Chapter 1

Before our engagement, my fiancé Sebastian Wright led me to the vault in his family's Manhattan penthouse and told me to pick any ring I wanted.

Some of them were worth eight figures. I chose a plain platinum band in the corner, priced at three thousand two hundred dollars.

Sebastian caught my hand and laughed.

"So easy to please. Don't come crying to me later."

But at our engagement party, when the master of ceremonies opened the ring box in front of two hundred guests, what lay inside was a nine-dollar plastic ring from a gumball machine.

The ballroom exploded with laughter.

Sebastian leaned back in his chair, entirely at ease.

"Just curing you women of that awful habit of comparing engagement rings."

Before I could speak, his childhood friend Delilah Ashford, seated at the head table, covered her mouth and giggled.

On her ring finger sat the eight-figure diamond from the vault.

Sebastian noticed me staring and frowned.

"She closed a major deal for the company. I gave it to her as a bonus. You're not going to nitpick something like that, are you?"

His mother, Vivienne, smiled and smoothed the moment over.

"Darling, if you really want to marry into this family, you can't be so fixated on money and jewelry."

I stared down at the plastic ring for a few seconds, then suddenly laughed.

"Sebastian."

"Do you really think I can't live without you?"

The room went quiet for a breath.

Sebastian seemed genuinely surprised. His eyebrow lifted, and then he laughed.

"Ivy, this is our engagement party. Don't say things you don't mean when you're sulking."

He reached for my hand, his voice almost patient.

"Nine dollars or three thousand—what's the difference to you? You said yourself you didn't care about the price. It was just a joke."

I looked down at his outstretched hand and didn't move.

So this is what it looks like when someone is certain you'll never leave. Even humiliation gets rebranded as a joke.

Vivienne rose to take my arm.

"Ivy, darling, Sebastian is just blunt sometimes. You two are going to spend your lives together. Are you really going to make a scene over a ring? People are watching."

I gently pulled my arm free.

"They've already watched."

Her smile stiffened.

Across the head table, Delilah finally seemed to register the shift. She hurried to slip the diamond off her finger.

"Ivy, if you really love it, you can have it back."

She held it out.

Sebastian's hand closed over hers before I could respond.

"What I gave you is yours."

He said it as naturally as breathing, then turned back to me.

"You've always hated fighting over things like this."

Something in me almost wanted to laugh.

Yes. I never fought.

Which meant, all these years, one sentence from Sebastian—"You're the reasonable one"—and I would step aside automatically.

Delilah said the wedding photographer wasn't refined enough. He replaced them.

Delilah had a nut allergy, so he had every dessert removed from our engagement menu without telling me.

I'd never thought any of it worth mentioning.

Until tonight, when I finally understood: if you don't push back for long enough, people stop believing you have a line at all.

I slipped the plastic ring off and set it back in the box.

"All right, then."

Sebastian frowned. "What do you mean, all right?"

I didn't answer. I picked up my clutch and walked out.

Someone behind me whispered that he should chase after me.

Sebastian's voice was mild. "Don't bother. She'll come back once she's calmed down."

My steps didn't slow.

The night air hit me as I stepped out onto Park Avenue.

I made my first call to the wedding planner.

"Margaret. Cancel October eighteenth. All of it."

She paused for two full seconds. "All of it?"

"All of it."

"And Mr. Wright—"

"Don't ask him about anything."

I looked back at the enormous engagement placard by the hotel entrance and felt, absurdly, lighter.

"The wedding is mine. I'm not having one."

The second call went to my attorney.

"I need a full itemization of my contributions to the apartment and the parking spot. Tomorrow morning."

The third call was to the director of the Paris atelier.

Six months earlier, she'd invited me to Paris for a year as a co-designer at Maison Lévrier. I'd turned it down because the wedding was too close.

When she picked up, I asked one question.

"Is the position still open?"

She laughed. "For you, always."

I stood at the curb, and for the first time I did not look back at the hotel.

"Good," I said. "I'm coming."