Chapter 1

I was addressing our wedding invitations when Louis Stephens pulled me into a resale group chat.

My swimsuit photo and my contact information were pinned to the top.

"Slightly used girlfriend for sale. Fifty bucks, local pickup. Any takers?"

The chat exploded.

"Delete that! Someone's going to track her down and harass her!"

"Yeah, sort out your fight in private!"

Louis lounged back on the couch, typing lazily.

"Fay's divorced. I want to take her abroad for a year to clear her head, so the wedding gets pushed back a year. What right does Dorothy Pruitt have to say no?"

"I've already planned the whole trip. If she keeps being unreasonable, fine, we just won't get married."

Someone tried to talk him down.

"Come on, Louis, don't say things you'll regret. Aren't you afraid someone actually walks off with your girl?"

Louis scoffed.

"Afraid? Besides me, what other man could ever catch her eye?"

The corner of my mouth twitched. I quietly dropped the invitations into the trash.

Later, I got into the luxury car parked downstairs.

Louis chased after it, falling once and then again.

I never looked back.

1

Just as I was about to put my phone down, someone new joined the chat.

"Five billion for pickup?"

Almost in the same second, a message came through to me.

"Dorothy, he doesn't deserve you. Come back to me."

Louis's pupils shrank. He shot upright.

"Alden Simmons?"

The chat went wild.

"Head of Simmons Group, the top name in L.A. business?"

"Five billion is nothing to him."

"She's pretty, sure, and a Stanford honors grad, but she's not worth anywhere near that."

Everyone was tagging Alden Simmons, telling him she wasn't worth it, that it was fifty dollars.

He replied with just one line: "She is worth it. But what gives certain people the right to treat her this way?"

Louis eyed me suspiciously a few times, then slumped back into the couch.

"Fake. Alden Simmons isn't someone people in our circle can even reach, and he'd never look twice at Dorothy."

The next second, Alden Simmons was kicked from the chat.

Another message popped up on my phone.

"Dorothy?"

"Just say something back to me, okay? Don't shut me out."

Before I could answer, friend requests kept flooding in, the words in them filthy.

"Nice body, gorgeous. Can I take a test run?"

"Fifty's steep. Free shipping?"

My hands were shaking as I turned off my friend-request setting. Then I sent a message to our family and friends group: the wedding was canceled.

Louis walked over, his tone the tone of a man delivering a decision.

"Dorothy, I'll say it one more time. I'm taking Fay abroad."

A minute ago he'd said his childhood friend Fay Mason was divorced, and he wanted to take her away for a year to help her recover.

I blanked for a second. "Are you joking?"

Two minutes later, he'd dumped me into a few resale groups.

One of them, he'd added me by mistake.

Five years together, and he was selling me off as secondhand for fifty bucks.

Then I didn't want him either.

I didn't even lift my head.

"Fine. I have no objection."

His eyes lit up.

"So the wedding?"

"Already canceled."

Only then did he notice the invitations in the trash. He clicked his tongue.

"Why'd you throw those out? We'll just need them again next year."

I frowned.

"Aren't you going to pack? Weren't you leaving today?"

Maybe he picked up that something was off with me, because he started volunteering his itinerary.

"I'm taking Fay to Iceland, the Arctic, Africa, and finally South America. Basically just one loop around the globe."

Just one loop around the globe?

I remembered what he'd told me before.

He didn't like traveling, because it was crowded and expensive and the experience was bad.

So in five years together, the farthest he ever took me was the free park across from our apartment complex.

Even when I suggested a honeymoon in the next city over, he shut me down flat:

"Five days away? What about the hospital? My surgeries are backed up as it is. Am I supposed to just abandon my patients?"

"Dorothy, can you be a little more sensible? If you want to travel, why not wait until we're old and we've got money and time to spare?"

So for me, travel had to wait until we were old.

But Fay didn't have to wait, and she could even make him push the wedding back.

"I've applied for unpaid leave from the hospital. My colleagues will cover my work, so it won't affect anything."

"And you don't need to worry about money either. Didn't your mom say your family isn't asking for a bride price? That twenty thousand can just be our travel fund."

When I still didn't respond, irritation came off him in waves.

"A trip around the world takes at least three years. I'm only going for one. The schedule's already packed tight."

"You have to understand, Fay only miscarried six months ago. A schedule this rushed will wear her out, and it's bad for her recovery..."

"Louis."

I cut him off, my voice level.

"I agreed to your world trip. I canceled the wedding. I have no objection to any of it. What else is there for you to be unhappy about?"

He pressed his lips together and said nothing.

"Since there isn't anything, could you delete those messages in the resale group?"

His expression clearly faltered.

"You saw?"