Chapter 1 — Walk Yourself

“Walk yourself.

That’s what happens when you marry a nobody.”

My father said it with a laugh, loud enough for the front rows to hear, and then he sat down in the back pew beside my mother as if my wedding were a hearing and he had just delivered the verdict.

The chapel in Charleston went silent.

I stood at the double doors in my ivory dress and gripped my bouquet so hard the stems bent under the ribbon.

At the altar, my fiancé, Ezekiel Adeyemi, waited with his hands folded, his face pale but his eyes steady on mine.

For six months my father, Harrow Vandermeer, had been telling everyone who would listen that Ezekiel was beneath us.

Ezekiel was a public defender.

My father owned three luxury car dealerships and believed a man’s bank balance was the same thing as his character.

I had expected my father to refuse the walk.

I had not expected him to announce it to the room.

The six months before the wedding had been a slow campaign, and I had absorbed every day of it.

My father did not forbid the marriage outright — that was not his way.