Chapter 1

For ten years, Liam was my secret.

He was the boy my older sister, Eleanor, brought home, a rough kid from a bad part of town.

Eleanor gave him a chance, a place in our Vance family home, and he became a part of us.

To the world, he was a success story, now a manager at one of the Vance foundations.

To me, he was more, my guardian, my confidant, my first and only love.

Our relationship was a whisper in the grand halls of our New England life, hidden from everyone, especially Eleanor, the matriarch.

Then I saw the Instagram post.

Liam, smiling, with Chloe.

Chloe, his high school sweetheart, the one who left him for a career on the West Coast.

The caption read, "Some things are worth waiting for."

My breath caught.

Below, comments flooded in.

"Finally! Ten years is a long time, man!"

"So happy for you both, Liam! Knew you never got over her."

Ten years.

Our ten years.

He was talking about her.

The air left my lungs, my phone almost slipped from my hand.

The betrayal felt cold, sharp.

I found him in the library, a place we often met.

"Liam, that post," I started, my voice shaking.

He looked up, a casual smile on his face.

"Oh, that? Just some friends, a stupid drunken dare, Ava. You know how they are."

He waved a dismissive hand.

"Chloe' s back in town, we ran into each other, that' s all."

A drunken dare.

He expected me to believe that, after ten years of whispered promises, of shared dreams in stolen moments.

The faces of our mutual friends, their cheerful congratulations, flashed in my mind.

They weren' t congratulating a dare.

They were celebrating a reunion they believed was a decade in the making.

My ten years with him, erased by a single, public declaration for another woman.

The humiliation burned, a bitter taste in my mouth.

I just looked at him, the man I thought I knew.

He was a stranger now, his easy lie more painful than the post itself.