Chapter 1

I waited all night.

I checked my phone more times than I could count, but Xander never sent me another message.

Instead, I came across a new post from his female best friend, Vanessa Lane.

It was a photo of a table covered with food.

Her caption read:

'Someone went to all this trouble. Lucky me.'

I froze, my fingers tightening around my phone.

I recognized those plates.

I had picked them out myself.

I’d had a sensitive stomach since I was a child, and I was also an incredibly picky eater.

So Xander had hired a professional dietitian for me.

Sometimes, the great CEO himself would even put on an apron and cook for me.

Whenever I hovered around the kitchen, he would ruffle my hair and smile helplessly.

“Sienna, you know you’re the only person in this world who gets to eat food I cooked myself, right?”

He really had treated me well once.

After I agreed to date him, he never let another woman into his home.

But now, not only had he let Vanessa stay, he had cooked for her too.

If everything had gone the way it was supposed to last night, Xander and I should have kissed beneath the fireworks after his proposal.

Then we would have gone home hand in hand.

So where had everything gone wrong?

The next morning, I arrived at rehearsal with enormous dark circles under my eyes.

Several of the younger women immediately crowded around me, practically glowing with excitement.

“Sienna, that was a proposal last night, right? Mr. Shaw is insanely romantic. I heard fireworks like that can cost millions.”

“Thanks to you, the whole city got a free show.”

I lowered my head with a bitter smile.

Last night, millions of people across the city had watched a beautiful fireworks display.

But I, the woman it had supposedly been for, had seen none of it.

I was distracted throughout the entire morning rehearsal.

At lunch, someone glanced curiously toward the door.

“Sienna, where’s your private dietitian? They’re late today.”

I gave an awkward smile and avoided the question.

Then I escaped into the lounge.

Ever since I had suffered a stomach attack during rehearsal once, Xander had refused to let me eat whatever I wanted.

No matter how busy he was, he always made sure my meals were arranged in advance.

Breakfast.

Lunch.

Dinner.

I had gotten so used to being taken care of that after only one day without it, the ache in my chest felt almost unbearable.

I somehow made it through the rest of the day.

But the moment I walked out of the rehearsal hall that evening, I stopped in my tracks.

Xander was leaning against his car.

He was smiling and waving goodbye to one of my coworkers, exactly the way he had countless times before when he came to pick me up.

As if last night’s argument had never happened.

As if he hadn’t been the one who left me standing alone in the cold.

He opened the passenger door for me with practiced ease.

Once we were inside, silence filled the small space.

I hesitated, about to speak.

Then his phone screen suddenly lit up.

I glanced at it without thinking.

And froze.

Xander’s lock screen used to be a photo of me performing.

Five years ago, when I had just turned eighteen, I became the youngest cellist ever accepted into one of the country’s most prestigious orchestras.

At the time, Xander had just fallen out with his family and left home to start his own company.

One day, he happened to pass by the concert hall.

On a whim, he bought a ticket.

That was when he took the photo.

He once told me that the moment he saw me onstage, it felt as though something had struck him straight through the heart.

Over the next five years, he changed phones countless times.

But he never changed that old photo.

Whenever I brought it up, Xander would actually look a little embarrassed.

“Sienna,” he once told me, “you’re the moon I can never stop looking at.”

Apparently noticing where I was looking, Xander glanced down at his phone.

His expression didn’t change.

“Sienna, I used to dream about you playing the cello.”

He gave a faint laugh.

“But now I hear you play every day, and honestly, it’s not that special anymore.”

He lit a cigarette and cracked the window open.

“Still, I do love you.”

Then he placed a document in front of me.

“Sign the prenup, and you can still become Mrs. Shaw.”