Chapter one: THE THIRD TIME

THIRD WEDDING, RIGHT GROOM

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PART ONE: THE ALTAR

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CHAPTER 1: THE THIRD TIME

"Miles Morretti, do you take Lila Clement to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

Miles opened his mouth to answer.

The chapel doors banged open behind us.

Two hundred heads turned at once. I didn't have to. I knew the sound of that door. I'd heard it twice before, at two other weddings, in two other white dresses.

The first time, a wedding coordinator had knocked on the bridal suite fifteen minutes before the ceremony. Valeria had fallen. There was blood. She was alone at the hospital. It had turned out to be a paper cut.

The second time, I'd made it halfway down the aisle on my father's arm before a waiter whispered in Miles's ear. Valeria was on a hotel balcony, threatening to jump. Miles had turned to two hundred guests, said the wedding is canceled, and run.

This was the third time. I'd known it was coming from the moment the hinges hit the wall.

"Mr. Morretti!" His assistant, Paul, came down the aisle at a half-run, tie crooked, face gray. "Sir, I'm sorry. We have an urgent situation."

Miles's hands were still holding mine. I felt the exact moment they changed—the fingers going loose, the pulse jumping under my thumb. When I looked up, his face was already doing what it always did: concern first, then panic, then that strange guilt that never seemed to be aimed at me.

"What is it?" he asked.

Paul's eyes flicked to me and away. "It's Miss Valeria, sir. She's packed her bags. She's on her way to the airport."

He was holding his phone out in front of him, and a thin, broken voice was coming out of the speaker loud enough that the first three rows could hear it.

"—is he there? Paul, is he there? Tell him I'm at the terminal. Tell him I'm sorry. I just can't watch it, I can't—"

Paul fumbled to take it off speaker. The sobbing went on, smaller and tinnier, against his ear.

"The airport?"

"She says she can't bear to watch you get married. She says she's leaving the country and she isn't coming back. She says—" He swallowed. "She says she'll have nothing left here once you abandon her."

Abandon her. As if marrying me were a crime committed against his stepsister.

Miles let go of my left hand. He started to turn.

I caught his wrist.

I held on hard enough that my knuckles went white, hard enough that I could feel his heartbeat racing under my fingers, and I kept my voice low, for him only. "Don't."

"Lila—"

"Don't you dare leave me here again."

He looked down at me, and for a second I saw it: real pain in his brown eyes, real conflict. Three years ago, that look would have been enough. I'd have let go and told him I understood.

"Lila, I'm sorry. I have to—"

"If you walk out that door," I said, and my voice rose no matter how hard I tried to hold it down, "I will never forgive you. Do you understand me, Miles? Never. This is your last chance."

Somewhere in the front row, my mother gasped.

"Valeria has no one else." Miles said it gently, the way you explain something to a child. "You know that. Our parents died six years ago. It's been just the two of us since then. I promised my father before he died that I'd take care of her."

"What about me?" It came out as a whisper. "What about the promises you were about to make to me?"

He touched my face with his free hand. I hated how my body still leaned into it.

"You should be more magnanimous, Lila." His thumb brushed my cheek. "She's going to be your sister-in-law. Your family. You should care about her too. I'll make this up to you. We'll have a bigger wedding. A better one. Whatever you want. I'll make sure Valeria apologizes for all of this. But right now, she needs me."

"She always needs you."

"Lila—"

"Every time. Every single time I put on a white dress."

He pulled his wrist free.

He walked back down the aisle, his dress shoes clicking on the marble, Paul hurrying behind him. He didn't run, the way he had the second time. He walked like a man doing something difficult and noble. The doors swung shut behind him, and the sound echoed off the stone walls for a long time.

The whispers started at the back of the chapel and rolled forward.

"Poor thing."

"Can you believe this?"

"Three times. That's not normal."

"That sister has him wrapped around her finger."

"She should have left him after the second time."

"Why does she keep trying?"

I stood at the altar in a silk gown I'd spent four months choosing, holding a bouquet of white peonies, and I listened to two hundred people say out loud the things I'd been refusing to say to myself.

Something in my chest gave way, the last support of a structure that had been cracking for years.

Reverend Hollis cleared his throat behind me. "Miss Clement. Would you like me to make an announcement?"

"Give me a minute."

"Of course. Take all the time—"

"One minute," I said.

My mother was crying into my father's shoulder. My father was staring at the doors Miles had walked through with an expression I'd only seen on him once before, when a business partner had embezzled from him and lied about it to his face. Miles's groomsmen were looking at their shoes.

And Jessica, my maid of honor, was already halfway up the steps toward me in her emerald gown.

"Lila." She grabbed both my hands. "Honey. Look at me. Do you want me to get you out of here? There's a back door by the vestry. I'll get the car—"

"Do you have my phone?"

She blinked. "What?"

"My phone, Jess. You said you'd hold it during the ceremony."

"Lila, if you're about to call him—"

"I'm not calling Miles."

She stared at me. Then she reached into the hidden pocket of her gown, pulled out my phone, and put it in my hand.

I unlocked it. My thumb was shaking. I scrolled past Miles's name at the top of my favorites, past my mother, past my father, to the name I'd been carrying in my head since two o'clock that morning, when a voice on the phone had said If he doesn't show, I'll be there. You just have to call.

Alexander Calvert.

I pressed call.