Chapter 4

Candace's POV

I picked a corner booth away from the windows where nobody would recognize me. The coffee shop was quiet for a Tuesday afternoon.

The private investigator Ava recommended was a middle-aged woman named Sandra Russell. She slid into the seat across from me carrying a envelope so thick I wanted to throw up just looking at it.

"Ms. Johnson." She opened the envelope and started laying out photographs one after another. "I've been following Mr. Gibson for the past week."

In the parking garage, Logan had his hand on Ivy's waist. In the hotel lobby, their fingers were locked together. Outside her apartment building at midnight, his lips were on hers.

I made myself look at every single one. My hands stayed folded in my lap with my nails digging into my palms, but I kept my face blank.

"They've been maintaining this relationship for approximately two months," Sandra said in that flat, clinical tone. "Meeting frequency is high. Three to four times per week, sometimes more. Hotels, her apartment, twice at his office after hours."

Two months. I'd spent two months addressing wedding invitations while he was doing this.

"Ms. Johnson?" Sandra's voice pulled me back. "If you need a lawyer referral, I have several I can recommend—"

"No. Thank you. This is enough."

She slid a USB drive across the table. "Digital copies. Timestamps, locations, everything documented. If you change your mind about the lawyer..."

"I won't." I picked up the drive and shoved the photos back into the envelope. "Thank you, Ms. Russell. Send me your final invoice."

I paid her in cash, left the coffee shop, and drove home with the envelope sitting on my passenger seat. I couldn't stop looking at it.

Logan came home at seven.

I was already on the couch waiting for him. I'd spread every single photo across the coffee table so he'd see them the second he walked in.

The door opened and he walked in loosening his tie, not even looking at me yet.

"Hey, I'm starving. Did you—"

He stopped when he saw the photos. All the color drained from his face.

"Candy,"

"Two months." I didn't move, didn't stand up, just sat there staring at him. "You've been fucking her for two months."

"You need to let me explain!"

"Explain what?" I picked up the photo of them kissing outside her building. "Explain this? Or this?" I grabbed another one from the hotel lobby. "Or maybe this one?"

"Candy, listen—"

"I am listening, Logan. I've been listening to you talk about Ivy for weeks. How smart she is, how dedicated, how she gets it." I threw the first photo at him and watched it flutter to the floor.

He opened his mouth but I kept going.

"I listened when you said I was boring, that I had nothing to talk about." Another photo hit his chest. "I listened when you came home at two in the morning smelling like her perfume and told me it was a work emergency."

"Stop—"

"Why? You didn't stop." I stood up and the photos scattered across the table between us. "I HEARD YOU! I heard you tell her she's the one you should have been with all along! You were planning our wedding and telling her you loved her! You kept going to her, kept lying to me, kept planning our wedding while you were fucking your secretary."

Logan looked at the photos, then looked at me, and his whole face changed. The panic just disappeared and he actually smiled.

"Candace." He held up his hands at me the same way you'd try to calm down a toddler having a meltdown. "You're being dramatic. Just calm down."

"Calm down?"

"Yeah." He picked up one of the photos, glanced at it, then tossed it back on the table. "Look, I'll give you some money, okay? We'll handle this quietly. You pretend you don't know and we continue with the wedding as planned."

I stared at him. "You're joking."

"The invitations are already sent, Candace. Canceling would be humiliating for both of us." He sat down on the arm of the couch super casual. "Ivy is just... she's just a secretary. It doesn't mean anything. You're the one I'm marrying."

I repeated his words back to him slowly, "It doesn't mean anything. Seven years together and I don't mean anything to you."

"That's not what I said!"

"You're playing with her! That's what you said! She's a toy and I'm just supposed to accept that my fiancé is—"

"Jesus Christ, Candace, don't be so dramatic!" Logan stood up, looking annoyed now. "Ivy knows what this is. She's not asking me to leave you. She understands it's just physical."

I felt something snap inside my chest.

I grabbed the decorative vase from the side table and threw it as hard as I could. It exploded against the wall behind him and Logan jumped back.

"What the fuck!"

"Seven years!" I was screaming. "I gave up my career for you! I spent seven years supporting your dreams, cooking your meals, waiting for you to be ready!"

"Candace!"

I grabbed the picture frame off the shelf, the one of us at the beach three years ago when we were still smiling at each other. I threw it across the room and watched the glass explode everywhere.

"And you think you can just give me MONEY?" I threw another frame, "You think I'm some whore you can pay off?"

"Stop it! Stop acting like a fucking psycho!"

"I'M NOT A PSYCHO!" I grabbed the wedding planning binder, the one I'd spent months filling with samples and ideas and all my stupid dreams. I threw it at him and watched the pages scatter everywhere. "I'm the idiot who believed you! Who defended you to everyone who tried to warn me!"

Logan backed toward the door. "You need to calm the hell down—"

"Ava told me! She told me people were talking, that you were going to replace me, and I said no, not Logan, he wouldn't do that!" Angry tears were pouring down my face and I couldn't stop them. "I said we'd been together seven years, that you loved me! But I was the only one stupid enough to believe it!"

"Candace—"

"Everyone knew! Everyone saw it except me!" I grabbed a coffee mug, threw it, missed. It shattered against the doorframe. "Your coworkers, Ava's cousin, probably your fucking mother, everyone knew you were screwing Ivy while I was at home planning our wedding!"

"ENOUGH!" Logan's voice cut right through my screaming. "Stop acting like a crazy bitch! You're embarrassing yourself!"

I froze. My chest was heaving and I was surrounded by broken glass and scattered papers.

He called me a crazy bitch.

He was looking at me with total disgust, like I was the problem here, like I was the one who destroyed everything.

I stood there breathing hard, my hands still shaking, and something in me just... stopped. I felt myself go cold and quiet.

Logan was still talking, "Look, I know you're upset, but you need to get control of yourself. This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're being completely irrational—"

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out and looked at the screen. A text from an unknown number: "Heard you need a new groom. I'm at the airport now. Can make it in time for your wedding. Best revenge there is. From Ray."