Chapter 1Perfection Was Never Love

On our eighteenth attempt to get married, Miles Corbett stopped the ceremony again because I began my vow a fraction too late.

He looked completely disappointed in me. "You know I'm a perfectionist. Why can't you follow the wedding schedule exactly?

"If you miss the timing again, maybe you should let your best friend take your place."

My best friend, Audrey Sloan, was famous for always being perfectly on time, so Miles used her as the standard I was expected to match.

If I reached the curb one minute after Audrey at the end of the workday, he drove away with her and left me behind.

If I entered the restaurant half a step later than she did on Valentine's Day, he gave her the candlelit dinner that was supposed to be mine.

If I reached the airport twenty seconds after her before our annual vacation, he canceled my ticket and traveled with Audrey instead.

Even at our wedding, he had stopped the ceremony seventeen times and used Audrey to rehearse my role seventeen times.

To make the eighteenth attempt succeed, I filled the venue with more than a hundred synchronized countdown clocks and practiced every cue for over two hundred nights.

But ten seconds before my vow was due, Audrey jumped the cue and said "I do" first.

Miles ignored both me and the synchronized clocks and canceled the wedding for the eighteenth time.

The problem had never been my timing; the problem was that the bride was not her.

So I finally decided to give his perfectionism what it wanted.

Miles took Audrey's hand again. "Watch carefully. We'll demonstrate it one more time."

I smiled and slid the wedding rings onto their fingers.

"No demonstration needed. I wish you both a lifetime of happiness."

* * *

The ballroom went silent for a moment before Miles Corbett's voice cut through it.

"That line isn't in the program. Remove it."

He glanced at me as though I had committed some irritating mistake by adding a sentence of my own.

I froze, my eyes stinging.

Even now, he thought I was still playing along with his game of creating a perfect wedding.

To him, my ideas and opinions were nothing more than glitches he could delete whenever he wanted.

And it was not only that one sentence.

He had removed my favorite tulips and replaced them with the white roses Audrey Sloan preferred.

He had cut my closest childhood friend from the wedding party and made Audrey's coworker my bridesmaid instead.

Even the heirloom wedding dress passed down through three generations of my family had been replaced by a gown Audrey liked better.

Whenever I objected, Miles said Audrey's choices suited his wedding theme better.

He chose perfection and discarded everything I loved.

Yet whenever Audrey made a mistake, he was perfectly willing to abandon perfection for her.

When Audrey saw me standing there, she smiled as if trying to smooth things over.

"Don't be so rigid. Celia was only trying to help.

"And honestly, I think adding that line wishing us a lifetime of happiness makes the wedding even more perfect. Don't you?"

I almost told her not to bother. Once Miles decided something, he never changed his mind.

But the next second, one look from Audrey was enough to make him surrender.

"Fine," he said helplessly. "Keep the line."

My fingers curled slightly.

It felt as though a tiny thorn had lodged in my chest.

Across a thousand disappointments, it was not as though I had never fought back.

Miles simply never compromised with me.

Our worst argument came when I insisted on wearing the bracelet my mother had left me on our wedding day.

I wanted the parents I had lost to feel, in some small way, as though they were there to see me become happy.

No matter how much I pleaded or argued, Miles refused to bend.

Even when I pretended to agree and put the bracelet on only after the ceremony began, he canceled the wedding five separate times just to force me to yield to his rules.

Yet the door I had never managed to open swung wide because Audrey said one sentence.

So it was not that Miles could never break a principle. I simply had never been important enough to become the exception.

While I stood lost in thought, Miles guided Audrey through a perfectly timed staged kiss.

The entire ballroom erupted in cheers.

Someone laughed. "Come on, Miles. Everybody knows you're in love with Audrey. Do you really have to throw another wedding every few months just to rub it in our faces?"

"Seriously, we've watched this bride-swap routine enough times. Change the act next time."

Miles did not answer, but amusement clearly warmed his eyes.

He silently accepted another joke that was nowhere in his precious schedule.

And just as silently accepted that I had become the clown replaced eighteen times in his show.

I looked around the ballroom and realized nearly every guest belonged to Miles's or Audrey's circle.

The relatives and friends who truly cared about me had stopped coming after years of watching me be humiliated again and again.

No wonder almost no one here even seemed to recognize the actual bride.

What Miles did not understand was that even the most committed clown eventually gets tired.

Eventually, she unties the ropes, steps off the stage, and leaves the perfect performance behind.