The friend chuckled, a dry, rasping sound, and leaned over to whisper loud enough for me to catch the tail end of it. “She deserves better? Or he does?”

I didn’t flinch. I smiled—not a fake, nervous bride’s smile, but a knowing one. A smile that said, Wait. Because what none of them—not Douglas with his arrogance, not the envious onlookers, not even Callum—realized was that I had already made peace with the truth. I didn’t come to this wedding to get married. I came to burn the playhouse down.