Greg and Sue are what renewed my faith in love. Because of them, I was convinced that I would one day meet the man of my dreams. A man who would look at me the same way Greg looks at her.

There’s no way that he could cheat on her with another woman.

It’s simply not something I can wrap my head around. I refuse to.

“How could he do this to me, Lila? How could he do this to us?” she whispers. The tears stream down her face endlessly now. Her eyes are hollow. Tired. She suddenly looks exhausted, her pain reflected in her eyes.

“What makes you think he’s cheating on you? The Greg that I know loves you more than anything in the world.”

“Apparently not,” she says sarcastically.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me. You two are literally the dream couple. I can’t understand why he would sabotage that, for any reason. It just doesn’t make any sense,” I murmur.

My heart sinks into my stomach as I stare at my best friend. The pain in her eyes pierces through my heart like a knife. I want to kill Greg for hurting her like this, yet a part of me still can’t believe it.

“Tell me what happened. What makes you think he’s cheating?” I ask.

“His email has been logged in on my phone from the last time he used it when we were on vacation, and he lost his phone. I’ve never opened it before, but I did today to get flight details that were sent to his email since I needed to make sure I wasn’tdouble booking him. I opened it, and there were all these…emails,” she says, a tremor in her voice.

“For the past five months, he’s been communicating with this woman. Some bitch named Julie. She’s in Denver. He’s traveled to Denver six times in the past five months, Lila, for ‘work.’ Each time he stayed a week there.”

Shit!

“It doesn’t exactly say ‘hey, we’re having an affair,’ but they’re probably just trying to keep it under the radar. I found a bunch of receipts of payments he’s made to this woman over the last few months. Payments he never told me anything about. We tell each other everything, Lila! Why would he keep this from me if he weren’t—” she breaks, unable to keep talking.

Shit! Shit!

“It doesn’t say what the payment is for, but why else would he be sending another woman money?”

Shit! Shit! Shit!

“I’m so sorry, Sue. I—I don’t even know what to say. Greg doesn’t seem like the type. Have you said anything to him about it?”

She shakes her head repeatedly, sniffling.

“I wouldn’t even know what to say to him. I left the house as soon as I saw it. I just needed to get away,” she explains.

“I don’t know what to do, Lila. What do I do?” she asks, teary, hollow eyes looking to me for help.

But I have no answer, so I just sit there staring at her like a deer in the headlights.

Chapter 6

Nightmares

Lila

Nine Years Ago

I arch my back, stretching in hopes of loosening the tight knot that seems to have formed at the base of my spine. That’s what I get for sitting in this position for the past three hours, looking through the catalogue of wedding dresses that I got from the bridal store.

I need to wrap this up before Seth gets out of the shower, because I know how he hates seeing me stressed, even if that stress is because of me planning our wedding. I feel so lucky and blessed to be getting married to him. There’s a slight change to the flow of the running water in the bathroom, giving me a heads up that it probably won’t be much longer till he’s out.

The last few months have been hectic, planning my wedding, but I’ve had a lot of help from my mom and sister, Joanne. Not to mention his family has also been as supportive as can be. I’d do it a hundred times over, if it means that I get to spend the rest of my life with the man of my dreams.

A silly smile stretches out on my lips as I twirl a lock of my hair around my fingertips. Everything about the wedding is already set. It certainly helps that his family is wealthy and paying for it, so there has been no delay. Almost as soon as he proposed, we had a wedding date picked out, and now, that day is only two weeks away. My big day.

I can’t believe I’m about to be Mrs. Seth Michaels! A little squeal of excitement makes its way past my lips, the grin almost splitting my face in half at this point. But I stop myself with a reminder that Seth is only a couple of feet away.