Erica Butler was scrolling through a resale app when she saw someone selling custom cufflinks from H-brand for ten dollars, swearing they were the real thing.

In the photos, everything matched — the packaging, the cufflinks themselves, even the message on the gift card were identical to the birthday present she'd given Carter Maddox.

Something dropped in her chest. She placed the order, just to make sure.

The seller messaged her:

"Looks like our addresses are in the same building. Why don't we just meet up?"

What were the odds?

Suspicion flared, and Erica decided to go see for herself.

She reached the address the seller had given, and the door was opened by a woman in the late stages of pregnancy.

The woman carried out the gift bag and handed it to Erica, then stuck out her tongue playfully.

"Sorry about that. I'm Laura Swanson, eight months along, and my husband won't let me go out."

Erica examined the cufflinks carefully, and to her surprise, they really were genuine.

She asked, puzzled, "Why are you selling them so cheap?"

Laura huffed.

"It's my husband's fault! He won't let me leave the house, insists it's to protect me. I got mad, so to smooth it over he gave me these custom cufflinks, eight hundred grand's worth, and I decided to sell them for ten bucks out of spite!"

Just then a man's voice came from inside the apartment:

"Laura? Why aren't you back yet?"

At the sound of it, every drop of blood in Erica's body seemed to freeze in an instant.

That voice belonged to her boyfriend, Carter Maddox.

She was about to speak when Laura called back into the apartment:

"I'm not coming! Carter, quit bossing me around!"

The guess was confirmed, and it hit Erica like a bucket of ice water poured over her whole body.

A fine, spreading ache rose from the center of her chest and reached into every limb.

Her voice came out dry. "What is Carter to you?"

Laura turned her head and smiled, sweet and easy.

"He's my husband. We've been married two years already!"

...

There was a ringing in Erica's ears. She staggered half a step and nearly fell.

The boy she'd loved for five years, the one she was about to marry, was already married to someone else — and about to have a child.

Her mind was in chaos, and then she heard footsteps inside, coming closer.

The next second, Carter appeared, wrapping his arms around Laura from behind, chin resting on her shoulder.

"Come inside, sweetheart. You're about to be a mother, and you're still acting like a kid."

Laura pouted.

"I'm so bored I could die! You want me to forgive you? Fine, but only if you get Mavis and the others to come over tonight and keep me company!"

Carter laughed, indulgent.

"All right. I already told Mavis James yesterday to bring over some food a pregnant woman can eat. We're throwing a party here, Terence is coming too. I was going to make it a surprise for you."

Standing outside the door, Erica heard it all, and it drenched her like ice water from head to foot.

Terence Donaldson, Mavis James, both friends she and Carter had known since childhood, the ones who'd always said how they envied what she and Carter had.

She'd treated them as her closest friends, and all along they'd known Carter had married someone else in secret and kept it from her.

The whole group had gone behind her back, folding themselves into Carter's little family long ago. Only she, from beginning to end, had been the outsider.

A helplessness welled up from the center of her chest, and her nose stung.

The whole world had betrayed her, abandoned her.

Laura, meanwhile, was cheered up at once, unable to hold back her smile.

"Oh, why didn't you tell me!"

She thumped Carter's chest, half-embarrassed, half-annoyed.

"You're awful! You didn't warn me, so it's not my fault I got mad and sold those custom cufflinks of yours!"

The smile on Carter's mouth froze for an instant, then went back to normal.

"It's fine. Just a pair of cufflinks, no big deal."

A laugh nearly rose in Erica's throat.

She'd tracked down the designer half a year in advance, humbling herself, saying every nice thing, sending every gift, until finally the designer agreed to make that one pair of cufflinks for Carter.

And now, with one weightless line, he said it didn't matter.

The thing she'd given him, it turned out, didn't matter even if it was lost.

Carter's arm curved around Laura's waist as he coaxed her gently:

"Go on inside, baby."

The girl nodded, but then slipped free of him.

"Let me say goodbye to the lady who bought your cufflinks first."

Only then did Carter lift his eyes and look toward the door.

The moment he saw Erica, his pupils contracted slightly.

Erica met his gaze without flinching, without looking away.

She'd thought he would be at a loss, would panic and explain. But there was none of that.

His slip lasted only a heartbeat.

He ruffled Laura's hair. "You go in first. Good girl. I'll see the guest downstairs."

Laura, who knew nothing, was still smiling without a care in the world, and waved at Erica.

"Bye-bye, hon. I'm not in any state to walk you out myself."

Carter watched Laura waddle back into the apartment, and the indulgence in his eyes melted away. He clamped a hand around Erica's wrist and pulled her toward the elevator landing.

"We'll talk outside."

Erica stumbled after him, her wrist locked as if in an iron clamp, the bones aching.

"Carter! Let go of me!"

She fought with everything she had, prying at his fingers with her other hand, but he didn't budge, his grip shockingly strong.

Frantic now, Erica dug her nails hard into his forearm and dragged them down.

Carter flinched at the pain and let go on instinct.

Erica seized the chance to yank her wrist back, and the next second her hand flew up in a ringing slap.

"Smack!"

Carter's face snapped to one side.

He turned back slowly, running the tip of his tongue against the struck cheek, something dark and unreadable in his eyes.

"You're not going to explain?" Erica's voice shook. "Carter, you tell me what's going on!"

Carter was silent for a moment.

"There's nothing to explain," he said. "What you saw is the truth. Laura and I have been married two years. The baby's eight months."

"Laura's in her last trimester, and she can never know about this. If you take it to her and anything happens to her baby, Erica, I will never let you off."

The world spun around Erica, and her heart felt as if a hand had seized it and wrung it dry.

Carter Maddox had once loved her past all reason.

He'd told her, more times than she could count:

"Erica is the most important person in my life. Anyone who makes you unhappy, even a little, I'll never let them get away with it."

And now here he was, laying down a threat like this to her, all to protect another woman and her child.

Tears rose in her eyes. Erica forced them down.

She stared at him.

"We were together five years. You said you'd marry me this fall. Carter, what was I ever to you?"

Carter lowered his lashes and wouldn't look at her.

"I'm sorry. Let's break up."

Break up?

The two words landed like a shove into an ice cellar, and Erica felt the blood in her whole body turn solid.

She fixed her eyes on the man she'd loved for five years, and the tears finally spilled over.

"Carter, do you have any conscience left?"

"Do you even remember? Junior year, you fell into the campus lake. I can't swim, and I jumped in after you without thinking twice. I spent three days in the ICU. The doctors said the cold did too much damage, that I'd never be able to have children. Have you forgotten all of that?"

His throat worked, but he said nothing.

"And your parents!" The tears wouldn't stop now. "The year they were in that car accident, who stayed at the hospital for a whole month without so much as changing out of her clothes? Your mother lost control of her bladder and bowels, and I was the one who cleaned her. Your father spiked a fever in the middle of the night. Where were you? You were pulling overtime at the office. I was the one being a good child in your place!"

She closed the distance between them, step by step.

"I gave you everything in me. I gave you the best years of my life. Carter, can you look me in the eye and say you did right by me?"

At last he raised his head and met her eyes.

"I know. Everything you've said, I know. I loved you too, Erica. I really did love you."

"Loved?" Erica let out a cold laugh.

"And now? What is this now?"

Carter drew a deep breath.

"Laura is… different. She's simple. She doesn't understand anything, like a blank sheet of paper. She isn't strong and independent the way you are. Without me, she can't survive."

He paused, and his voice dropped lower.

"But you're different. Without me, you'll still be just fine."

Erica stood frozen, as if he'd slapped her hard across the face.

She understood at last. Some people never intended to walk with you all the way to the end.

And she was nothing more than a side character in someone else's story.

Her lips trembled.

"So because I'm strong, I deserve to be betrayed? Because I'm independent, I deserve to be thrown away? Carter, what kind of garbage logic is that?"

Carter frowned, a trace of helplessness in his voice.

"Don't be like this. That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" Erica was nearly screaming now. "Say it! Tell me, where exactly do I fall short of her? Is it because she's younger and prettier than me? Or because she can give you children?"

The instant the words left her mouth, she froze herself.

Because she can give you children.

The sentence went in like a needle, straight into the softest place in her heart.

She thought of the afternoon she woke from the ICU.

Carter had held her hand, his eyes rimmed red, kissing her forehead again and again, saying:

"Ricky, you scared me half to death. Don't you ever do that again. I won't have you risking your life for me."

Later, when she found out she could never carry a child, she'd hidden on the hospital rooftop and cried the whole afternoon.

Carter had searched the entire building, and when he finally found her on the roof, he'd pulled her tight against him and said:

"It doesn't matter. We won't have children. Having you is enough. You're the most important family I'll ever have in this life."

And now?

Now he had his arm around another woman, one carrying his child.

And for her sake, he was threatening Erica, telling her they were through.

Erica felt her heart torn clean in two.

All at once she thought herself an utter fool.

She remembered last winter, one of Terence Donaldson's dinners, everyone crowded around a big shared meal.

Mavis James had raised her glass, grinning.

"Ricky and Carter are just meant for each other. I saw it back in high school! So when are you two getting married? I'm waiting to drink at the wedding!"

Terence had chimed in from the side.

"Exactly. If you two don't get married, none of us are ever going to believe in love again."

Carter had smiled then, draped an arm over her shoulders, dipped his head, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"Soon. Once I've got things settled at the company, I'll marry her this fall."

That night, home again, she'd been too happy to sleep, turning it over and over in her mind: where the wedding should be, what style of gown to choose, what color paper for the invitations.

She'd even gone to look at baby things. She knew she couldn't have her own, but she'd thought maybe they could adopt. Carter loved children so much, he'd surely make a wonderful father.

Thinking of it now, by then Carter was probably already making a baby with Laura.

Coaxing her with promises of marrying her in the fall, and turning around to marry someone else and have a child.

While she, like an idiot, had been kept completely in the dark.

"Terence and Mavis, they both knew, didn't they?"

Carter's eyes flickered.

"They…"

"They knew you were already married, didn't they?" Erica cut him off. "They watched me circle around you like a fool for two years, watched me eagerly planning our wedding, and not one of them said a single word to me."

The tears came again.

"I treated them as my best friends. This is how they treated me."

Erica started to laugh.

"Fine. If this is how all of you want to play it, then I'll go tell Laura right now that her husband has a girlfriend of five years on the side!"

"Erica!" Carter's face changed in an instant. He grabbed her arm, gripping hard enough to hurt. "Don't you dare!"

Just then a timid voice came from behind them.

"Carter… the two of you… you know each other?"

Both of them went rigid at the same moment.

Erica turned her head and saw Laura standing in the doorway, one hand on her heavily pregnant belly, a cup of water in the other.

Carter's face changed instantly into something gentle. He crossed to her.

"Why did you come out? It's cold out here. Go back inside."

Laura didn't move. Her eyes went past his shoulder and settled on Erica.

"Are you and my husband acquainted?"

The air went silent.

Carter opened his mouth, but Erica got there first.

"We are."

She looked at the gift bag in Laura's hand and gave a small smile.

"Those cufflinks you sold me — I'm the one who gave them to him."

Laura's eyes went wide.

"He and I were together for five years."

The color drained out of Laura's face in an instant.

The cup shattered on the floor, shards of porcelain scattering everywhere. She stumbled back a step and caught the doorframe, lips trembling as she looked at Carter.

"Carter, is it true? Were you two together for five years?"

Carter's face went ashen, fury churning at the back of his eyes.

He spun around and closed the distance to Erica in a few strides.

Crack.

His hand landed hard across her face.

She staggered into the wall with a dull thud.

Her head rang, her vision blacked out for a moment, and something warm slid slowly down from her temple, staining half of what she could see red.

Before she could steady herself, a large hand clamped down hard around her throat.

Carter's fingers tightened, pinning her whole body against the wall.

"Didn't I tell you? Don't run your mouth. Don't set her off!"

Erica's hands went to his fingers on instinct, trying to pry them loose, but he didn't budge.

The suffocation rose over her like a tide. Her feet kicked uselessly against the floor, her nails dragging bloody streaks across the back of his hand, and still Carter showed no sign of letting go.

Her vision began to blur, the ringing in her ears louder and louder.

She looked at his twisted face and it struck her, suddenly, as utterly unfamiliar.

Was this the Carter who had once held her like she was precious?

The Carter who'd said, "Anyone who dares upset you, I'll never let them off"?

The Carter who'd said, "You're the only one I'll love in this life"?

The dark closed in thicker and thicker, and she felt herself starting to give out.

And then —

"Ah! My stomach — it hurts so much!"

Carter's grip froze.

He looked back and saw Laura clutching her swollen belly, her face white as paper, sliding slowly down the doorframe as fine cold sweat beaded on her forehead.

"Laura!"

Carter let go of Erica's throat in an instant and rushed over.

With nothing to hold her up, Erica sank limply to the floor, dragging in gulp after gulp of air, her throat raw and burning.

She lifted her eyes and through the blur saw Carter kneeling beside Laura, gathering her carefully against him, his voice frantic to the point of breaking.

"Laura, how do you feel? Where does it hurt? Look at me, look at me!"

He fumbled his phone out of his pocket to call 911, his other hand gripping Laura's and pressing it to his own cheek.

"Don't be scared. I'll get you to the hospital right now. You and the baby are going to be fine, do you hear me? You'll be fine!"

He hung up, lifted Laura into his arms, and started toward the elevators.

He passed right by Erica without a single glance.

The elevator doors closed, and Erica was left alone, sitting in the empty elevator hall.

She leaned against the wall, the blood from her forehead already reaching her jaw, and at last she made up her mind. She took out her phone and sent a text.

"Dad, I'm not marrying Carter. I'll go through with the arranged match."