Chapter 1

During the group photo, I crouched down to pick up a lens cap I'd dropped on the floor.

When I looked up, Dylan had already raised his camera and pointed it straight at Wendy.

I was about to move closer, but I could already see there was no space left for me in the frame.

The colleagues around us laughed under their breath.

"Here we go again. Every time Dylan shoots Wendy, you can just see it in his eyes."

"That's what you call a photographer and his muse. Nobody gets it like they do."

My fingers tightened around the lens cap.

Everyone said they had a natural chemistry.

But nobody remembered that I was the girlfriend he'd been with for four years.

In those four years, he took over a thousand photos of me.

He never edited a single one.

When I complained, he'd just ruffle my hair.

"It's not like you make a living off your looks. Why bother retouching them."

"Natural is better."

Then he'd turn around, open his editing software, and go through Wendy's photos frame by frame.

Carefully. Like he was crafting a grand confession.

Watching his back, I suddenly understood in that moment.

It wasn't that everyone else had misread their relationship.

It was that I had misread my own.

I was never going to be the lead in his story.