“Did you believe her?”
“I believed you might be stressed. I never believed you didn’t want to marry me.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
His answer was quiet.
“Because I thought you would tell me when you were ready.”
I closed my eyes.
That was the cruelest part of Vanessa’s plan. She hadn’t needed Ethan to stop loving me. She had only needed to create a small space between us and fill it with her own version of the truth.
“Ethan, did you ever send Vanessa messages that she might interpret as romantic?”
Another silence.
“I need to tell you something,” he said. “And I should have told you earlier.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“What?”
“Two months ago, Vanessa told me you had asked her to help you decide whether to postpone the wedding. She said you wanted me to believe everything was fine until you figured out what you wanted.”
