Chapter 1

The worst moment of my life began with a laugh, not mine but my best friend's.

I pushed open the bedroom door of my fiancé's apartment expecting to find Maxwell getting ready for our rehearsal dinner only to freeze completely when I saw Lily Hartwell tangled in white sheets with the man I was supposed to marry in exactly two weeks.

For several heartbeats I could not process what my eyes were showing me, nor make my brain accept that the platinum blonde hair spread across Maxwell's pillow belonged to Lily, the woman who had been my best friend since our freshman year of college.

Maxwell turned to look at me without any trace of guilt or shame or even surprise, just a kind of weary irritation that suggested I had interrupted something he found more important than our relationship, and when he spoke, his voice carried the same tone he used when explaining basic concepts to people he considered intellectually inferior.

"Elle," he said, sitting up and making absolutely no effort to cover himself or show even a pretense of embarrassment. "You were not supposed to find out like this."

The casual way he delivered those words, as if my discovering his infidelity was merely an inconvenience in his otherwise well-planned day, made something cold and sharp settle in my chest.

I watched with growing horror as Lily turned to face me with an expression that held no apology whatsoever, just pure satisfaction that seemed to glow from her perfect features.

"Maybe now you will finally stop pretending he loves you," Lily said, her voice dripping with the kind of sweet venom that only someone who knows all your insecurities can properly deliver. "We have been together for six months, and honestly I am doing you a favor by showing you what a pathetic mistake you were about to make."

Six months echoed in my head like a death knell.

While I had been choosing flower arrangements and seating charts and dreaming about our future.

Maxwell had been sleeping with my best friend.

"Six months," I repeated, my voice coming out strangled and barely recognizable. "You have been carrying on an affair for half a year and neither of you had the decency to tell me before I spent thirty thousand dollars on a wedding that is apparently never going to happen?"

Maxwell had the audacity to sigh deeply, as if I was being unreasonable by objecting to his betrayal, and he said in that maddeningly calm voice, "Elle, you need to be realistic about this situation, our engagement was always more about merging our families' business interests than any genuine romantic connection, and frankly Lily is far better suited to be the wife of someone in my position."

Better suited, as if I was a poorly fitting jacket rather than a human being whose heart was currently being shredded into ribbons.

I found myself backing toward the door because I could not breathe in this room filled with their casual cruelty and complete lack of remorse for what they had done.

Lily laughed then, that tinkling sound I had heard countless times over eight years of friendship but never directed at me with such obvious enjoyment of my pain, and she pulled the sheet higher around herself in a territorial gesture that made it abundantly clear she considered Maxwell her property now.

"You actually thought you were special enough to keep someone like Max interested," she said, examining her perfectly manicured nails as if this conversation bored her. "Plain little Elle with her boring job and her boring personality, as if someone like him would actually choose you over me when I am everything you could never hope to be."

"We were friends," I managed to say through the tightness in my throat. "How could you do this to me, Lily? How could you sleep with my fiancé and help me plan my wedding and smile in my face while you were destroying my entire life behind my back?"

"Because watching you try on wedding dresses while knowing Max was in my bed every night was absolutely delicious," Lily said with a smile that held genuine pleasure. "Every time you talked about your honeymoon plans or showed me pictures of wedding cakes, I was thinking about how he would rather be with me, and honestly Elle, the look on your face right now makes every moment of pretending to be your friend completely worth it."

I turned and fled before they could see me completely break down, stumbling through the expensive hallway and into the elevator, and I made it to my car in the underground parking garage before the tears came in great gasping sobs that shook my entire body and left me feeling hollowed out and empty.

My phone buzzed insistently.

When I finally looked at the screen through eyes blurred with tears, I saw that Lily had posted a photo to Instagram showing her and Maxwell in bed together with his arm draped possessively around her waist, both of them smiling at the camera as if they had not just obliterated someone they claimed to care about.

The caption read "Finally with the man I love" in Lily's distinctive handwriting font, and I watched in real time as likes and comments accumulated from people congratulating her and asking about her mysterious new boyfriend, completely unaware that the man in question was engaged to someone else and that the wedding invitations had already been mailed.

Another message arrived directly from Lily, and when I opened it with shaking hands, I found words that would echo in my nightmares for weeks to come: "You should have known he always wanted me."

I stared at the message.

And in that moment, something inside me broke.