Chapter 1

At our engagement party, my fiancé announced that he was marrying his pregnant best friend for one year—and expected me to wait for him.

Then he asked for my mother’s ring.

Nearly a hundred guests stood beneath a banner bearing our names, champagne raised for our wedding announcement.

Logan brought Madeline onto the stage instead.

His childhood best friend wore a pearl-white dress over her four-month pregnancy. She held his arm as he explained that Evan, the baby’s father, had left her.

“We’ll be married for one year,” Logan said into the microphone. “Once Madeline is settled, we’ll divorce. Ava and I will marry next summer.”

I waited for him to admit that this was the first I’d heard of it.

“Ava understands. She always does.”

Applause started near his mother’s table.

When we first moved in together, Logan had spent a Saturday carrying my mother’s walnut desk upstairs and fixing its loose drawer.

“Your work belongs here too,” he’d told me.

I had believed we were building that kind of home. Through every interrupted birthday and cancelled dinner, I kept waiting for the man who had made room for me.

Now he was asking everyone to applaud while he gave my place away.

Madeline leaned toward the microphone.

“I only asked what I was supposed to do if my baby came into the world without a father.”

Logan put his hand against her back.

“This is about giving a child stability.”

“And what am I supposed to have?” I asked.

“You still have me.”

A few guests lowered their glasses.

Madeline looked down. “I don’t even need a ring.”

“You do if people are going to believe the marriage.” Logan turned to me. “Ava, let her use yours.”

My mother had given me that ring when I moved out. I’d entrusted it to Logan for his proposal eighteen months ago, on the pier outside this hotel.

“You want her to wear my engagement ring while I wait for you to divorce her?”

“Only if Ava’s comfortable,” Madeline murmured.

“She knows it’s temporary.”

Logan took my left hand. Before I could pull away, he slid the ring off.

I drew my hand against my chest.

“My mother gave that to me. You don’t get to give it to someone else.”

He closed his fingers around it.

“She’s only borrowing it.”

I waited for him to give it back.

He didn’t.

I stepped off the stage and walked toward Madeline’s older brother.

Three years ago, after Logan left my birthday dinner to collect her from a bar, Sebastian had found me alone on this hotel’s pier.

When you get tired of waiting for him to choose you, find me.

Now he watched me approach without moving to meet me.

“Three years ago, you told me to find you when I was done waiting.”

“I remember.”

“Did you mean it?”

“Every word.”

Behind me, Logan called my name.

“Then kiss me,” I said.

Sebastian didn’t touch me yet.

“Do you want me, or do you want him to watch?”

“Right now? Both.”

His hand settled at my waist.

“Then look at me.”

I did.

He kissed me in front of everyone.

A chair scraped across the floor. Logan pushed through the crowd and seized Sebastian’s shoulder.

“Get your hands off my fiancée.”

Sebastian released my mouth, but not my waist. He looked at me.

“Your fiancée?” I asked.

I glanced at Madeline, then at the ring in Logan’s hand.

“Which one?”