Chapter 2

When I got home, I started packing without a second thought.

Gavin didn't come back until after dark.

As usual, he didn't notice anything different about me.

"Maris, I brought you a present."

He pushed a blue gift box toward me with two fingers.

I met the gentle smile in his eyes, and what I felt was complicated.

Right then a social-media alert pushed through on my phone.

Serena Colebrook had announced her wedding, loudly and publicly.

I glanced at the cover image on the notification.

Behind a table spread with gold jewelry sat a mountain of guest favors.

The same blue gift box that was sitting in front of me.

A cold smile pulled at my mouth.

I thanked Gavin with nothing behind it.

He seemed to relax. "As long as you like it."

Then he turned and went into the bathroom.

I opened Serena's announcement video.

So Gavin had proposed to her at the airport the day she came home.

"Serena, before you left, you told me my wedding had to be saved for you.

"So no matter how hard it got, I kept my wedding for you all these years."

His eyes were earnest and his voice broke.

As though the wedding he'd promised me were nothing but an obstacle in the way of his devotion.

My mother, Gavin's mother Margaret, and Paige were all there, proud of themselves for the part they'd played in wrecking my weddings.

The moment Serena nodded, they all rushed in to hug her, glowing like fans whose favorite couple had finally gotten together for real.

My mind went blank for a moment, and what arrived before the anger was a dull ache in my chest.

So all those years of pain came down to one careless sentence Serena had said ten years ago.

And everyone around me had known the two of them were promised to each other all along.

The video cut to a montage of their past together.

They kicked through the surf at Coralhaven, fed the gulls at Lake Vireo, chased migrating whales off the Solmere Coast, and waited up for the northern lights in North Aster.

Every one of those days was a day Gavin had told me he was traveling for work.

In ten years, he never took me anywhere.

He always said he was busy. In school it was wait until summer break. After graduation it was wait until the honeymoon.

My chest tightened anyway, whether I wanted it to or not.

The last frame of the video was the wedding date.

Two days from now.

I closed my phone, thinking.

Gavin came out of the bathroom right then.

I asked him out of nowhere, "Two days from now. Do you want to get married?"

He froze for a second, then came over and put an arm around my waist.

"You're not worried about me anymore? What if we try to get married and something happens again?"

There was a smile at the corner of his mouth, as though he were certain I'd back down.

I just met his eyes, cold. "I want to. Are you marrying me or not?"

Irritation flickered between his brows, but he kept his voice soft.

"Of course. But I had the adviser run the dates, and the best one for us is four days from now."

He said it like the most reasonable thing in the world, without a trace of guilt on him.

A cold smile lifted the corner of my mouth.

"No. I want the day after tomorrow."

Gavin's face went dark instantly, his chest rising and falling hard.

"Are you really that desperate to get married? No wonder all of Merrowfield laughs at you for it.

"Even Paige says it about you behind your back. You really ought to take a hard look at yourself.

"Do you have any idea how much this embarrasses me?"

Marriage-crazy.

The phrase went straight through me.

Back when Gavin and I first got together, somebody mocked me for chasing after a man and called it pathetic.

Gavin got into a brawl with him over it, just to settle the score for me.

That night the moon was bright and clear, and he made me a promise through a split lip.

"Maris, I'll marry you before we're twenty-five."

After that, I spent every year waiting — waiting to put on an apron and be somebody's wife, waiting for ordinary dinners across a table from him.

But one year dragged into the next, hope collapsed again and again, and in the end I became the joke of all Merrowfield.

Gavin was the one who taught me to expect it. Now Gavin was the one calling me marriage-crazy.

My throat closed up, and nothing came out.

There was just one thing he didn't know.

Two days from now, I was getting married. Absolutely.

Whether he showed up or not.