Chapter 1

I stayed by Carter’s side during his hardest five years, only to finally get his proposal.

The night before our engagement party, I made him a plate of handmade spaghetti.

It was his birthday.

I took half a day off work, simmered the sauce for four hours, and hand-wrote every single wedding invitation.

But when he came home, there was a woman in a white dress standing behind him.

It was Seraphina, the first love he had pined over for years.

Sera saw the food on the table and smiled softly.

"Carter has a very sensitive stomach now, Chloe. He probably isn’t used to this kind of home-cooked stuff anymore, right?"

Carter took off his coat and draped it naturally over her shoulders.

"She spent a long time making it. Just have a few bites."

It sounded like a favor. Like charity.

Sera sat in my usual seat and twirled a single strand of pasta.

"It's a bit salty."

Carter looked at me.

"Put less salt next time."

I quietly said okay.

But the next second, he slid a black card in front of me.

"Sera just returned to the country and has nowhere to stay. She’ll be staying in our new house for now."

"You should go stay at Helen’s place for a while. There’s plenty of cash on the card. Don’t make things hard for yourself."

I looked at the spaghetti clumping together, then at the invitations with our names on them.

The handwriting was so neat, yet so ridiculous.