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CHAPTER 1

UP IN SMOKE

CASS

“ T his is the best idea you’ve ever had.”

The whiskey burns a trail down my throat when I take a long swig straight from the bottle.

My very best friend in the whole world, who is dutifully overseeing the ritual burning of my ex’s crap, extends her hand to request a turn. I oblige. “Well, you had quite a lot of flammable keepsakes to be disposed of. I thought it was only right that we sacrifice it all to the gods,” Jessa says in her adorable British accent. She takes a drink, the front of her body lit by flickering shades of orange from the bonfire we built in my mother’s backyard.

That’s right, my mother’s backyard. Because at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I’ve moved back in with my mom to recover from the most brutal breakup known to humankind—getting dumped at the altar.

By an objection.

From the best man.

Who’s been having an affair with my ex-fiancé since, you know. Literally always.

Jessa passes the bottle and stands to rummage around in the pile of cardboard boxes and plastic bins I’d brought back from our apartment in Boston.

“Did you bring anything with you that’s actually yours?” she asks with a brow arched, hooking a pair of Davis’s boxer briefs on her finger.

“Technically, nothing was mine, so I took whatever the fuck I wanted.” The glug of whiskey doesn’t even make my face scrunch up, thanks to the fact that I’m very, very drunk. This is further impressed upon me when I stand up, listing a little on my way to her side.

I rummage around in the bin, pulling out a small throw pillow that says Best Girlfriend Ever.

Holding it up for Jessa, I cock an eyebrow. “Seriously. He got this for me for Valentine’s one year.”

I throw the HomeGoods reject into the fire with enough force that the logs topple, sending a plume of fire and embers up to the heavens. I’m already elbow deep in the bin again.

“He meant well,” she answers.

“His intentions don’t mean shit tonight.” Wadded up Oxford sweatshirt in my hand, I line up and shoot it smack into the middle of the fire.

He really did mean well. My sweet, kind, lying ex liked me not working, not for any misogynistic reason, but a practical one—we loved to travel and a teacher’s schedule isn’t conducive to spending Novembers in Mallorca. He has a classic, Ivy League, Chad sort of job at his father’s company, working in hedge fund investment property high yield whatevers, which was part time at best. He could leave whenever he wanted, which left me curious as to how he could manage any accounts. Because I think he had accounts? I never was sure. But I was left alone a lot to do whatever I wanted, which most of the time was nothing. I had no real friends to speak of, and while Jessa would come visit or I’d go see her, I otherwise had nothing to do outside of spa days and Pilates and cooking and lots and lots of reality TV. I can’t deny that it was fun to lay around like a hoss cat and get manicures for the six years in Boston after college, even if it did get tedious. We traveled. We went out. It was fine.

That really sums up Davis and me.

Fine.

So when he dumped me at the altar for the best man, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I didn’t have anything to do. My whole life revolved around him, and I lost myself somewhere in the shuffle. Didn’t think I’d move back to my hometown. Didn’t think I’d be living with my mother at twenty-nine either, but life was full of fun little surprises like that.

I learned the lesson just when I thought I had it all figured out.

The universe is so rude.

Davis thought he could have it all—me as the little wife and Henry as his side piece. And why not? For ten years, he fooled me, and I lived with the son of a bitch. His family was none the wiser, and if it had gone to plan, they would have been satisfied and his inheritance secured by way of his bullshit union to me. He’d have his cake and eat it. Really, he thought of everything.

Guess the only thing he didn’t consider was me.

Jessa unfolds the flaps of a box and peers inside. “This one’s all books. Should we toss the whole thing on?”

I gape. “How dare you suggest such a thing, Jessamine Hastings.”

She rolls her eyes. “They’re Davis’s finance textbooks.”

“Oh. In that case—burn, baby. Burn.”

We giggle, taking his stupid schoolbooks in arm to tear out the pages and toss them into the fire, watching the flames eat them up.

God, it’s so satisfying.

See? I’m coping. It’s been weeks since it all fell apart, and I know exactly how I feel—I’m hurt and I’m sad and I’m fucking pissed that he lied to me for so long. He let me live in that lie right along with him. And when put to the screws, he discarded me.

I still haven’t acknowledged the sliver of relief beneath the pain of his betrayal and my heartache.

At least I found out before it was too late.

“Did you leave anything at the apartment that wasn’t nailed down?” she asks, ripping out a handful of pages to feed the hungry fire.

“He was on my honeymoon with Henry . I left the place looking like a Whoville house on Christmas Eve. Not even a crumb for a motherfucking mouse.” I close one eye so I can watch the fire dance and sway and destroy without seeing double. It’s true—my cousin Remy and I drove the Audi Davis bought me to the apartment Davis paid for and filled up a U-Haul with everything we could carry, all of which was paid for by—you guessed it—Davis. “I think I have some dishes in here. Those should be fun to smash.”

Inspired, I go digging for them, dumping over boxes until I find the one I’m looking for.

If we want to get technical, ownership is Davis’s. I purchased the dishes—and most everything in the pile of boxes—with a credit card under his social security number. But I still picked them out. I picked all this shit out. This is all I have left, and none of it is mine.

It was so much fun jet-setting around the world with my rich boyfriend, I didn’t realize that over the course of the last ten years, I’d lost myself little by little, bit by bit.

Not until he was gone.

I pick up a dish and throw it into the bonfire. The pitch of the crash it makes sounds like victory.

What else is a girl to do but throw some more?

So I chuck them, hand over fist in succession, until my heart is beating so fast I tip my face up to the sky and let out a battle cry to the heavens.

Jessa yelps, and when I tear my eyes away from the moon, I realize that in my fervor, I’ve disturbed the variety of toxic textiles in the inferno. The fire is taller than me, and a breeze has pushed it into the fence. One plank is lit like a birthday candle, the flames wavering in the dark.

“Shit!” I panic and pick up one of Mom’s potted begonias, dumping the contents into the bonfire while Jessa runs for the hose.

With only a little fumbling, Jessa gets a solid stream of water going, eyeing me as she sprays the fence. “Perhaps let’s just one at a time, darling.” Her British accent is adorable.

“If I wasn’t currently worried about my mother’s wrath or burning the house down, I’d call you a buzzkill.”

She chuckles, making her way back to the whiskey. “Pace yourself, darling. Wouldn’t want you to run out of fuel for all that rage.”

“I’ll never run out of fuel for that particular fire,” I assure her.

At that, I take a good look at the mountain of boxes, cataloging the contents. “These stupid boxes have been sitting in the garage for two months. One minute, I want to donate the whole lot of it with no attachment, and the next I’m crying over a box of men’s underwear like it’s sacred. I don’t want to wallow—I’ve done enough of that. I don’t want to think about him anymore. I just want to move on, and if all this shit is still hanging around, how am I supposed to forget about it? Forget about him?” The words pile up in my throat, choking me. I pick up a stack of photos, image after image of Davis and me, smiling and happy.

What a fool I was to think I’d found forever.

I chuck them in the now manageable fire and watch the flames eat holes in them.

“Do you miss him?” Jessa asks softly.

“I’m too pissed to miss him.”

I feel like she has a follow-up question, but instead, she says gently, “I know you want to forget,” while I dig through a fresh box. “I know you want to move on. And you will. But you were with him ten years . Give yourself a bit of grace.”

“Fuck grace. And fuuuuuck time! ” I hold up his Tag Heuer and pitch it in, not remembering there being sirens in the hip-hop song playing from the speaker on the deck. “Fuck him for leaving me with nothing to call mine.” I grab a whole box of clothes and dump it on top. “Even this stupid sweatshirt is his,” I say, pulling it off and chucking it. “He bought these fucking shoes for me.” With a kick, one goes toe over heel in an arc into the fire. “Damn, even hammered I’m a good shot.”

“Uh, Cass?” Jessa’s brows are drawn. She looks over her shoulder.

I kick off the other shoe, but overshoot. It hits the grass on the other side of the fire with a thud. “Jinxed it,” I mutter, but my mission isn’t lost. “Literally nothing. There’s not one fucking thing I own that isn’t tainted by him, Jess. My earrings he gave me for my birthday!” I undo them and toss them in, unsatisfied when they disappear soundlessly into the pile of glowing logs at the heart of the fire. “This stupid bra! I was supposed to wear this on my honeymoon, for God’s sake,” I say, wrestling with its clasp.

“Um, is that…” Jessa stands, looking toward the side of the house, but I barely register her.

“Tits out!” I shout, whooping when I throw in the lacy bra from the outrageously priced designer boutique in Milan. The second my hands are free, I hook my thumbs in the waistband of my palazzo pants. “I got these stupid pants in Fiji on vacation with that traitor! Benedict Arnold! Rat fink!” Hopping around in a circle, I hinge to help out my drunk foot, which is very stupid and very stuck. “Double-crosser! Two-timer! Lying, cheating sonofa?—”

It’s very still, and very quiet. Balancing on one foot—the other is still tangled in the leg of my pants—I freeze, my red hair half covering my face when I look up.

Unexpectedly, I find my best friend with her jaw on the ground and her gaze locked on the eight firefighters standing in my backyard.

I close one eye.

Scratch that— four firefighters in full gear are gobsmacked and staring at me, four of whom I’m pretty sure I went to high school with. One whose jawline I’d know drunk, in the dark, and seeing double.

The shield of Wilder’s helmet is pushed up so I can see his face, from that unmistakable square jaw to his wide mouth. I’ve kissed that mouth a hundred thousand times, traced the bridge of his nose with loving fingertips, smoothed the lines between his dark brows with nothing more than a smile in his direction. But it’s the look in his eyes that locks my lungs, tight with heat that has nothing to do with the fire, despite the flames dancing in their reflection.

And in the middle of those flames is me.