people look when they’ve seen something they can’t unsee, and his mouth was set tight like he was holding panic down with his teeth.
He crossed the room in two strides and grabbed my hand so hard my rings dug into my skin.
“Cancel the wedding,” he hissed, voice low and sharp. “We need to escape now!”
For a second my brain didn’t process the sentence as real language.
It sounded like the kind of thing someone says in a nightmare, the kind of thing you wake up from and laugh about later.
“Logan,” I said, blinking, my voice thin, “what are you talking about? The ceremony is about to start.”
My bridesmaids stared at him like they were waiting for the punchline.
His eyes went glossy, tears gathering as if he was fighting to stay upright.
“I’ll explain later,” he choked, and his grip tightened as if letting go of me would mean losing me. “We just need to get out of here now.”
Someone behind me whispered, “Is this a prank?”
But Logan wasn’t smiling.
He looked like someone who had just seen a car coming and had seconds to push me out of the road.
His gaze flicked to the hallway, then to the window, as if he expected someone to appear in the doorway at any moment.
“Logan,” I demanded, trying to pull my hand back, trying to anchor myself to normal, “tell me what’s happening.”
My heartbeat was suddenly in my throat, loud and frantic.
“Not here,” he said immediately.
“Please. Trust me.”
I should have argued.
I should have demanded an explanation in front of witnesses, demanded he say it out loud where nobody could twist it later.
Instead, I saw the fear in his eyes—real fear, not cold feet, not wedding jitters.
The kind of fear you only get when danger is already in the room and you’re pretending it isn’t.
I stood.
The dress shifted around my legs, heavy and awkward, and my bridesmaids automatically reached forward to help me, still stuck in the ritual of taking care of the bride.
Logan didn’t give them time.
He guided me toward the service hallway, moving fast, his body angled like he was trying to block sightlines.
We passed the kitchen where trays of plated food sat under heat lamps, the smell of rosemary and butter suddenly nauseating.
Staff members turned and stared, holding tongs and clipboards, confusion widening their eyes.
A wedding coordinator stepped into our path, her headset tilted, her face already forming the polite crisis smile.
“Logan—your guests—” she began, reaching for my arm like she could physically return me to the schedule.
“Emergency,” Logan snapped, not slowing.
“Call it off.”
The coordinator’s mouth opened, then closed, as if her brain couldn’t find the right script.
We slipped past her and out a side door into the parking lot.
The afternoon sun hit my veil and made it glow, and for a second I felt absurd—like a figure in a magazine spread sprinting through a scene that wasn’t supposed to exist.
The air outside smelled like warm asphalt and cut grass, ordinary, and that ordinary smell made the panic feel sharper.
Logan practically dragged me to his car.
He threw open the passenger door and helped me in as if time mattered more than dignity, more than the fact that my dress was bunching awkwardly under me.
The door slammed, and the sound made my chest jolt.
Logan rounded the car, got in, and the engine started so fast it sounded like he’d never turned it off.
As he sped out of the venue lot, my phone buzzed relentlessly—texts, missed calls, my mother’s name lighting up like an alarm.
I didn’t even look at it at first because looking felt like admitting I was abandoning everyone.
“Logan,” I said, my voice trembling now, “you’re scaring me. Why are we leaving?”
My hands clutched the skirt of my dress like it was the only thing solid.
He kept his eyes on the road, knuckles pale on the steering wheel.
His jaw worked as if he was trying to decide whether to tell me the truth or spare me for one more mile.
Finally he spoke, voice raw.
“An hour ago,” he said, “your uncle Raymond cornered me in the men’s room.”
My stomach tightened, the name sparking something sour in my chest.
“My uncle?” I said. “What did he—”
Logan swallowed hard.
“He told me if I married you today… I’d be signing you into something you can’t get out of.”
The words made the inside of the car feel smaller.
I stared at him, chilled, my mind scrambling for something logical to hang onto.
“What do you mean?” I whispered.
I hated how small my voice sounded.
Logan blinked hard, and a tear slipped down his cheek before he could wipe it away.
“He said the wedding isn’t for love,” he murmured. “It’s for a contract.”
My blood ran cold.
“A contract with who?”
“With people who don’t show up in photos,” Logan said, and his voice shook on the last word, “and don’t forgive debts.”
The sentence hung between us like smoke.
I felt the world tilt, as if the road outside had shifted.
And then he said the thing that made my whole body tremble.
“Your parents aren’t just hosting a wedding today,” Logan whispered.
“They’re handing you over.”
I felt the air leave my lungs.
The heavy white satin suddenly felt like something else—less like a celebration, more like a wrapping.
“Handing me over?” I repeated, my voice cracking.
“Logan, they’re my parents. They love me. This has to be a misunderstanding.”
Logan didn’t slow down.
He took a sharp turn onto a back road, tires hissing on asphalt, the sudden change in direction making my dress slide against the leather seat.
“I thought so too,” he said, and there was a broken laugh in his throat that didn’t make it out.
“I laughed at him. I told Raymond he’d had too much to drink before the ceremony.”
He glanced at me, face pale, and I saw grief there—real grief, like he was mourning the person he thought my family was.
“But then he showed me his phone,” Logan continued. “He showed me the ledger.”
The word ledger made my stomach drop again, because it sounded like numbers, like records, like things people keep when they believe everything has a price.
“Your father’s business didn’t ‘bounce back’ last year,” Logan said. “It was bought out.”
He swallowed hard.
“And the price wasn’t money.”
He nodded toward the road ahead as if he could point to the truth with the direction of the car.
“The man sitting in the front row,” he said, “the one in the gray suit you didn’t recognize? That’s Elias Thorne.”
I tried to picture the man Logan meant, but my memories of the room were suddenly slippery.
I remembered faces, smiles, familiar relatives, but the front row had been a blur of ceremony and nerves.
“He’s not a business associate,” Logan said.
“He’s the one who owns your father’s debt.”
The phrase owns your father’s debt made my skin prickle.
Logan’s voice lowered, rougher now, like he was forcing the words out because they needed to exist in the air.
“The moment we said ‘I do,’” he said, “your father’s liability would have legally transferred to me.”
His hands tightened on the wheel. “And you would have become Thorne’s collateral.”
My mind buckled.
Collateral was a word used for cars, houses, bank loans—not people.
“Raymond said that by tonight,” Logan continued, “we wouldn’t be going to the Maldives.”
He glanced at me again. “We’d be going to Thorne’s estate. Permanently.”
I looked down at my phone then, like I couldn’t stop myself anymore.
It was still vibrating in my lap, screen lighting up again and again like it was trying to burn through my skin.
A new text popped up from my father.
Where are you? Thorne is getting impatient. Don’t ruin this for us.
The word us hit like a physical blow.
Not me. Not Claire. Not his daughter.
Just us, cold and transactional, like a team protecting a deal.
Like I was something being transferred, something being delivered.
“They were selling me,” I realized aloud.
The realization wasn’t an explosion—it was a slow sink into a dark well, the kind where you keep falling even after you understand you’re falling.
“The dress,” I whispered, my fingers gripping the lace at my wrist, “the flowers, the ring… it was all just packaging.”
My voice sounded far away, like it belonged to someone else.
“I couldn’t let it happen,” Logan said, and there was strength in him now, not loud strength, but stubborn.
“I didn’t have time to find a weapon or call the p0lice—Raymond said Thorne has people on the local force.”
He swallowed again, breathing hard.
“I just knew I had to get you past that gate before the doors locked for the ceremony.”
Suddenly a black SUV appeared in the rearview mirror.
It wasn’t slowing down.
It sat too close, headlights steady, the kind of tail that doesn’t belong to a random driver.
The sight made the back of my neck go cold.
“Logan,” I gasped, one hand flying to the dashboard, the other to my dress as if fabric could hold me down.
He didn’t look surprised.
“I know,” he said through clenched teeth, and his foot pressed harder on the accelerator.
“Check the glove box. There’s a burner phone and a set of keys to a cabin in Vermont.”
He took another turn, sharper, and the SUV stayed with us, its dark shape glued to our path.
“My grandfather’s place,” Logan added. “It’s not in my name.”
I reached into the glove box with shaking hands, lace sleeve snagging on the latch.
The compartment popped open, and the smell of leather and old paper drifted out.
My fingers found the burner phone first—small, cheap, anonymous.
Then keys, cold metal clinking softly against each other.
And then I saw a folder tucked underneath.
Thick, official-looking, the kind of folder you don’t keep in a glove box unless you expect to need it fast.
I pulled it out, my hands trembling so hard the papers inside shifted.
I opened it with care that felt ridiculous, like being careful could protect me.
It wasn’t just a ledger.
It was a life insurance policy in my name, recently updated.
The payout amount made my stomach twist.
Enough to cover my father’s debts ten times over.
But the condition underneath was worse.
It only applied if I d/// while married to a man of “suitable standing.”
The words suitable standing felt like a lock clicking into place.
My throat tightened, and I couldn’t swallow.
The SUV rammed our bumper.
The jolt slammed through the car, and my head snapped back against the seat, my breath punching out of me.
My dress shifted, my veil fluttered, and for a second everything was noise and motion and panic.
Logan fought the wheel, keeping us straight.
“They don’t want you back, Claire,” he said, eyes fixed ahead, voice tight.
“They want the ‘accident’ to happen while we’re on our honeymoon.”
The word accident hung in the air like a lie pretending to be fate.
“That way the debt is settled,” Logan continued, “and the ‘tragedy’ keeps their hands clean.”
I looked at him—the man beside me, the man I was supposed to marry in a room full of flowers and smiling relatives.
He had walked into a den of wolves to pull me out, knowing he was putting himself directly in the line of whatever came next.
He could have stayed quiet.
He could have played along long enough to protect himself.
Instead, he had grabbed my hand and dragged me out of my own wedding like he was tearing me away from a trap.
And now he was driving like every second mattered, because it did.
“Logan,” I said, and my fear sharpened into something colder, something steadier.
My hands moved without thinking, reaching up to unpin my veil.
I yanked it free, and the wind caught it instantly.
I threw it out the window, and it fluttered behind us like a ghost in the storm of our wake, momentarily blinding the SUV driver.
“Don’t go to the cabin,” I said, and for the first time my voice sounded like mine again.
It wasn’t trembling.
Logan glanced at me, startled.
“They’ll look for us there,” I added, holding the burner phone like it was a lifeline.
“Then where?” he asked, voice strained, eyes flicking between the road and the mirror.
The SUV’s headlights were still there, furious and persistent.
I looked down at the burner phone, then at the heavy gold band on my finger—the ring my father insisted I wear, the ring that suddenly felt like a shackle disguised as a gift.
I…
Continue in C0mment 👇👇
pulled it off and tossed it into the footwell.
“My mother always said I had my grandmother’s eyes,” I whispered. “But she forgot I also had her sister’s address in Montreal. The one the family hasn’t spoken to in twenty years because she ‘knew too much.’ If we’re going to be fugitives, Logan, let’s go to the only person who knows how to fight back.”
Logan looked at me, a grim, beautiful smile touching his lips despite the chaos. He shifted gears, the engine roaring as we headed for the interstate.
The wedding was over. The hunt had just begun.
The veil hit the wind like a white flag that refused to surrender.
For half a second it filled the rear window, a ghost of lace and satin twisting in the air, and I saw the black SUV’s headlights smear through it like angry stars. The driver swerved—just enough. Tires screamed. The SUV fishtailed, recovered, and came back at us harder.
Logan didn’t look at it. He didn’t have to. He drove like a man who had already run the scenario in his head and decided the only option was forward.
“Seatbelt,” he snapped.
I fumbled, fingers trembling, and clicked it in place just as he took the on-ramp at a speed that made the world outside blur into streaks of green and gray.
My phone kept buzzing in my lap like a living thing. Messages. Calls. My mother’s name flashing again and again.
I didn’t answer.
Because I couldn’t decide which was worse: my mother begging me to come back… or my mother pretending she didn’t know exactly where I was being taken.
I stared down at my hands. The ring—my father’s ring, the one he’d insisted I wear because it was “family”—sat in the footwell like a small piece of evidence. The gold looked dull in the shadow. Cheap. Meaningless.
A black sedan merged behind us on the interstate. Not the SUV—this one was lower, faster, the kind of car that looks ordinary until you realize it’s built for control.
Logan’s jaw flexed. “They’re swapping vehicles,” he muttered.
My throat tightened. “How many?”
Logan glanced at the mirror for a split second. “Two behind,” he said. “Maybe more.”
I clutched the burner phone like it could become a weapon through sheer desperation. “Who do I call?” I whispered.
Logan didn’t answer immediately, and that silence was its own kind of truth. You call the police when you believe the police belong to you. You call 911 when you believe the system is neutral.
Raymond had said Thorne had people on the local force.
And my father’s text—Thorne is getting impatient—had confirmed my parents weren’t panicking because I was missing. They were panicking because the exchange was delayed.
Logan exhaled hard. “Call your aunt,” he said finally. “The Montreal one. Now.”
I stared at the burner phone. No contacts. No history. Just a blank device meant for vanishing.
“My aunt’s address is in my head,” I said, voice shaking. “But her number… I don’t know it.”
Logan swore under his breath. “Then we do it old-school,” he said. “You know where she is?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I have the street. The building. I was there once when I was nine.”
“Good,” Logan said. “Then we get across the border.”
The word border hit like a reality check. This wasn’t a dramatic argument in a bridal suite. This wasn’t a family scandal.
This was flight.
This was survival.
I looked out at the trees whipping by and felt something inside me split: the version of me who believed my life was a straight line—college, career, marriage, kids—cracked apart, and the version of me who understood the world could be predatory stepped forward.
I swallowed, voice low. “What if they stop us at the border?”
Logan’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Then we don’t go through a main crossing,” he said. “We go where they don’t expect.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Logan’s eyes flicked to me—pain, apology, determination all in one glance. “It means things I never wanted to teach you,” he said. “But I will. Fast.”
The sedan behind us crept closer.
Logan downshifted suddenly, engine roaring, and the car surged forward.
But the sedan matched us.
It wasn’t just following. It was testing.
A tap hit our rear bumper—light, almost polite. A warning.
My stomach dropped.
Logan’s voice went cold. “They’re going to PIT us.”
I’d heard the term in movies, never in my life. It sounded too clinical for something that could kill.
“They’ll spin us,” Logan said. “Force us into a guardrail. If we flip, it becomes an accident. Convenient.”
My hands clenched. “What do we do?”
Logan stared ahead, calculating. “We get off the interstate,” he said. “Too many witnesses here. They won’t risk a full collision with traffic. They want clean.”
“Clean,” I echoed, bitter. “Like my wedding.”
Another bump—harder this time.
I gasped, gripping the door handle.
Logan took an exit so sharply the tires chirped. The sudden deceleration threw the sedan off rhythm, and for a second it overshot, swerving wide. The SUV followed, less nimble.
We plunged onto a service road lined with trees and industrial buildings. The air felt darker here, the sun blocked by warehouses and overpasses.
Logan drove like he knew the road. Like he’d already scouted.
“Do you?” I asked, voice tight.
He didn’t look at me. “I grew up around men who thought ‘owing’ was just another kind of leash,” he said. “I learned routes before I learned prayers.”
The sedan turned onto the service road behind us.
Still there.
Still hunting.
Logan’s voice sharpened. “In your bag,” he said. “Your bridal bag. Anything sharp?”
“My bridesmaids packed… makeup,” I said, incredulous. “Perfume.”
“Perfume,” Logan repeated. “Aerosol?”
“Yes,” I said, fumbling through the bag at my feet. Lipstick, compact, hairpins—then a small travel hairspray.
Logan nodded once. “Good. When I say, you spray it into their windshield if they pull up beside us.”
My stomach lurched. “That’s insane.”
“It’s survival,” he corrected.
My fingers closed around the hairspray like it was a weapon made of desperation.
We rounded a corner and the road narrowed. A freight yard rose on the left—chain-link fence, stacked containers, a guard shack with a half-raised gate.
Logan’s eyes fixed on it.
“No,” I whispered, instinct screaming.
Logan didn’t answer. He accelerated straight toward the gate.
The guard in the shack looked up, startled, and raised a hand—
Logan laid on the horn.
The gate wasn’t meant to stop a determined car. It was meant to stop polite people.
Logan clipped it, metal shrieking, and we burst through into the yard.
Containers towered on both sides like walls. The road became a maze.
Behind us, the sedan hesitated at the damaged gate—just long enough.
Logan killed the headlights and swung hard between containers, engine low. My body slammed against the door. The dress—my heavy, beautiful dress—became an anchor.
I grabbed the skirt with both hands and yanked it upward, gathering it like a parachute to keep it from tangling in the pedals.
“Cut it,” Logan barked suddenly.
“What?”
“The dress,” he snapped. “Cut it or it’ll kill us.”
I stared at him, shocked. This dress had taken months to choose. It had been my dream.
And now it was a liability.
I fumbled again in the bag and found a tiny pair of sewing scissors—delicate, silver, meant for last-minute thread emergencies.
I laughed—one sharp, hysterical sound.
Then I shoved the scissors into the satin and cut.
The fabric tore with a sound like a secret ripping open. I hacked at layers, freeing my legs, ruining the perfect hemline without hesitation.
Each cut felt like shedding a lie.
Logan took another turn, then another. The containers blurred past. The maze swallowed us.
We stopped abruptly in a narrow alley between stacks, engine off.
Silence hit like a punch.
My breathing was loud in the car.
Logan held up a hand—don’t move—and leaned forward, listening.
Distantly, we heard it: the sedan entering the yard. Tires crunching gravel. An engine idling, searching.
Logan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They don’t know where we went,” he murmured.
My chest tightened. “What if they search every lane?”
Logan’s eyes flicked upward to the container stack beside us. “They’ll try,” he said. “But they’re working on urgency. They expected you to cry, call your mom, run back. They didn’t expect you to disappear into a freight yard wearing half a wedding dress.”
I swallowed, shaking. “I didn’t expect that either.”
Logan’s mouth twitched—almost a smile. “You’re doing great,” he said quietly.
The compliment hit me strangely. My whole life, people had praised me for being good—good daughter, good student, good girl. This was the first time anyone had praised me for being dangerous enough to survive.
Footsteps crunched somewhere nearby.
Logan’s hand moved subtly toward the glove box again—where the keys and burner phone were. He didn’t open it. He just hovered, ready.
A shadow passed at the end of our container lane.
A man’s silhouette.
He paused.
Then kept walking.
My heart slammed so hard I tasted metal.
Logan exhaled slowly through his nose. “We wait,” he whispered. “Then we move.”
“How long?” I mouthed.
“Until they think we’re not here,” he whispered back. “Predators get impatient.”
Minutes stretched like hours.
My phone buzzed again in my lap.
A new message from my father.
Come back now. You’re embarrassing us.
I stared at it, bile rising.
Embarrassing us.
Not risking your life. Not where are you. Not are you safe.
Just image.
Just control.
I slowly typed with trembling fingers:
I know about Thorne. I know about the policy. I know you sold me.
I didn’t send it.
Not because I was afraid.
Because I suddenly understood something sharp and clean: if my father knew I knew, he would stop trying to lure me back with shame and switch to something worse.
Knowledge changes how predators hunt.
I deleted the message instead, turned off my phone, and shoved it deep into the bag.
Logan watched me. His eyes softened briefly. “Smart,” he whispered.
When the yard finally grew quiet—no engine, no footsteps—Logan started the car again, low, careful. We eased out of the container lane and navigated toward the far exit, where a service gate opened onto a back road.
We slipped out like smoke.
Only when we were miles away, trees swallowing the road, did Logan speak again.
“We can’t go to your aunt’s directly,” he said, voice low. “Not yet.”
My throat tightened. “Why?”
“Because they’ll assume you’re running to family,” he said. “They’ll put eyes on highways. Airports. Border crossings. Anyone connected to you.”
I stared at my shredded dress pooled around my legs. “So what do we do?”
Logan inhaled slowly. “We disappear for forty-eight hours,” he said. “Then we cross when they’ve shifted resources.”
I blinked. “Disappearing isn’t… simple.”
Logan’s eyes flicked to me. “It is if you know how,” he said quietly. “And if you’re willing to become someone else for a little while.”
My stomach churned. “Someone else?”
Logan’s voice softened. “Claire,” he said, “the woman in that bridal room was a daughter. A bride. A person who believed in plans.”
He paused.
“The woman next to me right now,” he continued, “is a survivor. And survivors use different rules.”
I swallowed hard.
“What are your rules?” I asked.
Logan’s jaw tightened. “First rule,” he said, “we don’t trust anyone whose livelihood depends on your compliance.”
That felt like a knife aimed straight at my childhood.
“Second rule,” he continued, “we document everything. Every message. Every threat. Every name.”
I nodded slowly.
“Third rule,” Logan said, voice dropping, “we don’t go back for closure.”
The word closure hit like grief.
I stared out the window at the forest rushing past. “But my mother—”
Logan cut in, gently but firm. “Your mother is part of it,” he said. “Even if she’s scared. Even if she’s trapped. She’s still part of the machine.”
Tears burned behind my eyes. “You don’t know her,” I whispered.
Logan’s voice was quiet. “I know enough,” he said. “She was sitting in that front row. She smiled. She clapped. While Thorne waited.”
My throat tightened until it felt like I couldn’t breathe.
We drove until dusk, then turned off onto a gravel road that led to a small, rundown motel with a flickering sign that simply read: VACANCY.
Logan parked behind the building, hidden from the main road.
He looked at me. “We’ll stay one night,” he said. “Pay cash. No names.”
My hands shook. “I don’t have cash.”
Logan pulled a folded stack of bills from his wallet. “I do,” he said. “I’ve been saving for a rainy day.”
I laughed weakly. “This is beyond rainy.”
Logan’s mouth twitched. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a storm.”
Inside the motel room, the air smelled like old smoke and cheap cleaner. The bedspread was rough. The light was too yellow. It felt like a place where people went to disappear.
I sat on the edge of the bed, wedding dress shredded, hairpins loose, makeup smeared. I didn’t look like a bride anymore.
I looked like someone who had escaped something.
Logan locked the door. Then he locked it again with the chain.
He turned to me and finally let his mask slip.
His hands trembled slightly.
His face crumpled with the delayed shock of what he had done—of what he had saved me from.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I wanted… today to be beautiful.”
I stared at him, throat tight. “You saved my life,” I said.
Logan shook his head. “I don’t know if I did,” he admitted. “I just… I couldn’t watch you walk into that.”
I swallowed, then asked the question that had been sitting like a stone in my chest.
“How did Raymond tell you?” I whispered.
Logan sat in the chair across from me, elbows on his knees. “He didn’t just tell me,” he said quietly. “He warned me.”
I blinked. “Why would he warn you if he’s part of it?”
Logan’s eyes were dark. “Because he’s not,” he said. “He’s the crack in your family’s wall. He’s the one they pushed out twenty years ago because he refused to play along.”
My breath caught. “Then why would he be at the wedding?”
Logan’s voice went hoarse. “Because he came to stop it,” he said. “He told me he couldn’t reach you. Your parents keep you close. They control your phone. Your schedule. He said the only way was to catch you through me.”
I stared, mind racing. “So… Raymond is on our side?”
Logan nodded slowly. “I think so,” he said. “But I don’t trust anyone fully. Not yet.”
I looked down at my hands, trembling. “My whole life,” I whispered, “I thought my family was my safety net.”
Logan’s voice was soft. “It was a net,” he said. “Just… not meant to catch you.”
A sob rose in my throat, hot and sudden. I covered my mouth with my hand, trying to contain it.
Logan didn’t tell me to stop. He didn’t offer platitudes. He simply moved closer and took my hand—gently this time, like he was reminding me I wasn’t property.
“You’re not alone,” he murmured.
I stared at him, eyes burning. “You could have left,” I whispered. “You could have walked away. You barely knew what you were stepping into.”
Logan’s jaw tightened. “I knew enough,” he said. “And I know something else.”
“What?”
His eyes held mine. “They picked you because you’re obedient,” he said quietly. “They picked you because you were trained to doubt yourself.”
I flinched.
Logan’s voice softened further. “But you’re not obedient anymore,” he said. “You cut your dress without blinking. You threw away the ring. You didn’t call your mom. You chose a dangerous aunt and a burned bridge over a comfortable lie.”
I swallowed hard.
He was right.
And realizing it made something inside me ignite—small but fierce.
I wiped my cheeks, inhaled shakily, and said, “Okay.”
Logan blinked. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeated, voice steadier. “We’re fugitives now. We document. We run smart. We don’t go back for closure.”
Logan’s mouth twitched into a sad smile. “That’s my girl,” he whispered.
Outside, somewhere in the parking lot, a car engine started.
Both of us froze.
Logan moved to the curtain and peeked through a gap.
A black sedan rolled slowly through the lot, headlights sweeping across parked cars like searchlights.
My stomach dropped.
“They found us,” I whispered.
Logan’s face was tight, but not panicked. “Not yet,” he said. “They’re searching. They’re guessing.”
The sedan paused near the office, then rolled on.
Logan exhaled slowly. “We leave now,” he said.
My heart pounded. “Now?”
“Yes,” Logan replied. “We don’t wait for certainty. We move on suspicion.”
He grabbed the go-bag he’d packed from the car—cash, documents, a spare hoodie, a baseball cap. He tossed me the hoodie.
I stared at it. “I’m still in—”
“Put it on,” he said. “Cover the dress. You can’t run in a symbol.”
I pulled the hoodie over my torn bodice, feeling fabric catch on lace. The dress rustled like it resented being demoted.
Logan opened the door slowly, scanning.
Then we moved—quiet, fast—into the night.
The hunt wasn’t over.
But neither was I.
And as the cold air hit my face and the parking lot lights blurred behind us, I understood the terrifying gift Logan had handed me:
Once you see the contract behind the flowers, you can never go back to being fooled by the bouquet again.
