Jolene has loved Chandler for as long as she can remember. He is her brother’s best friend, a listening ear when she needs a friend, and the unanswered wish her birthday candles have carried into the universe since the third grade.

So when graduation arrives, and everything changes between them, Jolene believes all of her dreams are finally coming true. Chandler no longer looks at her like a little sister. He doesn’t make it a point to keep space between them. And he certainly isn’t keeping his hands to himself.

Until it’s time to leave for university, and Chandler rocks her world by suggesting a break. “Just for college,” he says. An opportunity to explore, to have fun, and to not put too much pressure on maintaining a long-distance relationship when they’re so young. But despite it all, he promises that in four years, he’ll be there waiting to fall in love all over again.

So for four years, she guards her heart, saving it for the man it had always belonged to. Even while Claude, her research colleague, inches his way further beneath her skin with every day that passes. But when Chandler begins to pull back, she returns home for the holidays in a panic, six months early, and discovers that it was all for show. For it’s not Jolene’s finger boasting the brilliant, glittering diamond.

He promised her his heart . . . and then he turned her into the other woman.