Billionaire Fake Marriage

"You what?"The words barely made it past my lips. My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles ached."You had it coming, Skylar." Ray's voice was cold — the kind of cold that had been building for months and I'd been too blind to notice. "I don't want a girlfriend who shows up when it's convenient. I don't want a girlfriend who crawls into bed smelling like deadlines and someone else's schedule. I needed you last night, and where were you?""So your answer was to cheat on me?" My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated myself for it. Tears burned the corners of my eyes before I could stop them, spilling over before I had a chance to blink them back. "How could you, Ray? How could you even—"The soft click of a door cut me off.My spine went rigid.Slowly, I turned.Zane Hills stood at the entrance of the bedroom, a white towel hanging dangerously low on his waist, droplets of water trailing down the hard planes of his chest like they had somewhere important to be. His dark ha

Skylar's POVThe ceiling was unfamiliar.That was the first thing I noticed — before the throbbing behind my eyes, before the cotton-dry taste in my mouth, before any of it. The ceiling was the wrong color, the wrong height, and the morning light was coming from the wrong direction entirely.I sat up.Slowly. Carefully. The way you do when your body isn't sure it's ready to rejoin the world.The room materialized around me in pieces. Expensive furniture. Heavy curtains. A hotel room that cost more per night than my monthly rent.And a man.Sitting in the chair across from me, watching me with the measured calm of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment — the moment I woke up and realized.He was young. Mid-twenties, maybe. Sharp jaw, easy posture, dark eyes that held something between amusement and calculation. Handsome in the way that expensive things are handsome — polished, deliberate, slightly dangerous."How did I get here?" My voice came out rough. Foreign."You chos

Skylar's POV"You're late."I stopped in the doorway of his office, one hand still on the handle, and stared at him.He didn't look up from whatever document he was reading. Just let the words sit there between us, casual and unbothered, as though he hadn't spent yesterday drugged at an auction, then married me in a government office, then sent me home in one of his cars like a package that had been delivered to the wrong address."I'm sorry?" I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. "Zane. We got married yesterday.""Contract marriage." He turned a page. "Which means Monday still follows Sunday.""Normally—" I set my bag down on the chair across from his desk, "—after a wedding, there is a honeymoon. There is a period of adjustment. There is, at minimum, a morning where no one expects you to answer emails before nine a.m.—""It's nine fourteen.""—before ten a.m."He finally looked up.And that was always the problem with Zane Hills. Because when he actually looked at you — not

Skylar's POVThe view from the hotel room was the kind that made you forget, briefly, that your life had been structurally demolished and rebuilt in the span of forty-eight hours.City lights spreading out below us like scattered jewelry. The sky beginning to soften at its edges. A bottle of wine on the table that was probably worth more than my monthly rent, which was becoming a recurring theme in my life.I was leaning against Zane's arm on the window seat, which was also a recurring theme I was trying not to examine too closely."You didn't wear the dress I sent."His fingers were moving through my hair with an absentmindedness that suggested he wasn't fully aware he was doing it, which somehow made it harder to ignore."It was too much," I said. "I didn't want to walk into a government office looking like I was attending the Met Gala.""And yet here we are. On the news anyway.""Exactly my point." I sat up slightly. "And your mother noticed the ring within thirty seconds of seeing

Skylar's POVThe house was quiet in the way that large houses get quiet when a man who fills them with his presence isn't in them.I found Kai in the garden, crouched near the flower bed along the south wall, conducting some private negotiation with a butterfly that had landed on his sleeve. He was speaking to it in a low, serious voice, as though they had an agreement he was trying to honor.I sat on the step nearby and watched him."Aunty Skylar.""Mm.""What's the stake that you won't leave my daddy?"I looked up from my phone.He was still watching the butterfly, his expression contemplative, like he'd been working up to the question for a while and had finally decided the butterfly's presence made it safe to ask."Where did that come from?" I asked.He shrugged one small shoulder. "I think about it sometimes." The butterfly lifted off. He watched it go. "Daddy thinks a lot. When he's alone and doesn't know I'm watching, he gets this face." He turned to demonstrate — brows slightly