Chapter 1

"Before we toast the bride, I think we should thank Paige first."

Lucas, Nolan's best man, lifted his glass.

"If Paige had said yes to him back in college, Audrey wouldn't be sitting beside him tonight."

The rehearsal dinner erupted in laughter.

Someone whistled from the other end of the table. Paige covered her mouth, laughing, while Nolan shook his head and raised his glass toward her.

"To bad decisions," he said.

Everyone laughed again.

My fingers tightened around the stem of my wineglass.

Our wedding was in forty-eight hours.

I had spent three months planning this dinner. I chose the menu, fixed the seating chart twice, and found hotel rooms for relatives who forgot to book.

Now, at the dinner I had planned, everyone was thanking another woman for rejecting the man I was about to marry.

Then the projector behind us changed.

I looked up.

I had sent Mia nearly fifty photographs from the eight years Nolan and I had been together.

Our first apartment. Birthdays. Weekend trips. Our engagement.

None of them appeared.

Instead, Nolan and Paige stood together at graduation.

The next picture showed Paige wearing his sunglasses on a beach. Then she was sitting on his shoulders at a football game. After that came an old party photo, Nolan's arms around her waist.

People laughed before the stories were even explained.

My hand left the glass and curled into my dress beneath the table.

I turned to Mia.

Her face had gone pale.

"I didn't make this version," she whispered.

Paige heard her.

"Oh, I added some old photos this afternoon." She smiled at me. "Everyone wanted a little history."

A little history.

Photograph after photograph filled the wall with memories everyone at the table seemed to share.

Everyone except me.

Paige laughed and leaned against Nolan's shoulder. "You were crazy back then. Three whole years begging me to say yes."

He smiled. "I was persistent."

Something tightened beneath my ribs.

Three years.

For eight years, Nolan had made that crush sound forgettable.

But nobody around this table remembered it that way.

They remembered how long he had chased her.

And apparently, they still thought it was funny.

The screen changed.

Our engagement photograph finally appeared.

It was the first picture of me all night.

For one second, relief loosened my chest.

Then I saw the caption beneath it.

LUCKILY, SOMEONE WAS WILLING TO WAIT.

A few people laughed. Across the room, my sister Elise's smile faded.

Paige turned her head. She looked right at me with a sweet, innocent smile.

"But look at Audrey," She announced to the room. "She is so incredibly patient. She waited quietly in the background, and she finally got her prize!"

For eight years, I had never thought of myself as waiting.

Nolan had asked me out.

Nolan had asked me to move in.

Nolan had proposed.

But in their version of the story, Paige was the woman Nolan had wanted first.

I was simply the woman who stayed long enough to get him afterward.

I slowly let go of my wine glass.

Resting next to my plate was my heartfelt speech. I picked it up and crushed it into a tight ball.

I turned my head and looked directly into Nolan's eyes.

"That is not funny," I said.

The table went quiet.

"Audrey, please," Paige whispered, looking at me like I was throwing a tantrum. "It's just a funny memory. We're only talking about old times."

Nolan reached under the tablecloth. He tried to grab my hand.

I pulled away instantly.

"Audrey," Nolan said, lowering his voice. "Don't ruin the whole night over this."

I looked down the table.

The flowers. The candles. The place cards. Three months of my work surrounded the people laughing at me.

And somehow, I was ruining the evening.

I stood.My chair scraped loudly across the floor.

I walked over to the projector table and slammed my hand onto the power button.

The screen instantly went black.

"Audrey, what are you doing?" Nolan demanded.I didn't answer him.

I dropped the crushed ball of paper into my purse, turned my back on the silent room, and walked toward the exit.

By the time I reached the hotel lobby, my phone vibrated.

A message from our wedding coordinator.

[Final wedding confirmation is due tonight. Please verify all ceremony details before midnight.]

I opened the link.

At the top were our names.

Groom: Nolan Carter — Confirmed

Bride: Audrey Bennett — Confirmed

I stared at my own name.

Forty-eight hours from now, I was supposed to walk down an aisle toward him while the same people who laughed tonight watched me do it.

At the bottom were two buttons: Confirm and Request Changes.

My thumb hovered between them.

Then I pressed the second one.

Upstairs, Nolan still thought our wedding was moving forward.

For the first time that night, it wasn't.