Every time Gavin Northwood promised to marry me, someone we loved got hurt.
Chapter 1
By the time I turned thirty, people all over Merrowfield had given me a nickname: the marriage-desperate woman.
They laughed because I had been engaged for years and still kept setting wedding dates.
What nobody knew was that I had begun to believe there was something genuinely wrong with me.
Our first wedding ended before it began when Gavin’s mother, Margaret, supposedly fell down a staircase and broke her leg. The second was canceled after Scout, the golden retriever Gavin had raised since college, was said to have died from poisoning. The third disappeared from the calendar when my mother was supposedly struck by a falling store sign and rushed to the hospital.
After that came more accidents, illnesses, emergencies, and warnings.
Twenty-nine wedding plans.
Twenty-nine disasters.
So on my thirtieth birthday, I finally told Gavin, “Enough. We’re going to see Elias Vance.”
Vance was a spiritual adviser outside town who had once warned me that Gavin and I were badly matched, that marriage between us would bring suffering to everyone around us.
I had called him ridiculous.
Years later, after so many disasters, I wasn’t laughing anymore.
Gavin was upstairs getting dressed when his phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.
I wasn’t trying to snoop.
At least, that was what I told myself.
The screen lit up with a notification from a group chat called OPERATION PROTECT GAVIN AND SERENA.
Serena.
My stepsister.
Gavin’s first love.
My fingers went cold.
I knew his password. I had known it for years.
For several seconds, I stared at that phone while every decent instinct in me said to leave it alone.
Then I opened the chat.
At the top was a pinned message.
29TH SUCCESSFUL OPERATION PREVENTING GAVIN NORTHWOOD FROM MARRYING MARIS ELLINGTON.
The members were Gavin.
His mother.
My mother.
My best friend Paige.
Serena.
And Elias Vance.
I scrolled.
The room seemed to tilt around me.
Margaret’s broken leg had been fake.
Scout hadn’t died. A veterinarian had sedated him while Gavin hid him at a friend’s property.
My mother’s catastrophic accident had been staged.
The illnesses, emergencies, ominous warnings, and last-minute crises had all been carefully arranged to frighten me into canceling our weddings.
One message from Serena read, Thanks, everyone. Gavin and I are leaving for the coast this weekend. Make sure Maris thinks he’s at the conference.
Another from Gavin said, Keep this one convincing. She’s starting to question why this always happens.
Then Paige:
Don’t worry. She’ll blame herself. She always does.
I stopped breathing.
For years, I had blamed myself.
After Scout’s “death,” I had barely eaten for weeks because I thought perhaps something I’d fed him had poisoned him.
When Margaret “broke her leg,” I left a good design job to care for her. I cooked, cleaned, helped her bathe, slept on a folding cot beside her bed.
After my mother’s accident, I became so terrified of hurting anyone else that I climbed the stone steps of Hollow Pine Abbey on my knees, praying for whatever curse followed me to end.
I still had faint scars.
And they had known.
Every one of them had known.
My phone buzzed.
A message appeared from someone I hadn’t spoken to in months.
Julian Sterling.
Years earlier, when we were twenty, Julian and I had been friends. Serious Julian, quiet Julian, the man who could make a promise sound like a legal agreement.
On a snowy night behind our college library, he had once said, “If you’re still unmarried at thirty, marry me.”
I’d laughed.
He hadn’t.
Now his message read:
You turned thirty today. Do you remember our agreement?
I stared at the screen until my eyes stopped burning.
Then I wrote:
Yes.
A moment later, another message appeared.
Are you serious?
I looked down at Gavin’s phone, at ten years of betrayal glowing beneath my fingertips.
Then I answered Julian.
Completely.
Behind me, footsteps sounded.
I put Gavin’s phone facedown exactly where I’d found it.
He walked into the kitchen buttoning his coat, then stopped.
His eyes went immediately to the phone.
“Did you touch that?”
His voice was too sharp.
“I moved it.”
He crossed the room and snatched it up. “Maris, you know I don’t like people going through my phone.”
I studied the face I had loved since I was twenty.
“Gavin, are you hiding something from me?”
His brows tightened.
“Seriously? Because I don’t want you invading my privacy, suddenly I’m hiding something? We’ve been together ten years. If you can’t trust me by now, that’s your problem.”
There it was.
Whenever Gavin lied, he attacked first.
I had seen it hundreds of times and never wanted to recognize it.
His expression softened when I remained silent.
“Come on. Don’t start imagining things. I don’t keep secrets from you.”
A strange calm settled over me.
“I don’t want to see Vance anymore.”
Gavin blinked. “What?”
“I’m tired.”
“You spent all week insisting we go.”
“I changed my mind.”
He gave an irritated sigh, the kind a patient father might give a difficult child.
“You’re always changing your mind. Yesterday this was the most important thing in the world.”
His phone rang.
I didn’t have to see the name.
I saw his face.
Every trace of irritation disappeared.
His eyes softened.
“Yeah?” he said quietly.
A pause.
Then, “Whatever you want. I’ll be there.”
He grabbed his keys.
“I’ve got something to handle. Get some rest.”
The door closed.
For ten years, I had followed Gavin emotionally everywhere he led me.
That afternoon, for the first and last time, I followed him in a car.
His sedan stopped outside Paige Merrick’s bridal studio.
Through the tall front windows, I saw Serena standing on a platform in a white gown.
Scout raced happily around her feet.
Alive.
Margaret hurried across the room carrying two veils.
Perfectly healthy.
My mother knelt beside Serena, pinning the hem.
Paige clapped her hands.
And Gavin stood in front of Serena with an expression I had spent ten years begging to see.
Tenderness.
Not obligation.
Not patience.
Love.
I watched him straighten a strand of Serena’s hair.
She smiled.
He smiled back.
My hand shook as I lifted my phone.
I sent Gavin a message.
I’m sick. Can you come home?
He answered almost immediately.
Medicine’s in the nightstand. You’re thirty, Maris. Learn to take care of yourself.
I looked through the window.
He slipped an arm around Serena’s waist.
Something inside me finally became still.
I remembered the college boy who once fought a man for mocking me.
The young man who pressed ice to my swollen ankle after I fell outside the library.
The boyfriend who promised me beneath a bright autumn moon, “I’ll marry you before we’re twenty-five.”
Maybe that Gavin had once existed.
But he was gone.
And I had spent years loving his memory.
I turned away from the window.
Julian had sent another message.
Tomorrow evening. St. Jude’s Chapel. If you come, I’ll be there.
For the first time in years, the thought of a wedding didn’t frighten me.
I typed one word.
Yes.
