The day I found my fiancé half-dressed on my sister’s living-room floor, I was running a fever of 102 degrees—and somehow that wasn’t the sickest thing in the room.
Chapter 1
Three weeks before my wedding, I stood in the doorway with one hand gripping the frame because my knees had gone weak. My fiancé, Aaron, sat against the couch with his shirt open. My younger sister, Paige, rested her head in his lap while his fingers moved through her hair, and an uncorked bottle of wine sat on the coffee table beside two glasses.
Paige looked up first. Tears appeared so quickly in her eyes that I almost admired the efficiency.
“Claire,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. He just reminded me so much of David.”
There it was.
David.
The name my sister had been using as an excuse for bad behavior since she was nineteen years old.
Paige had met David Mercer at a rooftop party during college. They talked for several hours, kissed once on a fire escape, and exchanged phone numbers. He never called her afterward, but somewhere inside Paige’s imagination, that single evening became a grand American tragedy worthy of its own miniseries.
David wasn’t a man who had rejected her. According to Paige, he was her one true love, stolen from her by cruel timing.
And because she had lost the love of her life, everyone else’s happiness apparently offended her.
Her college roommate learned that first. Paige slept with the girl’s boyfriend during spring break, then explained between sobs that seeing other people in love reopened her wounds over David. Years later, at our aunt’s second wedding, Paige cornered the groom near the coat closet and told him he had David’s eyes.
My parents always forgave her.
Mom called her sensitive.
Dad called her complicated.
I called her dangerous.
That was why, when I met Aaron, I kept him away from her.
For nearly three years, it worked. Aaron and I built a quiet life in Columbus, Ohio. We rented a small townhouse, adopted an ugly rescue cat named Walter, saved for a house, and got engaged beneath the string lights on our back patio one cool October evening.
Then I made one mistake.
At Dad’s retirement dinner, after too much wine and too much happiness, I mentioned the wedding date.
Paige’s face brightened.
“When do I finally meet this mysterious fiancé?”
Ten days later, Aaron showed me his phone. Paige had found him online using a fake account with another woman’s picture. She complimented his smile, asked whether he believed people could be destined for each other, and casually mentioned that she understood what it meant to love someone you could never have.
Aaron laughed.
“She isn’t exactly subtle.”
He blocked her while I watched.
I believed that was the end of it.
Then came the afternoon I got food poisoning. Aaron said he was helping his cousin move. Around noon, a friend texted me that she had seen his silver Honda in the visitor parking lot outside Paige’s apartment.
I drove there barely able to keep my eyes open.
And now I was watching the man who had promised to marry me stroke my sister’s hair.
Aaron finally stood.
“Claire, listen—”
“No.”
My voice surprised even me. There was no screaming in it. No trembling.
Paige pushed herself upright. “I didn’t plan this.”
“You never do.”
Her face crumpled.
“It’s David,” she said. “Aaron has the same kindness in his eyes. The same energy. I tried to fight it.”
I looked at Aaron.
He stared toward the wall.
That hurt worse than seeing him touch her.
Three years together, and he couldn’t even look at me.
I turned around and left.
Halfway down the stairwell, I had to grab the railing. Sweat ran down my back, my stomach twisted, and tears blurred the steps beneath me.
Then something strange happened.
I stopped crying.
A memory surfaced.
A name.
David Mercer.
What Paige never knew was that David and I had followed each other online for years because we shared several college acquaintances. We had never met in person, but occasionally one of us liked the other’s vacation photo or birthday post.
I sat in my car, shaking with fever and fury, opened my phone, and sent him a message.
This is going to sound completely insane, but my sister has spent years calling you the love of her life, and today she destroyed my wedding because of it. Would you be willing to help me finally end this fantasy?
His answer came nine minutes later.
Paige Reynolds?
Then another message appeared.
The woman who showed up at my mother’s house last month?
My fingers went cold.
I had told him nothing about that.
David sent screenshots. Photographs. Even a recording from his mother.
Paige had driven nearly two hours to his hometown and introduced herself to his seventy-year-old mother as an old friend. She claimed that she and David had once been deeply in love but had been torn apart by circumstances beyond their control.
His mother believed her.
She invited Paige inside for tea.
Paige even took pictures with her in the garden and posted one online with the caption, “Some connections wait patiently for the right season.”
I stared at the screen.
All these years, I had believed Paige was merely selfish.
For the first time, I understood something much more frightening.
My sister had built an entire romance around a man who had kissed her once and spent the next decade trying to get away from her.
Then David sent one final message.
Tell me what you need me to do.
