Chapter 2

That necklace had been with him every single day, pressed close to his skin.

Tucked away with all the love he still carried for Clara.

I hesitated for a moment, then pulled out my phone and sent a message to my best friend.

She replied fast, a string of shocked reactions following close behind.

"Abroad? Are you insane???"

"You and Ethan are literally about to get married — you want to go study overseas now? What about your future husband?"

"A catch like him isn't going to wait around for three years."

"Wait, something happened, didn't it?"

"Did Ethan do something? Did he cheat? Did he change his mind?"

Not exactly.

His heart had never belonged to me to begin with.

I filled my best friend Zoe in on what happened at the bridal shop.

She called me immediately on FaceTime.

"Yvonne, you need to think this through."

"Your two families have been tied together for years. Missing someone from the past isn't exactly a deal-breaker."

"We've all watched how well he treats you. You can't throw that away over one moment."

I knew all of that.

But the thing that breaks a camel's back is never just one straw.

And my decision to leave Ethan wasn't about this one thing either.

By any reasonable measure, I had no business marrying Ethan at all.

He was the heir to one of the most powerful families in the city.

I was just the illegitimate daughter of the Shaws. A secret. An afterthought.

The family's real daughter was Clara.

And we couldn't have been more different.

Clara was the product of two great families coming together in love.

She was the princess everyone adored, raised in warmth and admiration.

Following the path life had laid out for her, she would have married into the most prestigious family in the city. She would have gone from the cherished Shaw daughter to the celebrated Mrs. Crawford.

And I would have spent my life in some quiet, forgotten corner. Invisible.

But life doesn't follow anyone's plan.

An accident. A car crash. Clara was gone.

Her father's hair turned white overnight.

Ethan aged ten years in what felt like moments.

Ethan swore he'd never remarry.

But the Shaw family wasn't ready to let go of the connection — or the power that came with it.

Using my mother's life as leverage, they pressured and maneuvered until they managed to send me in Clara's place.

I was living under someone else's roof. I didn't have a choice.

I had to do what I'd always done since arriving at the Shaws'.

Walk carefully. Make myself useful. Keep everyone satisfied.

I paid close attention to Ethan's preferences. I showed up exactly when he needed someone. I quietly imitated the way Clara used to speak and move, hoping to earn even a fraction of his sympathy.

Ethan was sharp. There was no way he hadn't noticed.

But he never once called me out for it.

And unlike the Shaws, he never looked at me with that cold, dismissive stare — the kind that reminded you exactly how little you mattered.

Instead, he'd gently suggest I change out of something that didn't suit me, his voice easy and unhurried.

"Yvonne, you don't have to do this."

"You're a good person. But my heart already belongs to Clara."

In the end, he agreed to let me stay.

On one condition: he would never love me.

That was fine. Staying was enough.

I had no way to escape the Shaw family's grip on my life.

And Ethan had no way out of the grief that still followed him everywhere.

I needed his protection. He needed someone to take care of things.

And so, in this strange and distant kind of arrangement, we held each other up and walked through seven years together.

In those seven years, my mother's health stabilized, and I earned a place at a university abroad.

The day I received my acceptance letter, I said goodbye to Ethan — politely, calmly, like it was nothing.

But in the second before my flight was supposed to take off, Ethan appeared.

He got every plane on the tarmac grounded.

And then he searched that airport for me. For a long, long time.