There were diamonds on all the cakes, glittering and cascading like waterfalls. Atop them rings sat…one could even say they’d been designed to emulate engagement rings…but I’d been to enough Crowne parties to know they always go all out. The Fourth of July party had four-karat gold in the sand.

When West took a step to me, thumbing my jaw, I was too shell-shocked to stop him.

“Angel, those are my parents. You see his parents. You see the engagement rings.”

“Stop calling me that!”

Fear ripped through me.

The cake. The parents.

“Give me one more fucking chance, Angel. It was a mistake I made years ago. I messed up. I shouldn’t have taken your virginity that way. I shouldn’t have ghosted you. You’re a dream I can’t stop reliving.”

He thumbed my jaw, and this time I swatted his hand away.

“Well, you were my worst fucking nightmare.”

“Goddamn, West,” Gray said, appearing at the best or worst time—I couldn’t decide. His hand found my lower back. “Stop bothering my date. I’d hate to have to knock you out at your own party.”

“My party?” West laughed.

I spun away from Gray, away from them both, needing air. To get out of the room filled with books and diamonds and lies, somewhere dark, somewhere I couldn’t be seen, somewhere I could disappear.

“Yeah, your party, dickhead—Story, wait!” He caught up to me just as I was about to leave the library and grabbed my shoulders. “Where are you going?”

I don’t know how much Gray had overheard. Maybe he’d learned I was lying about my virginity. I should probably be worried about that, worried the small lie that had grown into a massive monster was about to devastate us.

But in this moment it didn’t matter.

“Where am I right now?” I demanded. “What is this?”

“Some benefit.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Please tell me you didn’t bring me to your engagement party. Please tell me you didn’t. Please.”

Forty-Nine

GRAY

“Of course not.” The smile on my face lingered, even as dread wove its way into my gut. I was still high on the night, when I believed I could have it all without consequences, but the tears in her eyes told me the truth.

My mother had been way too fucking nice about me bringing Story.

She’d said she looked lovely.

“I called off the wedding,” I said, more to myself, like it would make it true.

“Champagne, sir.” A server appeared with a tray of golden liquid in a thin flute of crystal.

I waved him away.

Worst fucking timing.

“I called off the wedding, Story,” I repeated.

She shook her head.

The silencing tapping of crystal filled the air like wind chimes, and we both looked to see my mother and Lottie in the center of the room.