Anya reached for the phone on the makeup table.
One new text. A number she didn’t recognize.
Check your email. I’m sorry.
Her stomach tightened before she even unlocked the screen. The kind of tightening that wasn’t fear, exactly. It was… recognition. Like her body knew something her mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
“What is it?” her mother asked, watching her in the mirror.
“Nothing,” Anya lied instantly, because panic was contagious and she didn’t want to infect the room.
She opened her email.
At the top was a thread forwarded to her—screenshots, dates, hotel receipts, and messages lined up with a neatness that felt brutal. It wasn’t one stray flirtation. It wasn’t one drunk mistake. It was months. Months of planning.
Ethan and Lauren.
Lauren—her maid of honor, her best friend since college, the woman who had spent the last week sleeping on Anya’s couch because “I just want to be close for everything.”
