Prologue
JADE: NOW
Heartbreak has to be the worst of all emotions. It settles in your chest, digging around until it’s carved a spot big enough to fit in, then refuses to budge. It bleeds and aches, whining loudly. Wailing, in fact. It demands your attention in bucket-loads—you can’t ignore the constant sound ringing in your ears. It’s non-stop, needing to feed off your pain. It thrives on it, and because it’s in your soul in every fiber of your body, you have no way of escaping it.
None.
It owns you until time heals you as best as it can, or you become bitter and twisted.
I’m probably at the latter stage now.
All because of my best friend, my husband. The love of my fucking life, apparently.
What a crock of shit.
Vows are supposed to mean something. They’re not just words you repeat in front of witnesses. They’re promises. Sacred. Binding. Forever.
We chose ours. Every word mattered. Every promise deliberate.
I promise to always love and honor you above anything else, to be faithful always. You are my one, my beginning and end. I will love you forever with every fiber of my being.
It was all a lie.
Chapter One
JADE: THEN
I’m sweating, and it’s so obvious in my thin shirt that clings to me in this ridiculous heat. I hate this—whoever decided pool parties are the way to celebrate being eighteen didn’t factor in bigger girls like me who don’t like to show their bodies. You know what I mean—I’m usually the fat friend or the ‘funny one,’ so the thought of squeezing myself into a bathing suit, or god forbid, a bikini, is absolutely not going to happen.
Not now, not ever.
Even when I’m on vacation with my parents, I’m in a full-on oversized shirt or something.
Tanning?
What’s that?
The only color I go is tomato red, and that’snotsexy.
But I’m here because he asked me to be, and to be honest, I’d do anything for him.
Devon. Everyone calls him Dev, except me. He’s been my best friend since kindergarten, my entire fucking world.
“Jade!” His deep voice rumbles from the pool, and I cringe, knowing what he’s going to say.
Please don’t.
But he does, ofcoursehe does. Because he’s Devon, and he thinks the sun shines out of my ass.
My large, pale ass.
“Get in here!” He grins at me, and my heart swells in my chest. He’s so beautiful, honestly, I could just die. His dirty blond hair is wet and slicked to his head, his dark lashes framing blue eyes I've compared to countless skies and oceans. His body—Christ, hisbody—shimmers with pool water under the heat of the sun, tanning his olive skin and making him even more perfect.
I sigh.
Even his abs have abs.
“I’m good!” I yell back, feeling the heat climbing from my neck to my cheeks as everyone turns to look at me.
