Chapter 1

Holden Montgomery has been my man for seven years.

He is the CEO of Montgomery Capital. A net worth of two billion dollars. In the Upper East Side of Manhattan, people lower their voices by an octave just to speak his name.

He has a stepsister named Sutton. His father married her mother when she was twelve. Since then, he has paid for her private high school, Parsons, and even funded an art gallery for her in Chelsea.

He told me he was just fulfilling his duties as an older brother.

I believed that for seven years.

Until my parents took an eighteen-hour Greyhound bus ride from Norfolk, Nebraska, to New York to discuss our upcoming wedding.

He didn't show up.

He said Sutton’s gallery opening was tonight, and he had to be there―an investor’s seat couldn't be left empty.

He left my parents waiting for three hours at that French restaurant in the West Village.

My mother’s old leather suitcase was packed with handmade jam from the farmers' market, ham my father had smoked himself, and a quilt she had stitched for three months―deep blue fabric with tiny white flowers, the stitches so fine they looked like they’d been measured with a ruler.

Mom wore her best dress, the one we bought together at an outlet store in Omaha three years ago. It cost forty dollars. She’d worn it until the cuffs frayed, yet she couldn't bear to buy a new one.

They waited at the restaurant until the appetizers were cold, the red wine had oxidized, and the waiter started checking his watch repeatedly.

I called Holden eleven times.

On the eleventh try, someone finally picked up. In the background, I could hear the clinking of champagne glasses, Sutton’s laughter, and a man’s voice saying, “Holden, your girlfriend is checking up on you again.”

He didn't apologize.

He just said, “Can you stop being so insecure?”

At that moment, I hadn’t decided to leave yet.

I just stood at the restaurant entrance, watching my father pour cold ice water into his thermos―the one he’d used for twenty years―while my mother wiped the table over and over. When she’s nervous, she wipes things; at home, she wipes the stove, and here, she was wiping the redwood table of a high-end French restaurant.

I asked myself: How much longer are you going to wait?

Then I knew the answer.

It wasn't “how much longer.”

It was “I’ve already waited far too long.”

The stops here.

Keep reading to see what happens next.