At the wedding, Victoria Langley's childhood friend, Spencer Calloway, catches the wedding bouquet that she's just tossed.

He arches a brow at her. "Does this mean I'll have to propose to someone? Well then, Vic, are you willing to elope with me?"

Victoria's bridesmaids begin cheering on him. Amid their loud cheers and giggles, they push Victoria into Spencer's arms.

"Give us a kiss!"

"What's with that shy look, Spencer? Didn't you bury your face into Victoria's chest and hold her while sleeping on the same bed at the bachelorette's party last night?"

Victoria giggles as she pinches one of the bridesmaids. "What's with the ruckus? My husband is still here, you know!"

But the tips of her ears have secretly gone red.

Spencer's lips curl into a wicked smile as he shrugs nonchalantly.

"I'm fine with it. It's just that a certain someone's mooch of a husband will be pissed."

Only then does Victoria turn to look at me. She pinches me on the chin gently while saying to me casually, "C'mon, it's just a joke. Don't be so petty."

Then, she declares, "Let's continue the wedding."

But I wave Victoria's hand away coolly before taking the microphone from the wedding host.

"Spencer wants to crash this wedding, right? Well, I'm taking everything seriously now."

Three days later, Victoria's eyes become red-rimmed as she stands outside the courthouse.

As for me, I've never looked back ever since.

The bridesmaids froze mid-laugh. Guests started whispering.

Victoria Langley grabbed my wrist, her face tight. "Spencer was just messing around. Do you really have to do this?"

She kept her voice low. "Stop making a scene, okay? This is the wedding you've been looking forward to for so long. Grandma is still waiting to see our wedding video."

The night before, my grandmother had one of her rare lucid moments. Her hands trembled as she joined my hand with Victoria's. Victoria knelt at the side of her hospital bed and promised she'd stand by me for the rest of her life.

Then she turned around and spent her bachelorette party all over Spencer Calloway.

My eyes stung. I raised my voice. "Burying your face in his chest and sleeping in the same bed is just messing around?"

The words carried across the entire venue. Every guest swiveled between Victoria and Spencer, gossip written all over their faces.

A flash of embarrassed anger crossed Victoria's face. She snatched the microphone out of my hand and dropped her voice to a warning. "Shut up. Are you trying to destroy this wedding?"

Spencer took the microphone, his tone light. "Sleeping in the same bed? We used to take baths together when we were two, butt naked.

"It's kind of late for the groom to start getting jealous, don't you think?"

It only took him a couple of lines to make the whole thing disappear. I was the one who looked petty.

Victoria's father, Richard Langley, gave Spencer an approving pat on the shoulder, then shot me a contemptuous look. "Spencer's the kind of son-in-law I always wanted. He has a good family, good manners, and knows how to carry himself.

"Not like some people, who have no sense of occasion and reek of poverty."

"Dad!" Victoria cut him off sharply. "Stop it."

She watched my face nervously, her eyes full of guilt and concern. The color drained from my face, and the bitterness in my chest kept spreading.

Ten years ago, my parents went to the coast to celebrate their anniversary. They found Victoria caught in a riptide and went in after her.

Neither of them came back. If they were still alive, I wouldn't be standing here swallowing this.

Spencer folded his arms and curled his lip at me. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me you're actually upset."

He clicked his tongue. "If there was really something going on between us, you think you'd have even gotten a chance with her? Fine, fine. It's all my fault. I'll leave. Happy?"

Victoria's expression changed instantly. She rushed after him, caught him by the waist, then turned back to me with a frown. Her voice was sharp with accusation.

"Spencer flew all the way back from overseas for our wedding. If you can't appreciate that, fine, but what gives you the right to chase him off?"

I looked up and saw Spencer's taunting smile. Suddenly, the whole thing just felt pointless. I pulled the wedding band off my ring finger and threw it at her.

"He doesn't have to leave. I will.

"You want to steal the groom's spot? The ring's all yours."

Victoria's fingers closed tight around the band, and her eyes blazed with fury. "Caleb Mercer, aren't you generous!

"You walk out that door today, and I swear this wedding will have a new groom on the spot!"

"Let him go! I'll wait for him to come crawling back on his knees."

I walked out of the reception hall without looking back, leaving Victoria's furious snarl far behind me.

I flagged down a cab. The driver kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror before carefully speaking up. "Where to, sir?"

I sat in the back seat, the anger churning in my chest slowly dissolving into something blank. Where could I even go?

Not long after my parents died, Grandma, still dazed with grief, got into a car accident. The other party demanded a massive settlement, and I had no choice but to sell the house.

It was pouring that day and I couldn't get a cab. Victoria was the one who showed up on a motorcycle and tore through the rain to get me to the hospital. She pulled off her helmet one-handed, revealing sharp, striking features.

"There's no PIN on it. Use it for now." Before I could react, she shoved a bank card into my hand and walked away.

By the time I sorted everything out and tried to pay her back, she was impossible to reach. Then she showed up out of nowhere, leaning against my shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world, raising an eyebrow at the guy who'd been trying to confess his feelings to her.

"Sorry, no can do. My boyfriend gets jealous."

Her reddish-orange hair caught the sunlight, and just like that, she barged her way into my life.

"Play my boyfriend for now. Just consider it payback for saving your life."

For three years, I followed her around trying to pay her back, and everyone just assumed I was her lovesick, devoted boyfriend. When she wrecked her bike racing outside the city, I was the first one there. When she broke her leg skiing, I brought her meals from the restaurant every day.

Just when I was almost done paying her back, Grandma went missing.

That night, Northridge got hit with the worst snowstorm in a decade. The snow was past knee-deep, and the security footage showed Grandma leaving the house in nothing but a thin sweater.

The police checked over a hundred cameras and couldn't find her. I was losing my mind.

Victoria was the one who rallied tens of thousands of people to search the entire city. The minutes crawled by. The ninth time I collapsed in the snow, she was there, reaching her hand out to me.

"They found her. I already had someone take her to the hospital. She's okay."

I threw my arms around her and sobbed. She wiped my tears awkwardly, trying to keep her voice light. "See? Getting a hug from your girlfriend. It's not a bad deal."

For the first time, I didn't correct her.

"Hey, you alright?" The driver pulled a few tissues from the box and handed them back. That was when I realized my face was already streaked with tears.

"Just drive."

The cab pulled forward, and the scenery on both sides blurred past.

The night before, Victoria had confessed something at Grandma's bedside.

"The person your parents saved at the beach ten years ago was me. My family offered 20 million dollars as a thank-you, but your grandmother turned it down.

"She said you can't put a price on a human life, and that your parents were heroes for what they did."

Her voice softened. "Caleb, we were meant to find each other. I'll love you for the rest of my life, with everything your parents would have given you."

Less than a day later, everything changed. A dull, constricting ache settled in my chest and wouldn't let go.

My phone kept buzzing. It was a video one of the bridesmaids had posted in the wedding group chat.

Spencer was wearing a black-and-gold suit with his arm around Victoria's waist, the two of them laughing as they toasted the guests.

"Someone ditched, so Spencer had to step up last minute."

"Tell me they don't look perfect together. They should just go ahead and make it official."

I held the power button until the screen went dark. For a second, it caught my reflection, cold and still.

"Sir, take me to Kingsgrove Manor."

There was something I needed to find out.

I went straight to the gaming room the moment I stepped out of the cab.

Victoria had hidden a box in here. I caught her once, carefully tucking photos inside. I tried to get a look, but she just laughed and threw herself into my arms. "It's a surprise for when we get married."

So I waited. I kept imagining what might be in that box.

The lock was a four-digit combination. I tried Victoria's birthday, our anniversary, and my birthday, but none of them worked.

My fingers were shaking when I punched in Spencer's birthday, and it opened.

Inside were three thick photo albums, ten sports car keys, and a dark green velvet jewelry case. I opened the first album.

Every page was Spencer, from childhood to the present day. On the back of one photo where a younger Spencer stood on a winner's podium, helmet tucked under his arm, Victoria had written a single line.

"The love of my life. May you always shine."

The date was July 5th, 2016, the day my parents died.

"So you found it." Victoria's voice came from behind me, hoarse. "I did have feelings for Spencer once, but that's all in the past.

"That day, I was going to tell him how I felt, but he just went around hugging everyone, saying we were all like little sisters to him. I never gave him the watch. And every car I bought him after that, I never gave him those either."

"So," I choked out, cutting her off, "the day your confession failed, you got wasted on the beach and the tide pulled you in. And my parents paid for it with their lives."

I was shaking with rage. I lost my parents all because of this absurd, pathetic reason, and then she spent eight years lying to me.

"None of it was a coincidence, was it? You transferred schools out of guilt. You showed up in front of me on purpose. You made sure I owed you 200,000 dollars so I'd spend three years chasing after you."

I stared at her. "Was this all just a game to you, Victoria?"

"No, Caleb, that's not what happened."

Panic flickered across Victoria's face. She reached out to wipe my tears, then felt me flinch and pulled her hand back, trembling.

She took out a lighter and flicked it on. "There's nothing between me and Spencer. Nothing ever happened. If it bothers you this much, then I'll just—"

She tossed the lighter into the box. The flames slowly swallowed the albums.

"If you're still upset, I won't contact him ever again. Is that enough?"

She pulled out her phone, opened her contacts, and started to block and delete Spencer right in front of me. Before she could, Spencer's call came through.

Victoria hesitated for a moment, then answered. "Just one last time. I'll end things with him for good."

Three minutes later, she stormed back in, furious. "Did you upload that video of Spencer catching the bouquet? The whole internet is calling him a player now. You're cyberbullying him!

"Do you have any idea that he has a major world championship match tomorrow? He can't have this kind of scandal hanging over him!"

The accusation was so ridiculous I almost laughed. "Are they wrong, though? He caught the bouquet at someone else's wedding and proposed to the bride."

"I already told you it was a joke! You're really going to ruin his career over something this petty? I didn't think you were this kind of person, Caleb."

Victoria looked at me with disappointment. "I'll have someone use AI face-swap to switch your faces in the video. You just need to put out a public apology saying you made it all up because you were jealous. That should be enough to calm things down."

I was so angry I looped back around to calm. "No. This has nothing to do with me."

"Caleb Mercer!"

Victoria suddenly threw her arms around me and snatched my phone out of my pocket. I reached for it, but her bodyguards grabbed me and shoved me into a storage room.

Her voice came through the door, muffled. "I'm clearing your photo gallery first, so you don't post pictures of us and make things worse.

"Cool off tonight. I'll have the housekeeper let you out tomorrow morning. Once Spencer's match is over, I'll come back, and we'll go to the county clerk's office."