Chapter 1

I left with my parents, and Caleb Jones made no move to follow us.

A few minutes later, my phone buzzed. When I checked it, I found that Caleb had posted a video of what had just happened in a group chat full of his friends.

The camera had been trained almost entirely on my face, and the moment the clip went up, the comments started pouring in.

[Quinn Grant didn't lose her temper?]

[How could she not be furious over something like that? She's obviously holding it in. Look at her pretending nothing's wrong.]

[Her parents were right there. Of course she couldn't make a scene. She's probably dying inside.]

Then Maya Stone, Caleb's first love, joined in with a show of concern.

[I actually don't think Quinn's angry. Something feels different this time. Caleb, maybe you should call this whole thing off.]

Caleb didn't take her seriously.

[You're reading too much into it. She'd never actually leave me. She's just trying to make me sweat.]

[You know how possessive she is. She used to lose it if I so much as talked to another woman. Give her a little time. I'm certain she'll blow up.]

I sat in the cab with my parents on the way home, reading the messages over and over. Each one seemed to sink deeper than the last, until the hurt spread through me and settled into a dull ache in my chest.

I'd always been possessive. Even as a child, I hated people intruding on my space or touching things I considered mine, and plenty of people had found that side of me impossible to put up with.

Caleb had been different.

What everyone else saw as possessiveness or a need for control, he called proof of love. He liked it when I got jealous over him, liked it when he could make me angry.

According to him, that was what loving someone deeply looked like. If you could stay calm no matter what your partner did, then you couldn't care that much. No reaction meant no love.

At the time, I'd believed I'd finally found someone who understood me. That was why we went from dating to marriage quickly.

Even after we married, Caleb sometimes went out of his way to talk to other women or have meals with them just to provoke me, but back then he still knew when to stop.

He never pushed too far. Once he apologized, I would soften, and I treated the whole thing like a private game between us.

That changed when Maya returned from overseas.

Caleb ignored my objections and met with her anyway. Then he gave her a position at his company. After that came the dates, and eventually he brought her into our home to stay.

Every time he crossed another line, he gave me the same excuse: none of it meant anything. He was only testing me to see whether my love for him was real.