Chapter 1

Chapter 1

For the seventh time, Landon stood me up at City Hall.

I sat on the cold bench with our appointment slip in hand, waiting to finally sign our marriage license.

Just as I pulled out my phone to ask when he would arrive, an algorithm update pushed a video from his childhood best friend, Maisie, right to the top of my TikTok feed.

"Happy 999th day of marriage to my sweet husband. From our past to our future, it has always been you."

Right in the center of the photo carousel was an official marriage certificate. Landon's full name was printed boldly in the husband box.

The date stamped on the certificate was May 20th, exactly three years ago.

All the puzzle pieces clicked into place with brutal clarity.

This was why he had bailed on me seven times.

He had already made another woman his wife years ago.

My first instinctive thought was that it had to be someone else with the same name.

Yet the face smiling back at me from the official document was the exact face I had woken up next to for the past five years.

I could no longer lie to myself.

My boyfriend of five years, Landon, was legally married to his childhood sweetheart.

The date on the document felt like a physical blow, knocking the air straight out of my lungs.

Heavy tears spilled over my eyelashes and dripped onto my phone screen.

Landon and I had been together since our college days.

Yet while whispering sweet promises into my ear, he had secretly married another woman three years ago.

He had spent three full years living a double life.

Every single morning, he would wrap his arms around my waist, kiss my neck, and cook me breakfast before driving me to work.

Because of his endless tenderness, I never doubted him when he claimed emergencies kept him from meeting me at City Hall.

I trusted our love so deeply that I thought a piece of paper was just a formality we would get to eventually.

I never imagined the man who treated me like his entire world belonged to someone else on paper.

Clutching my aching chest, I tapped the screen to let the video play.

It was a long compilation, running for seven full minutes.

Photo after photo chronicled their history: growing up on the same street, his heartbreak when she went abroad for college at eighteen, and their sudden reunion when she moved back three years ago.

In Maisie's video, their story looked like the ultimate fairy tale of childhood sweethearts destined to be together.

The video was going viral, and the comment section was overflowing with adoration.

"This made me believe in true love again!"

"Childhood sweethearts always win in the end."

"First love beats the newcomer every single time."

"What a gorgeous second-chance romance! Wishing you two a lifetime of bliss!"

Reading those glowing comments felt like hundreds of needles driving straight into my heart.

If I were just a stranger on the internet instead of Landon's live-in girlfriend, I would have cheered for them too.

I paused on every single slide, reading every single caption with masochistic precision.

"May 20, 2021. The first thing I did after landing was turn the boy who used to follow me around into my lawful husband."

The photo showed Landon and Maisie pressing their cheeks together, holding up their marriage certificate with pure adoration shining in his eyes.

I remembered that exact day.

I had waited alone in an Italian restaurant for three hours, only to receive a text saying an urgent project required him to pull an all-nighter.

When he stumbled through the front door at dawn, I had wrapped him in a blanket, heartbroken that he had to work so hard.

Looking back, the only person deserving of pity was my foolish self.

"December 31, 2021. Chasing the Northern Lights in Alaska with my husband."

In the picture, they were locked in a passionate kiss under the emerald aurora, looking like a dream come true.