8 Years, No Ring

Chapter 1

I was getting married. Damon, the boyfriend I’d lived with for eight years, didn’t know yet.

He’d just hired a young, pretty assistant named Fiona, and the two of them were inseparable.

For Fiona’s birthday, Damon ordered an enormous five-tier cake for the office.

At the party, everyone smeared cake everywhere. Some of it ended up on my face.

Damon had completely forgotten that I have a severe dairy allergy.

When I opened my eyes in the ER after they brought me back, I was done with him for good.

I picked up my phone and texted my parents in London:

I’ll do the merger. I’ll marry him.

My mother worked fast.

I’d only just gotten back to the apartment from the hospital—I hadn’t even punched in the code on the door—when she sent me more than a dozen wedding venues.

I scrolled through them, then stopped on her message:

I always knew it wasn’t going to work out with Damon.

A man who actually wants to marry you doesn’t hide you for eight years and never once call you his girlfriend in public.

Better late than never. The wedding’s in three days. Take your time packing. No rush.

So from the outside, everyone had seen this relationship for the rotten thing it was.

Only I had wasted eight years like an idiot, because Damon said, We’re good the way we are. Why put a label on it?

I’d just pushed open the apartment door when Damon appeared behind me out of nowhere.

He heard the word wedding in my mother’s voice note and blurted:

“Wedding? Whose wedding?”

He leaned over to look at my screen. I locked my phone at once.

His hand went out on instinct to grab it—and then his own phone rang.

The hallway was so quiet that late at night that I could hear every bit of the frightened crying on the other end:

“Damon… I just went downstairs to get something, and I think someone’s following me! What do I do, I’m so scared, I’ve walked around the whole block and I can’t lose him!”

Damon’s face changed in an instant, his eyes all panic. “Fiona, don’t be scared. Go somewhere bright, somewhere with people—a store. I’m on my way!”

He hung up, and the wedding was gone from his mind completely.

Once again, without a second’s hesitation, he left me and ran out into the night.

I didn’t even look up.

After he left, I called Aunt Claire.

Ten years ago, my parents had gone to London to expand the business overseas, and they’d left me with Aunt Claire.

Damon lived next door back then. That’s how we met.

Later, when my aunt got married and moved, I didn’t want to intrude on her new life, so it seemed natural to move into Damon’s apartment.

I’d been there eight years.

When my aunt heard I was going home to get married, she was surprised. “Married? To Damon? Well, good. It’s been eight years. It’s about time.”

I pressed my lips together and cut her off. “No. It’s an arranged marriage. I barely know the guy.”

She was quiet for a few seconds, then said, sounding hurt for me, “Have you really thought this through? He always seemed to care about you. Do you want me to ask him what he’s actually planning?”

I laughed it off. “Don’t bother. We were never really a couple. He won’t even admit I’m his girlfriend in front of his friends. For eight years, I’ve been a free roommate who sleeps with him, at best. If I don’t wake up now, I’ll have thrown away the best years of my life on him.”

My aunt sighed and didn’t try to talk me out of it.

Before bed, I set a three-day countdown on my phone’s home screen.