Page 1 of One Weekend in London

Prologue

SADIE

GARRISON, GEORGIA

Everyone’s eyes are fixated on me.

For others, it’s a regular day at the Garrison Bean Bar, my favorite coffee shop.

But for me, it’s as if I’m some sort of rare specimen trapped under a microscope, unable to move or breathe without everybody and their mama taking notes.

It’s as expected as it is disheartening.

Small Southern towns like Garrison, where I was born and raised, are infamous for their never-ending gossip.

And ever since the day I left Maxwell, the mayor’s eldest son and my cheating ex-fiancé, standing at the altar, I’ve been the star of nearly every whispered, cruel story.

I just want it all to end.

My hands shake, the warmth of the piping hot latte I hold doing little to quell the coldness rolling through me, embedding itself into the marrow of my bones.

“Ignore ’em, Sadie Lou.”

Fighting to keep my chin from wobbling, I set my mug down and look up, meeting the gaze of my papaw Boone, the man who raised me after I spent the first three years of my life bouncing around in foster care.

With his faded blue eyes filling with a dangerous combination of sympathy, annoyance, and downright anger, he’s clearly ready to throw a full-blown hissy fit.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he takes a long pull of his peach-infused sweet tea and covers my ringless hand with his own, his skin calloused and weathered from years of hard work.

“Put some starch in that spine of yours and sit tall. Because, darlin’, it doesn’t matter how much that beautiful heart of yours is shatterin’. You ain’t a kicked dog, so you ain’t gonna act like it.”

He’s right about one thing—my heart is shattering. It has been for the past three months since I discovered my ex’s betrayal. Only, it isn’t close to fracturing into a million irreparable little pieces for the reasons most would think.

It’s not the cheating or failed nuptials.

No, what kills me is how foolish I was.

For six years, ever since I was a naïve senior in high school, I allowed Maxwell to cover my eyes with wool, choosing not to see the glaring red flags that, looking back now, were clear to everyone from the start... except me.

Red flags that all pointed to my high school sweetheart, the snake I was hours away from vowing my happily ever after to, being a heartless and deceiving scumbag.

I could kick myself for being so oblivious.

The constant backhanded comments and lack of intimacy, to the stream of “overtime” he clocked at his father’s law firm and the late nights he spent at the “gym,” were all pieces of a puzzle I refused to assemble.

A treacherous facade I was too blind to see through.

And the other woman? Vanessa was my maid of honor. Not to mention my best friend. She had been since preschool. Now, in my eyes, she’s nothing but a backstabbing hussy. And right or wrong, I wish her a fate as painful as her cutting betrayal. Perhaps a kidney stone the size of a golf ball.

Is it petty of me? Sure.

Does she deserve it? Absolutely.

Don’t get me wrong, Maxwell’s infidelity stings more than any white-hot brand ever could. Yet having my best friend stab me in the back by carrying on an affair and sleeping with my future husband—on the day of my wedding, no less—is a different type of hurt.

I fear I’ll never get over it.

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