ISABELLA'S POV
The knock on the green room door comes three minutes early.
Isabella's hands are shaking so badly she can barely hold her phone. She sets it down on the vanity and stares at her reflection. The gown is perfect. White silk that costs more than her first car. More than her mother's rent for six months. James chose it himself two weeks ago and told her she looked like a queen. She believed him because she believes everything he tells her.
Her phone buzzes. A text from her best friend Grace: "OMG I'm crying already and it hasn't even started. James is lucky as hell."
Isabella smiles but it doesn't reach her eyes. She's been smiling like this for three days straight. Ever since James proposed with a diamond ring that probably cost more than her education. Ever since he told her the announcement would change her life forever. He was right. Just not in the way she thought.
Another knock. This time harder.
"Isabella, we're ready," a woman's voice calls from outside.
Her heart jumps. This is it. This is the moment everything becomes real. The moment three hundred journalists get to watch James Mitchell announce that he's marrying her. A girl from a small town whose mother sews wedding dresses for other people's daughters. A girl who worked three jobs while studying fashion design at night until her feet bled. A girl who met James at a charity event and never stood a chance against how much he made her feel.
She stands up and her legs almost don't hold her.
Something in her chest has been wrong for weeks now. A feeling she's been trying to ignore. The way James went quiet when his father called last month. The way his ex-girlfriend Sophia showed up at his office last week and James spent two hours behind closed doors with her. The way he's been taking calls in other rooms. The way he looks at Isabella sometimes like he's made a terrible mistake.
But he proposed. He got down on one knee and said he loved her. He said he wanted to spend his life with her. Isabella decided the feeling in her chest was just nerves. Decided that doubting him meant she didn't deserve him.
She takes a breath and opens the door.
The woman outside is wearing a headset and looks stressed. "He's at the podium. You're on in two minutes. Just walk straight out when the music starts, wave, and go stand beside him. Okay?"
Isabella nods but her mouth has gone dry.
The hallway is chaos. Production assistants running with clipboards. Cameras being wheeled into position. Someone yells something about sound check. Isabella walks toward the stage entrance and her dress swishes around her legs like water. She can hear the roar of the crowd on the other side of the curtain. She can hear reporters shouting. She can hear the buzz of three hundred people waiting for this moment.
She thinks about her mother back home. Her mother who worked sixty hour weeks sewing other women's wedding dresses and never had time to make her own. Her mother who cried when Isabella called to tell her about James. Her mother who will be watching this live on the internet from a small apartment in a small town.
The music starts.
It's a classical piano piece. Elegant. The kind of music that belongs to people like James. Not to people like her.
Isabella steps out from behind the curtain and the lights hit her like a wall. She can't see anything for a moment. Just white brightness and shapes moving. Then her eyes adjust and she can make out the crowd. Hundreds of faces. Hundreds of phones recording. Hundreds of cameras flashing.
She looks toward the podium and sees James.
He's standing there in a black suit that costs more than her entire wardrobe. His dark hair is styled perfectly. His face is the face she's been falling asleep next to for two years. The face she wakes up next to thinking she's the luckiest woman alive.
Except his face looks different right now.
His jaw is tight. His eyes are cold. He's looking at her like he's never seen her before. Like he's looking at a stranger. Isabella's step falters and she almost trips. She recovers but her heart has already started doing something wrong in her chest.
She walks toward him anyway because stopping is not an option. Because three hundred people are watching. Because this is the moment she's been dreaming about for two years.
When she reaches the podium, James doesn't pull her close. He doesn't kiss her. He doesn't take her hand. He just looks at her and she feels something inside her start to break apart.
"Thank you for coming," James says into the microphone. His voice is steady. Controlled. The voice of a man making a business announcement, not a man announcing his engagement. "I appreciate your time today. I have an important statement to make."
Isabella stands beside him and tries to smile but her face feels frozen.
"Over the past two years I've been in a relationship with Isabella Summers. She's a talented designer and an interesting woman. However, I've come to realize that we're not compatible for the long term."
The words don't make sense. Isabella's brain is trying to process them but they're not connecting into anything that sounds real.
"Isabella is a talented designer, but she is not suitable for the kind of life I lead. She lacks the background and connections necessary to be a part of my world. I wish her well in her future endeavors."
Suitable.
The word lands like a punch.
Isabella feels the color drain from her face. She can feel three hundred sets of eyes on her. She can feel cameras zooming in. She can feel this moment becoming permanent. Becoming the thing that defines her. The moment on live television when James Mitchell told the entire world that she wasn't good enough.
She opens her mouth but no sound comes out.
James is talking again. Something about his company. Something about moving forward. But Isabella can't hear anything except the word unsuitable echoing in her head like a curse.
This isn't real. This can't be real.
She turns to look at him and his eyes are looking past her toward the crowd. Like she's already gone. Like she's already forgotten.
"I have another announcement," James continues and Isabella's stomach drops because she can see where this is going. She can feel it coming like a storm. "Sophia Laurent and I have rekindled our relationship. We're very happy together."
The crowd gasps. Cameras flash faster. Someone shouts a question. Someone else is laughing. It's the most humiliating moment of Isabella's life and she's living it in front of the entire world.
She can't move. Can't speak. Can't do anything except stand there in the dress James picked, on the stage James put her on, while he destroys her completely.
Sophia steps out from the side of the stage wearing a black dress that's somehow sexier and more appropriate than Isabella's white gown. She's smiling like she won a prize. She walks to James and he puts his arm around her and kisses her like it's the easiest thing in the world.
Isabella realizes in that moment that this was planned. That she was the plan. That James brought her here, put her on this stage, dressed her like a prize, just so he could take it all away in front of cameras.
She walks off the stage without saying anything because there's nothing left to say.
But as she's leaving, she hears Sophia's voice in the distance, laughing. Celebrating. And something inside Isabella that was soft and hopeful and vulnerable snaps cold.
Three months later, sitting in a basement room in Queens, covered in sketches and fabric, Isabella will make a decision that changes everything.
She will come back.
And when she does, James Mitchell won't know what hit him.