The night before our wedding, my fiancé looked me in the eye and said, ‘My parents found someone better for me.’

The night before our wedding, Ethan Carter stood in the doorway of my apartment, still dressed in the suit he had picked for our rehearsal dinner. He didn’t sit. He didn’t reach for me. He simply looked at me with that distant, practiced expression people wear when they’ve already accepted they’re about to hurt you.

“I’m sorry, Paige,” he said. “My parents found someone better for me.”

For a moment, I thought I must have heard him wrong. Better? As if I were something to be upgraded. As if love were a business deal and I had lost the contract.

I let out a laugh, because the truth was too humiliating to accept right away. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”