Brice Lawson Roset

The wedding planner handed me my bouquet, and that was the exact moment my fiancé announced he was marrying my best friend instead. "Vera Sloane." Daniel Cross said my name into the microphone like he was reading a grocery list. Three hundred guests turned to stare at me. "I can't do this. I'm in love with Mira." My bouquet hit the floor. Mira Quinn stepped out from behind the floral arch in a white dress. My shade of white. She had her hand pressed to her flat stomach, lashes wet with tears she'd clearly rehearsed. "I'm so sorry, Vera," she whispered, loud enough for the front rows. "We tried to fight it. But the baby—" The room gasped as one creature. Daniel pulled her against his side and looked at me with something worse than hatred. Pity. "You're a kind person. You'll understand. You always put others first." I stood there in the dress I'd spent six months altering myself, because I'd been too proud to let Daniel pay for anything. Because I didn't want him to know. To know what, exactly? That the quiet, broke art teacher he'd been "saving" from a sad little life had a secret she'd buried so deep she almost believed it gone. "Say something," Daniel pressed, almost gentle. "Don't make this harder than it has to be." I looked at the two of them. My fiancé of three years. My best friend of twelve. And then I started to laugh. It came out wrong—high, cracked, hysterical. Mira flinched. A few guests recoiled like I'd snarled at them. Daniel's jaw tightened. "She's having a breakdown," Mira murmured, burrowing into his chest. "I told you she couldn't handle it." "Vera." Daniel's voice dropped to a warning. "People are watching." People were watching. Yes. Watching the woman in the secondhand-altered gown get dumped at the altar by the handsome man and his pregnant, beautiful best friend. I wiped my eyes. My hands had stopped shaking. Something colder than calm was sliding into place inside me, locking like a vault door. "Daniel," I said softly. "Did you ever ask why I never let you meet my family?" He blinked, thrown. "Because they're dead. You told me—" "I told you a lot of things." I bent down, picked up my fallen bouquet, and set it neatly on the empty chair where his mother sat, white-faced. "You should have asked more questions." My phone buzzed in the silk clutch at my wrist. One message. From a number I hadn't answered in four years. I read it. And for the first time all day, I smiled like I meant it. The message said: Miss Sloane, the board has voted. The company is yours the moment you walk back through our doors. Your grandfather's final condition has been met. Welcome home. Daniel saw my face change. "What is that? Who's texting you?" I slipped the phone away. "You just made the most expensive mistake of your life," I told him. "And you don't even know it yet." Then I turned, gathered my ugly perfect dress in both fists, and walked down the aisle alone—out of the church, out of his life, and straight toward the inheritance I'd run away from the day I met him. Behind me, Daniel called my name twice. I didn't slow down.