Page 2 of The Mountain Man's Runaway Bride

The wannabe outerwear model scoffs again and leads forward.“You’re not actually marrying someone in Alaska, are you?”

“I’m pretty sure I saw this exact thing happen in a Hallmark movie,” a blonde woman the row in front of me says tugging out her earbuds and turning to face us.

I blink. “No! That’s not what’s happening here.”

“What is going on, then?” the outerwear model asks

“Well…”

“Please,” the blonde clutches her hands together at her chest. “I’ve been sitting here this whole flight coming up with scenario after scenario of how a woman in full bridal wear ended up on a flight to Alaska.”

My tween neighbor with the camera on me nods in silent encouragement. Okay, she’s definitely filming this.

“Yeah, but…”

“You might as well tell us, dear,” the elderly woman urges without skipping a stitch in her afghan. “You look like you could use a friend.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” I give a short laugh. And even though I’m not usually one to unload on a stranger—let alone several of them—the dam inside me breaks.

The words pour out of me like a flood.

“I was supposed to get married this morning.” I shift in my itchy tulle skirt. “Not to a mountain man. But to a man I thought was—safe. Stable. Sincere. You know, the kind of guy who never misses a credit card payment or forgets to dot ‘I’ and cross a ’T’.”

The white-haired woman clucks her tongue in understanding.

“I thought we were happy. I won’t pretend that what we had was perfect. He got annoyed when I didn’t put the cinnamon back in the exact same spot on the shelf. I wished he’d leave a little more room for spontaneity. But he seemed like a good guy. Dependable.”

A few heads nod. The blonde nods, “I get it.”

“But he wasn’t dependable,” the outerwear model says. “Was he?”

“Apparently not.” I clutch my can of ginger ale, gripping on to it like it’s my lifeline. “This morning, I was standing in the hallway outside our hotel suite taking a moment for myself. I’m wearing this”—I gesture at my dress—“and flowers in my hair. Ready to walk down the aisle. Just as I was about to meet up with the rest of the bridal party and head to the ballroom, I hear something that makes me freeze.”

A wave of shame washes over me. I shakily take a sip of my warm ginger ale.

“On the other side of the door, my fiancé was talking to his best man. Laughing, he says that he isn’t even sure he loves me. But that he’s marrying me because we’ve ‘been together forever’ and ‘it’s the right thing to do.’ We’re not ‘getting any younger’ and he might as well ‘lock it down.’ Like I’m some kind of retirement fund or mortgage rate.”

A collective gasp ripples through my corner of the plane.

I barrel on, the flood fully rushing.

“And then, because apparently that wasn’t enough, his best man says at least my fiancé was able to have a few last hurrahs as a bachelor. Including with a woman from his office. Someone they met at his bachelor party.” My grip tightens around the can, leaving a dent. “Someone who was actually my lab partner in biology class back in high school.”

White hair drops her crochet hook.

Blonde clutches her face in horror.

The tween lowers her phone.

Only the outerwear model still has the power of speech. He shakes his head in disgust and mutters, “Trash. All of them.”

I give a tight-lipped smile in appreciation. “I don’t even remember how it happened. One minute, I’m standing outside the hotel room door. The next I’m in an Uber—with an overnight bag—fleeing the venue and asking to be taken to the airport. I traded in the tickets for our honeymoon and changed them to this one.”

“And they let you on?” the tween asks, equal parts impressed and confused.

“It turns out no one argues with a woman in a full-length white dress with streams of mascara running down her face.” I give a shaky laugh. “So that’s it. That’s how I got here. In 28C, headed to Alaska for a solo honeymoon. Because there’s no way in hell I’m ever going back to that man.”

There’s a beat of stunned silence.

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