Chapter 1

Zaria's POV

It was supposed to be my engagement party today. I'd stayed up all night getting my dress ready. Mother was elated that I was finally getting married to the man of my dreams but what did I wake up to?

A freaking video of myself in the most ugly form and guess who'd posted it just to spite me and completely dent my image?

My very own fiancé Callum.

I stared at my phone as it kept buzzing due to the thousands of notifications pouring in trying to make sense of what I kept seeing.

"I always knew she wasn't meant for Callum." A lady had said with an emoji that was throwing up.

My hands trembled as I replayed the video. It was a private video Callum and I had made and he promised me he'd never post it.

"She's ugly and I always wondered why Callum had stuck to a low class bitch like her."

"Lmaooo she really thought she was the one."

I sat up in bed and read every single one because apparently I was a masochist. The video was from two years ago — me, at a house party, drunk and dancing badly. He'd made me give him a strip tease.

“Twerk for me baby,” Callum had said trying to pull down my skirt but though I was drunk, I still kept it on.

Callum had found it, downloaded it, added a caption that I couldn't even finish reading, and posted it to his seventy thousand followers at two in the morning.

While I was asleep in his bed and in his apartment. I put the phone face down on the nightstand and sat there for a moment just breathing.

I picked the phone back up and looked at the notifications again, tears blurring my sight.

Then I heard the front door and I leapt out of bed. Maybe his account had been hacked, so I wiped my face clean. Callum would never do anything like this, right?

Callum was in the doorway.

“Callum,” I called. “I saw…..” I froze mid sentence. Callum wasn't alone, Ashley Milan was beside him and she had her hand wrapped around his.

It felt like I'd been struck on the head with a sledge hammer and I felt my stomach churn.

No….no…. I shook my head. This can't be happening to me. It's all a dream and I'll wake up to Callum’s kisses very soon.

"Zaria." Callum said my name the way you say the name of a problem you've been putting off dealing with.

I looked at Ashley. She looked back at me with a smug smile and she leaned her head against his arm.

"How long?” My entire being trembled. The tears were already flowing. “How long has this been going on Callum?” My voice quivered.

"That's not—"

"How long, Callum?"

He let go of Ashley's hand to cross his arms, which was a thing he did when he was repositioning. "This isn't about her. This is about the fact that you and I have not been working for a very long time and you've been too comfortable to see it."

"You posted a video of me." I yelled. “That was a video that was supposed to stay between us!”

"I posted the truth." His voice was so calm it made my skin crawl. "You've been walking around here acting like you belong in spaces you don't belong in, Zaria. Like that ring meant more than it did."

Ashley made a small sound beside him.

"It was a promise ring," he continued. "It was never an engagement. I never called it that."

"You called it that." My voice was embarrassing me, going thin at the edges. "You called it that at dinner, in front of your parents—"

"I was being kind." He tilted his head slightly. "You wanted it to be more than it was so I let you have that. That's not my fault."

I stared at him.

Four years and I was looking at a stranger. A calm, unbothered stranger who had let me build an entire life on something he'd apparently decided was temporary and had not once thought to tell me.

"You need to get your things out today," he said. "The new lease starts tomorrow."

Ashley was looking at her nails. “And make sure you don't take anything my baby bought for you.”

“Yes,” Callum agreed. “But you can keep the filthy ring.”

“What did I ever do to you?” I sniffed. “If I did anything wrong, you could have told me Callum.”

“There it is,” he laughed. “That desperation to get tied to a man. For Christ sake Zaria, I don't want you. Stop forcing yourself on me.”

His words felt like a slap across my cheek. Me? Forced him? He was the one who came up to me at the library back in college and told me he liked me.

How could it be that I was the one who forced him?

“Just leave my house.” He shoved me and I caught hold of the wall before I fell. Ashley hissed and walked inside with Callum following her.

I pushed off the wall and went back into the bedroom and I packed. I didn't cry. I moved through the room, opened drawers, pulled things off hangers, filled two suitcases and a duffel and didn't stop moving because the second I stopped moving it was going to hit me and I couldn't let it hit me in front of them.

They were in the kitchen when I came out with the bags. I could hear him talking, low, and her laughing at something, the sound of the fridge opening, two people making themselves at home.

I left without saying anything and as soon as I stepped into the porch, the door opened and Callum came out alone.

Callum came out alone. He stopped a few feet away and looked at me with disgust.

"Don't be dramatic about this," he smiled. “You asked for it anyway.”

I didn't say anything.

"You knew what this was. You're smart enough to have known." He pushed his hands into his pockets. "You moved in with a man who hadn't married you. You took up the position of a wife without the title, without the ring, without any of it — and that was your choice, Zaria. I gave you a promise ring. That's all it ever was."

The cold was getting into my jacket.

"No man is going to want you after this," he said, almost gently. Almost like he was doing me a favor. "You gave everything to someone who didn't ask for it. That's not something you come back from easily."

He went back inside and the door clicked shut.

I stood there on the empty street with my suitcases and I finally, finally let myself cry.

Four years. I had loved this man for four years, had moved into this apartment eighteen months ago when he said it made sense, when he said we were building something, when he slid a ring onto my finger at dinner and called it a promise and I had believed him.

How could I have been so foolish?