Chapter 1

I'm the most famous marriage-desperate woman in Merrowfield.

But every time my fiancé, Gavin Northwood, and I try to hold a wedding, disaster strikes.

The first time, his mother fell down a staircase and broke her leg.

The second time, Scout, the dog Gavin had raised for eight years, died of poisoning.

The third time, my mother was struck by a falling sign and critically injured.

The fourth time, the fifth time... every attempt after that ended with someone close to us getting hurt.

I hated that curse, and on my thirtieth birthday I dragged Gavin out to see a spiritual adviser and have it stripped off us for good.

Before we left, I happened to see a group chat on his phone called "Operation: Protect Gavin and Serena."

One name came straight into my head.

Serena Colebrook.

Gavin's first love, and my stepsister.

I stared for a long time before I opened the chat with shaking hands.

The pinned announcement at the top read: "Twenty-ninth successful operation preventing Gavin Northwood from marrying Maris Ellington."

The members were my mother, Gavin's mother, my stepsister, Gavin himself, and my best friend, Paige Merrick.

Everything came clear in an instant.

My heart clenched hard, but I only opened my own phone, my face perfectly blank.

It doesn't matter. Who says the man I'm desperate to marry has to be Gavin Northwood?

I looked at the message that other man had sent me.

"Didn't we agree that if you still weren't married at thirty, you'd marry me?"

I answered calmly.

"Yes. I'll be there."

Chapter 1

The second my message went through, Gavin Northwood came out, dressed and ready.

He caught me setting his phone face down exactly where I'd found it.

His expression darkened instantly, and he strode over and snatched it away.

"Maris, you know I don't like other people touching my phone."

I still hadn't come all the way back from what I'd just seen.

I kept my face cold and asked him, "Gavin, are you hiding something from me?"

His brows drew together, and the answer came out of him too fast.

"Because I don't like people digging into my privacy, now you suspect me?

"We've been together ten years and you don't trust me even that much?"

When I said nothing, he seemed to hear how defensive he sounded, and his voice softened.

"Don't be ridiculous. I don't keep secrets from you."

A cold smile tugged at my mouth.

Whenever somebody hit a sore spot, he attacked first. Every time.

Even the way his lashes moved when he lied hadn't changed.

The last thin thread of hope in me snapped.

I turned, sat down on the couch, and looked at my nails.

"Forget it. I'm tired. I don't want to see the adviser anymore."

Exasperation spread over his face at once, as though I were a child throwing a fit.

"You were the one who wouldn't stop pushing me to go yesterday. Why are you always up and down like this?"

Right then his phone rang.

The instant he saw who was calling, the anger in his eyes melted into something gentle.

"Mm. Whatever you want."

"I've got something to take care of. Think about what I said."

His black sedan pulled away from the house.

I clenched my fists, then hailed a cab and followed him anyway.

The sedan finally stopped somewhere painfully familiar.

Paige Merrick's wedding-planning studio.

I looked in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

One glance was enough to knock the air out of me.

My stepsister, Serena Colebrook, was trying on a wedding dress.

Scout, the dog who was supposed to be dead of poisoning, bounced around her feet.

Margaret Northwood, who was supposed to have shattered her leg in a fall, was hurrying back and forth in perfect health, helping Serena compare styles.

My own mother, Denise Ellington, who was supposed to be flat on her back after a serious injury, crouched on the floor arranging Serena's hem.

And Paige, who'd told me just last night she had "something really important" on today, stood off to the side gushing.

"Serena, look at you. Look how beautiful you are."

Gavin's eyes followed Serena everywhere, full of a tenderness I'd never once seen turned on me.

My fingertips shook with the ache of it.

I could still see myself holding a barely breathing Scout, crying until my chest tore open.

Years ago, the spiritual adviser Elias Vance had told me Gavin and I were badly matched, and that marrying him would bring disaster.

I hadn't believed it at first, but the disasters really did start coming, one after another.

After what happened to Scout, Gavin disappeared for an entire month.

He drove me half insane, leaving me to blame myself every single day while I waited for word from him and begged to be forgiven.

When Margaret broke her leg, I even quit my job so I could take care of her.

After my mother was badly hurt, I cried until there was nothing left in me and finally believed every word Vance had said.

I climbed the steps of Hollowpine Abbey on my knees, stopping to bow every third step until the skin split open, because I thought I had to scrub some curse off myself.

And now their happiness, bright and loud in front of me, turned every one of those sacrifices into proof of how stupid I'd been, and it hurt so badly I could hardly stay upright.

I couldn't help myself. I messaged Gavin: "I'm sick."

He answered in seconds. "Medicine's in the nightstand. Get it yourself. You're thirty. Learn to be independent."

When I looked up again, he was already back at Serena's side, as though the message had never arrived.

My eyes stung.

It hadn't always been like this.

Once, whenever I got sick, he wouldn't leave my side for a second.

He'd cool my fever with damp cloths, make soup, and blow on every spoonful before he fed it to me.

Only now did it come back to me that everything had started changing the day Serena came home from abroad.

He started drifting, and he stopped hearing anything I said.

He hid parts of his social feed so I couldn't tell where he was anymore.

I'd believed ten years with me was enough to thaw Gavin out, enough to make him let go of the girl he'd wanted and never had.

And I'd assumed that Serena, after all that time studying overseas, would look down on him even harder than she used to.

But that awkward boy had grown into a polished, successful man, and Serena changed her mind.

And some corner of Gavin had never stopped belonging to her.

If he was always going to choose the other woman, why keep humiliating myself?

My phone buzzed again. It was the other man.

"Maris, are you serious about this?"

I didn't hesitate.

"Completely."

Chapter 2

When I got home, I started packing without a second thought.

Gavin didn't come back until after dark.

As usual, he didn't notice anything different about me.

"Maris, I brought you a present."

He pushed a blue gift box toward me with two fingers.

I met the gentle smile in his eyes, and what I felt was complicated.

Right then a social-media alert pushed through on my phone.

Serena Colebrook had announced her wedding, loudly and publicly.

I glanced at the cover image on the notification.

Behind a table spread with gold jewelry sat a mountain of guest favors.

The same blue gift box that was sitting in front of me.

A cold smile pulled at my mouth.

I thanked Gavin with nothing behind it.

He seemed to relax. "As long as you like it."

Then he turned and went into the bathroom.

I opened Serena's announcement video.

So Gavin had proposed to her at the airport the day she came home.

"Serena, before you left, you told me my wedding had to be saved for you.

"So no matter how hard it got, I kept my wedding for you all these years."

His eyes were earnest and his voice broke.

As though the wedding he'd promised me were nothing but an obstacle in the way of his devotion.

My mother, Gavin's mother Margaret, and Paige were all there, proud of themselves for the part they'd played in wrecking my weddings.

The moment Serena nodded, they all rushed in to hug her, glowing like fans whose favorite couple had finally gotten together for real.

My mind went blank for a moment, and what arrived before the anger was a dull ache in my chest.

So all those years of pain came down to one careless sentence Serena had said ten years ago.

And everyone around me had known the two of them were promised to each other all along.

The video cut to a montage of their past together.

They kicked through the surf at Coralhaven, fed the gulls at Lake Vireo, chased migrating whales off the Solmere Coast, and waited up for the northern lights in North Aster.

Every one of those days was a day Gavin had told me he was traveling for work.

In ten years, he never took me anywhere.

He always said he was busy. In school it was wait until summer break. After graduation it was wait until the honeymoon.

My chest tightened anyway, whether I wanted it to or not.

The last frame of the video was the wedding date.

Two days from now.

I closed my phone, thinking.

Gavin came out of the bathroom right then.

I asked him out of nowhere, "Two days from now. Do you want to get married?"

He froze for a second, then came over and put an arm around my waist.

"You're not worried about me anymore? What if we try to get married and something happens again?"

There was a smile at the corner of his mouth, as though he were certain I'd back down.

I just met his eyes, cold. "I want to. Are you marrying me or not?"

Irritation flickered between his brows, but he kept his voice soft.

"Of course. But I had the adviser run the dates, and the best one for us is four days from now."

He said it like the most reasonable thing in the world, without a trace of guilt on him.

A cold smile lifted the corner of my mouth.

"No. I want the day after tomorrow."

Gavin's face went dark instantly, his chest rising and falling hard.

"Are you really that desperate to get married? No wonder all of Merrowfield laughs at you for it.

"Even Paige says it about you behind your back. You really ought to take a hard look at yourself.

"Do you have any idea how much this embarrasses me?"

Marriage-crazy.

The phrase went straight through me.

Back when Gavin and I first got together, somebody mocked me for chasing after a man and called it pathetic.

Gavin got into a brawl with him over it, just to settle the score for me.

That night the moon was bright and clear, and he made me a promise through a split lip.

"Maris, I'll marry you before we're twenty-five."

After that, I spent every year waiting — waiting to put on an apron and be somebody's wife, waiting for ordinary dinners across a table from him.

But one year dragged into the next, hope collapsed again and again, and in the end I became the joke of all Merrowfield.

Gavin was the one who taught me to expect it. Now Gavin was the one calling me marriage-crazy.

My throat closed up, and nothing came out.

There was just one thing he didn't know.

Two days from now, I was getting married. Absolutely.

Whether he showed up or not.

Chapter 3

When I said nothing, Gavin seemed to realize he'd gone too far.

He stepped forward to take my hand.

But he'd barely taken two steps when his phone rang.

The corner of his mouth lifted right away, and he tossed one line over his shoulder.

"Get some rest. Don't wait up for me."

Then he turned and walked out.

This time I didn't make a scene.

I just quietly took the invitations out of the drawer.

I wrote in the names, one card at a time.

Then I booked the venue I'd dreamed about for years.

When it was all done, I felt lighter than I had in my whole life.

The next day, though, Gavin came storming to the house with Serena.

"Maris, was this you?"

I looked into his eyes, blazing with anger, and asked him back, "Was what me?"

The cold in his gaze felt like it could drown me.

"Serena's wedding venue burned. That was you, wasn't it?

"How did I never notice you were this jealous?"

I stared at him, unable to believe it.

"What makes you think I had anything to do with it?"

He gave a harsh laugh. "Then tell me why you suddenly had to have me marry you tomorrow. You found out, didn't you?"

He'd barely finished when my mother, Margaret, and Paige all came charging in just as furious.

"Exactly. If Serena hadn't asked whether it might've been you, we'd all still be in the dark.

"You're too greedy. A marriage-crazy woman like you doesn't come close to Serena. Gavin puts you up in a house like this and you ought to be grateful!"

Paige gave me a sideways look, disgust all over her face.

My mother and Margaret, by contrast, wore nothing but disappointment.

"Maris, honey, it isn't that I'm playing favorites. But you really shouldn't have done that to Serena. She's still your sister. You can't even let her have one wedding?"

"That's right, Maris. I've already accepted you as my daughter-in-law. It's only a wedding. Did you have to destroy it?"

They went back and forth over me until the words were deep enough to drown in, as though I were some heartless, unforgivable criminal.

Serena stood behind them the whole time, playing the good girl, generous and unruffled.

The absurdity of it hit me so hard I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I cut the whole performance off. "All of you, be quiet! After all these years, aren't you the ones who betrayed me?"

That's right. For Serena.

Every one of them had betrayed me.

Serena had been the child everyone else's parents held up as an example.

Pretty, clever, always quick with the right thing to say.

She always showed people the best version of herself and kept every one of them charmed — not like me, with everything written on my face and my words always coming out clumsy.

That was exactly why my mother spent the family's savings sending her overseas to study.

Paige, who used to say "Maris is the best person in the world," turned into Serena's biggest fan the moment they met.

She forgot that when her parents were gravely ill, I was the one who begged Gavin for a job for her, which is how she saved enough to open her studio.

Margaret, who used to tell everyone how lucky she was to get me as a daughter-in-law, forgot everything I'd done to win her over, and forgot the nights I went without sleep taking care of her when she was ill.

Watching them all wind up to argue back, the anger closed around my throat.

That was when Serena stepped forward.

"Maris, I know you're unhappy. But I never wanted marriage at all. Gavin's the only person I've ever loved.

"It's just a wedding. Let me have it, all right?"

Her lips trembled and her eyes filled.

Everyone crowded around to comfort her and turned resentful faces on me.

Scout wouldn't stop barking, and the moment one of Serena's tears hit the floor, he lunged at me like he meant to bite.

I stumbled backward in fright, knocked over a glass, hit the wall, and split my head open.

But when I opened my eyes through the dizziness, all of them were fussing over the cut on Serena's leg from the broken glass.

My mother was even swearing at me. "Honestly, Maris. Thirty years old and still this careless!"

Gavin didn't spare me so much as a glance. He scooped Serena up in his arms and left me one cold line.

"We're taking Serena to get her leg looked at. You stay here and think about what you've done."

The door slammed hard.

But my heart had stopped hurting.

I pushed myself up off the floor, called a courier, and shipped my things out, box by box.

Chapter 4

When Gavin got back, he noticed the bandage on my head.

He asked me anxiously how I'd gotten hurt.

I didn't stop writing out the invitations.

I just said coldly, "It's nothing."

He saw the invitations, and a smile curved his mouth instantly.

"Still thinking about marrying me, Maris?

"Fine, I'll give you that. Once Serena's wedding is over, I'll marry you a couple of days after.

"Go try on dresses yourself. Just tell me the venue when it's time."

I made a noise of agreement, too tired to deal with him.

Smiling all over his face, he kissed my forehead and went out in high spirits.

A cold smile pulled at my own mouth.

There'd be no waiting a couple of days. My wedding was tonight.

But just as everything was set, #SerenaColebrookTheOtherWoman shot straight to the top of the trending list.

The post laid out, at length, exactly how the Northwood Group CEO's fiancée's stepsister had worked her way in.

The comment section was having a field day.

I knew instantly whose hand was behind it, and a smile I couldn't have named crossed my face.

A second later, Gavin and Serena burst through the door.

"Maris, I never imagined you were this kind of person! And to think I called you my sister!"

She'd stripped off her usual meekness and gone straight on the attack.

I looked at her coldly and almost laughed.

Before I could react, a hand cracked across my face.

"How did I give birth to something like you?

"Over a man, you'd destroy your own sister's reputation?"

My mother's blow knocked my head sideways, and I found myself looking straight into Gavin's eyes, cold enough to frighten anyone.

"Maris, go apologize to Serena and I'll still give you your wedding."

I forced the tears back down out of my eyes.

"I don't need it."

Paige let out a scornful little laugh.

"Gavin, what did I tell you? Nobody knows what Maris is like better than I do. She isn't in Serena's league."

Margaret took my hand with all the false warmth she had.

"Maris, I'm begging you. Go tell the press you were desperate to get married and jealous. Please?"

I pulled my hand free, done wasting energy on any of them.

But the words kept coming from behind me, thick enough to drown in.

"Serena is your sister! How can you be this cruel?"

"Marriage-crazy Maris. She's so cheap it's sickening."

I swallowed the anger and tried to leave, but a grip closed around my arm, hard.

It was Gavin.

He spoke low, right beside my ear.

"Maris, you went too far this time. Even I can't help you now."

The instant he finished, Paige opened the door.

The camera lights hit me full in the face.

Before my eyes could adjust, Gavin was already talking.

"Members of the press, I want to clear up the rumors that are trending right now.

"I have never intended to marry Maris Ellington. There has only ever been Serena.

"Maris is simply desperate to be married, and her jealousy caused all of you this trouble. I apologize on her behalf."

The moment he stopped, footsteps sounded at the door.

The reporters parted to make a path for whoever was coming.

The man wore a black overcoat, and the weight he carried into a room was quiet and expensive.

"Mr. Northwood, are you saying my fiancée is desperate to marry you?"