She’d made a mistake. Oh, had she ever made a mistake. Betzy had undermined Daisy Shay and what she was capable of, and now she would pay a price—the front-page news had made sure of it.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Grandma said to Mom, confirming that she’d been onto them all along.
“You didn’t have anything better,” Mom snapped.
A hand rubbed along Betzy’s shoulder a moment before Camila spoke up. “Do you want anything? Coffee? A box of tissues?”
“A sledgehammer,” Rachel suggested.
Sledgehammer?“For what?” Betzy pulled her hands from her face to peer up at her friend who, like the rest of the women, was gathered around her kitchen table for an emergency meeting. One that started at 5:30 in the morning after Grandma Lo stumbled onto her porch to collect her newspaper.
Rachel shrugged. “To get out your aggression?”
“I forgot that the Shays have family in the newspaper business too,” Mom grumbled.
“Maybe you shouldn’t torture yourself with this anymore,” Camila suggested. Her sister-in-law proceeded to pin the corner of the newspaper between her finger and thumb, but Betzy flattened her hand over it.
“It’s six in the morning,” Betzy said. “I think I should be able to torture myself until…” She glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Noon.”
She hovered over the paper once more. There, screaming from the front page, were three damning words in bold print:It’s a Sham!
Below, pictures of their engagement showed just whatitreferred to. She glanced over the images with a heavy sigh. Sawyer was on one knee in the first picture.
Her heart ached anew.
Next was a picture of the two embracing after he’d asked her to marry him.
What a moment that had been.
The third showed Sawyer sliding the engagement ring onto her finger, a ring that Betzy hadn’t wanted to remove until she caught sight of the very last picture on that page.
Before setting her eyes on the dreaded sight, Betzy reread the explanation of the photo, printed just alongside.
Cheating bachelor with old high school flame, Daisy Shay, just days before engagement.
And there it was for all eyes to see. Daisy and Sawyer kissing in some stupid bar.
If Betzy hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed it. She’d tried writing it off with the timing alone. Heck, he’d been with her at the cabin for the entire week. But he’d left before everyone else, on a dark night, all by himself. And it just so happened that he’d left in an angry huff after Betzy slowed things down between them. Looks like he knew where to get what he wanted after all.
“Good riddance,” she spat while glaring at the page. “They deserve each other.” Acid swooshed through her body in a boiling rage. But it wasn’t anger that prevailed. The hurt—that was heavier, hotter, greater.
Hurt from having lost Sawyer, officially, once and for all. Not that she’d ever really had him, she realized.
And that’s when the shame settled in. Reminding Betzy that she’d done this to herself. A jagged whimper cracked in her throat as she covered the sight with her hands. She wanted nothing more than to climb back into bed and never come out. “I’ve never felt so miserable in my life.”
“Five copies ofSlipper Magazineat your service,” Matthew said as he came in from the back door. He handed the stack to Claudia before shrugging out of his coat.
“How bad is it?” Claudia asked while thumbing past the first few pages.
Grandma took one and passed on the rest. “Yeah, did you read it yet?”
Matthew shook his head. “No, I was driving. I’ll leave that toyouguys.”
Camila took one and handed the other two to Betzy. Rachel snatched her copy, gave her finger a lick, and began flicking the pages.
Betzy stared at the cover, not quite willing to dive into her magazine just yet. “First one to find it, call out the page, will you?”
“Twenty-three,” Camila said. Betzy looked down to Camila’s magazine to see the exact spread she’d been sent anonymously.
