After His Fiancée Tried to Drown Me

The cream-colored envelope arrived on a Tuesday morning, slipped under my apartment door like a small, elegant thief. I picked it up from the floor, my fingers brushing against the heavy paper stock, and immediately recognized the Hunt family's embossed crest in the corner. My heart did that familiar, painful skip it always did when anything connected to Maddox crossed my path.

I sat at my kitchen counter, coffee cooling beside me, turning the envelope over in my hands. The formal invitation inside was written in calligraphy I didn't need to read to understand. Maddox Hunt's engagement party. Aboard his family's yacht in the Hamptons. This weekend.

I pressed my fingertips together, a habit I'd developed as a child when trying to hold myself together. Eight years of loving him in silence, of being his closest friend but never quite his love, had led to this moment. He was finally, officially, irrevocably moving on. With someone else.

'RSVP by Thursday,' the card read. As if there was any question.

I wrote my acceptance in careful script, sealed the envelope, and set it aside to mail. Of course I would go. I had always said yes to Maddox. Even now, even this.

* * *

The yacht gleamed white against the darkening sky, its name – 'Fortuna' – illuminated in soft lights that reflected off the water. I handed my invitation to the attendant at the gangway, who checked my name against a list and nodded me aboard with a practiced smile. The deck was already alive with champagne flutes and conversation, the kind of effortless wealth that had always surrounded Maddox like an aura.

I smoothed down the navy dress I'd chosen – elegant but understated, the kind of thing that wouldn't draw attention but would ensure I fit in. I didn't want to be remembered for this night. I just wanted to exist within it, to witness what I had always known was coming but had never had to face so directly.

'Maddox!' someone called out, and my eyes found him automatically, the way they always had.

He stood near the bow, one hand resting on the polished railing, the other holding a crystal tumbler. He wore a light gray suit that caught the evening light, and he was laughing – that rich, confident laugh that had once been reserved for our private jokes. Now it belonged to his colleagues, his family, and most of all, to the woman beside him.

Rylie Torres. I'd seen her in photographs, heard her name whispered among our mutual friends. She was everything I wasn't – bold, socially graceful, unafraid to claim her space in the world. She wore a silver dress that caught the light with every movement, her dark hair swept up to reveal the elegant line of her neck. She leaned toward Maddox with the easy intimacy of someone who belonged there.

I moved through the crowd like a ghost, accepting a glass of champagne from a passing server and