Chapter 3

3.

I went back to the wedding venue alone.

My eyes burned as I drove.

I looked at the wedding band on my finger and remembered the day she proposed to me.

She had dressed up in a giant teddy bear suit outside my office.

When I walked by, she pulled off the mask, sweaty and smiling.

"Rowan Vance, I love you. Will you be mine forever?"

She was a sweet girl from the South back then. Her voice was like honey.

I fell for her hard that day.

I had liked her since college, but she was with Caleb back then.

I kept my feelings buried for years until they broke up.

I thought our life together was perfect. She had a temper, sure, but I could handle it.

I thought she loved me.

I would have bet my life that she would never cheat.

I had seen the way she looked at me. I thought it was real.

But reality had just slapped me across the face.

Back at the hotel, I saw Caleb had updated his Instagram.

We were all classmates, so we still followed each other.

I usually ignored social media, but he had sent the post directly to my DM.

It was a photo of two hands locked together.

The caption read: "After all these years, I'm glad I'm still the one in your heart."

I knew those slender fingers. They belonged to Sienna.

The comments were already blowing up with people we knew.

"Whoa, Caleb! Are you and Sienna back together?"

"Omg, this is huge news!"

"Wait, isn't Sienna getting married today?"

Caleb only replied to the last one.

"She ditched the wedding for me."

He was gloating. He was rubbing my face in it.

I gripped my phone so hard I thought the screen would shatter.

Sienna had sworn she would only ever love me.

Yet she abandoned me at the altar for a man she hadn't seen in years.

She had been caring for his cat for two years behind my back.

Her heart had left me a long time ago. I was just the last to know.

I was such a damn fool.

I forced myself to stay professional. I went around to every table, apologizing to the guests.

By the time the room was empty, I felt like a hollow shell.

I sat in the corner of the silent ballroom, and the grief finally hit me.

My phone buzzed. It was a text from Sienna.

"I'm not coming home tonight. Still busy at work."

At the same time, Caleb sent me another DM.

It was a video of Sienna laughing. "Come on, baby! We're going to miss the sunrise!"

His caption: "Watching the sunrise with my favorite girl."

A chill spread through my entire body.

Her work emergency was actually a romantic trip to Lovers' Peak.

There was an old legend about that mountain.

If a couple watched the sunrise from the top, they would stay together forever.

I had asked her to go there with me a dozen times.

She always said, "I have to watch CeeCee. Her owner is very picky."

All those years of love, and I never really had her heart.