Part 1Married Him At Your Engagement Party

My marriage to Holden had reached its bitter, inevitable end.

Despite the deep, bruising love we supposedly shared, we were forced to sign the papers. Yet, we had chosen a deeply toxic way to remain tethered to one another—we vacated the marriage, but we couldn't vacate each other's beds.

That afternoon, everything felt exactly the way it always did.

But just as the tangled heat between us settled, a frantic, violent pounding erupted at the front door.

A woman’s voice, high-pitched and laced with pure, venomous jealousy, pierced through the wood.

"Open the door, you homewrecking trash! You've been clinging to Holden day and night—do you have absolutely no shame?"

Panic spiking in my chest, I blindly reached out for Holden in the tangled sheets, but my fingers met only cold, empty air.

He was already gone.

My hands shook as I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and dialed his number. It rang and rang, the hollow sound echoing in the quiet apartment, but no one picked up.

Just as the panic threatened to swallow me whole, a text message flashed across my screen.

It was from Holden. Four devastating words: Make yourself scarce. Now.

My stomach plummeted.

It was a poorly kept secret that the Prescott family had never deemed me worthy of their son. In the two years since our quiet divorce, his mother had paraded an endless assembly line of blue-blooded, trust-fund heiresses past him.

But this was the very first time Holden had ever sounded so frantic, so desperate for me to disappear.

The screaming in the hallway escalated into a hysterical pitch.

"The locksmith is already on his way! The second I get in there, I am going to rip your face off!"

Terror, raw and primal, hijacked my nervous system. I didn't even stop to grab my shoes. Barefoot, my heart hammering violently against my ribs, I bolted out onto the terrace.

These luxury high-rise condos were built practically on top of each other; the wrought-iron dividers between the balconies were separated by a mere two feet of open air.

Just as I pressed my back against the brick, gasping for air, I noticed a stranger standing on the adjacent terrace.

He was holding his phone out, the speakerphone volume turned all the way up. A sickly-sweet, overly dramatic female voice whined from the device.

"Oh, Beck, please open the door! I've missed you so, so much."

The man looked up. Our eyes locked over the dizzying drop of the city skyline.

In almost perfect, absurd unison, the two of us spoke.

I said, "Fifty grand if you come over here and pretend to be my boyfriend."

He said, "Fifty grand if you come over here and pretend to be my girlfriend."

* * *

The man’s dark eyebrows arched in amusement. His tone was a lazy, arrogant drawl that left zero room for negotiation: "A hundred grand. Come here."

I hesitated, glancing at the terrifying gap between the buildings. But the sound of heavy boots and jingling tools echoing from my front door shattered my resolve.

My defenses crumbled. I lowered my voice to a desperate whisper.

"Help me."

A wicked, triumphant smirk touched the corner of his mouth.

He extended a long, muscular arm, his grip wrapping securely around my waist. With a terrifyingly effortless pull, and a slight push off the railing, he hauled me over the dizzying gap and straight into the hard wall of his chest.

A split second later, a deafening crash echoed as my apartment door was kicked open.

"Rowan! Get out here!"

The shrill voice detonated in the quiet afternoon air. Out of pure instinct, I tried to dart inside the stranger's condo, but his arm snapped around me again, pulling me flush against his body, burying my face into his shoulder.

Struggling was useless. I was trapped against the solid, warm expanse of him, so I surrendered, shrinking myself into his towering frame.

"Still scheming even after the divorce, always trying to climb your way up a ladder that doesn't belong to you. You cheap little parasite."

The vicious insults mixed with the sharp clicking of heels, marching straight toward my terrace.

My spine went rigid. I braced myself for the confrontation.

But in the next breath, the woman’s voice abruptly lost its venom, melting into something cloying and submissive.

"Oh... Mr. Harrington? What are you doing out here? And who is..."

They knew each other?

A jolt of shock went through me. I instinctively tried to pull away, but his grip only tightened, an immovable vice around my waist.

"My girlfriend," the man said smoothly, his voice a low rumble vibrating against my cheek. "We got a little too wild in bed earlier, and now she’s throwing a tantrum."

The implication was so filthy, so outrageously intimate, that a flush of hot humiliation burned all the way to the tips of my ears. Furious, I opened my mouth and bit down hard on his collarbone through his shirt.

"Mmh... ah!"

A low, husky groan escaped his lips, instantly thickening the already suffocating sexual tension in the air.

Just as I was drowning in the sheer, unbearable awkwardness of it all, a voice I knew better than my own spoke up.

"Cam."

My hands curled into tight, trembling fists.

Holden was here.

"Cam, sweetheart, stop making a scene."

"She's just a nobody. It's not worth getting yourself worked up. I'd hate to see you ruin your health over nothing."

His tone was dripping with gentle indulgence.

Holden and I had loved each other—or at least shared a life—for seven years. To the outside world, his demeanor toward me had always been one of professional admiration or quiet approval.

Never once had he spoken to me with such careful, delicate coddling.

I knew, with absolute, soul-crushing certainty, that if I had been the one throwing a hysterical tantrum, Holden would have coldly told me to get out of his sight.

That realization washed over me, leaving a hollow, freezing ache in the center of my chest.

"Hmph! Tell me right now, where did you hide that trash? Don't even try to lie to me, Holden. My friend saw her walk into this building with her own two eyes!"

"Baby, I swear to you. Ever since the divorce, I have had absolutely nothing to do with her."

I squeezed my eyes shut, biting down on my lower lip so hard I tasted copper.

Less than an hour ago, he was buried in my neck, calling me baby. Now, that word slipped off his tongue, perfectly tailored for another woman.

When we signed the divorce papers, he had looked me in the eye and told me it was just a piece of paper. A strategic move to pacify the conservative board members and his demanding family. I'm Holden Prescott, he had said. And for the rest of my life, the only woman I acknowledge is you.

I had believed him.

I had stripped away my pride, discarded my self-respect, and spent two years as his secret, shameful entanglement. And what did it buy me?

I have absolutely nothing to do with her.

Something massive and heavy lodged in my throat. I couldn't breathe.

Treasonous, pathetic tears spilled over my eyelashes.

"Then how do you explain all the women's things in there?" the girl pressed, refusing to back down.

"This condo is just a crash pad for when I work late. I'm only here when she isn't. Since the divorce, we keep things strictly professional. We have never crossed the line."

Holden explained it all so gently, without a shred of his usual impatience.

"You've seen my text logs, Cam. When I text her 'I'm at the apartment,' it's my way of telling her to stay away."

A choked, breathless laugh tore from my throat.

That was our code.

I'm at the apartment meant I needed to be there in an hour. It meant he wanted me.

And now, he was weaponizing our secret intimacy to prove his innocence to another woman.

In that quiet, suspended moment, the fog lifted. Everything I had been too blind, or too terrified, to see over the last seven years snapped into brutal, undeniable focus.

To Holden, I was never a partner. I was a multi-tool.

A ruthlessly efficient secretary in public, an eager, compliant body in private. Proper and polished during the day, fiercely devoted at night.

I had been nursing the delusion that I was "special" to him, using it as a drug to numb the pain of year after year of compromise and humiliation. I knew the arrangement was toxic, but I had willingly drowned in it.

I laughed again, louder this time. The sound was ragged and ugly.

The air on the adjacent balcony went dead silent.

Then—

"Rowan?"

Holden's voice drifted over, laced with sudden, cautious dread.

The man holding me shifted his weight, angling his broad shoulders to completely shield me from their view.