CHAPTER 1
SABINE'S POV
The dress still fit perfectly. I stood in front of the mirror in my apartment, turning slowly, watching the ivory fabric catch the light from the window.
In five days I would be Marcus's wife.
"You look ridiculous," Priya said from the couch, holding a mug of tea and grinning at me over the rim of it. "Ridiculous good. Stop turning, you're making me dizzy."
"I can't help it," I said, laughing. "I still can't believe it's mine."
"It's been yours for three months, Sabine. You bought it in April with your friend Ivy"
"I know. I just—" I smoothed my hands down the front of the skirt, feeling the little beads under my fingers. "I keep waiting for it to feel normal. It doesn't. Every time I put it on I feel like I'm about to cry."
"You are about to cry. Right now. Look at your face."
I laughed again, wiping quickly at my eyes before anything could actually fall and ruin the moment. Priya set her tea down and came to stand beside me at the mirror, resting her chin on my shoulder the way she'd done since college.
"You deserve this," she said quietly, her voice losing its teasing edge. "You know that, right? After everything."
"I know."
"I mean it. You built this life with your own two hands. Nobody gave you any of it."
I didn't say what I was thinking, which was that some part of me had given up an entire other life to get here, a name, a fortune, a father who still didn't fully understand why I'd walked away from both. But I didn't want to think about that today. Today was supposed to be simple. Today was supposed to just be happy.
"Turn again," Priya said, stepping back. "I want to see the back one more time before you take it off."
I turned, slower this time, and caught sight of myself fully in the mirror, the dress falling the way it was supposed to fall, my hair still down from work, my cheeks flushed from laughing. I looked, for just a moment, like a woman whose life had gone exactly right.
The knock on the door startled us both.
"That'll be Marcus," I said, already moving to unzip the dress. "He's not supposed to see it yet."
"Relax, I'll get it. Go change." Priya was already crossing toward the door as I hurried into the bedroom, carefully stepping out of the dress and hanging it back in its garment bag, smoothing the fabric one more time before I zipped it away.
I pulled on jeans and an old sweater, my heart still light and fluttering from the fitting, and came back out just as Priya opened the door.
Marcus stood there, and something about his face made me stop halfway across the room.
He didn't look like a man five days from his wedding. He looked pale and tired. His eyes moved past Priya, found mine, and something in them made my stomach drop before he'd even said a word.
"Hey," I said carefully. "You're early. I thought you had that meeting."
"I need to talk to you," he said. "Alone."
Priya glanced between us, her easy expression fading into something more careful. "I'll head out," she said, grabbing her bag from the couch. She squeezed my hand once on her way past, a small, silent question in her eyes that I didn't have an answer to yet.
The door clicked shut behind her, and Marcus and I stood there in the quiet apartment.
"You're scaring me," I said, trying to laugh it off, though it came out thin. "What's wrong? Did something happen with the venue?"
"Sit down, Sabine."
"I don't want to sit down. Just tell me."
He ran a hand through his hair, the same nervous habit he'd had since I met him, and for one long, terrible moment he didn't say anything at all. When he finally spoke, his voice came out flat like he'd practiced the words so many times.
"I can't marry you."
The room went very quiet. I heard the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. I heard my own heartbeat.
"What?"
"My family needs this," he said, the words tumbling out faster now, like he was afraid of stopping before he finished. "My mother's business, it's in trouble, worse than I told you. The Colemans can fix it. Warren's already agreed, if—" He stopped. Swallowed. "If I marry Ivy instead."
I laughed. I actually laughed. It was a short, broken laugh.
"That's not funny, Marcus."
"I'm not joking."
"Ivy," I said slowly, like saying her name out loud would somehow make the sentence make sense. "My Ivy. My best friend Ivy."
"I know how it sounds."
"Do you?" My voice cracked on the word, and I hated it, hated that it cracked, hated that some part of me was already breaking even though the rest of me still refused to believe any of this was real. "Because it sounds like you're telling me you're calling off our wedding five days before it happens to marry the woman who helped me pick out my dress."
"It's not about you," he said. "It was never about you. It's family. You'll understand once you've had time to—"
"Get out."
"Sabine—"
"Get out of my apartment, Marcus."
He stood there a moment longer, like he wanted to say something else, something that might make this easier, but there was nothing left to say that would have changed a single thing. He left without another word, and I stood alone in the middle of my living room, staring at the garment bag still hanging in my bedroom doorway.
I didn't cry right away. I just stood there, waiting for the ground to stop feeling like it had disappeared beneath me, waiting for some part of this to start making sense. But it didn't.
I told myself it had to be some kind of joke, some cruel, unforgivable joke I would make him apologize for.
