Chapter 3

Skylar's POV

"Getting married."

I said the words out loud, slowly, like they were in a foreign language I was still learning. My brain refused to accept them. Rejected them completely, the way a body rejects something poisonous.

"I am your secretary, Zane." I pressed a hand to my temple, pacing two steps before stopping because my legs weren't entirely steady. "I answer your calls. I schedule your meetings. I remind you to eat when you've been in a boardroom for six hours. That is what I am to you. Not — not this."

"Luckily for us—" He leaned back, completely unbothered, like we were discussing a quarterly report and not the complete destruction of my morning, "—I don't care what people expect."

Us.

He said us.

I stared at him. "Did you just say us?"

The corner of his mouth curved. Not quite a smile. Something worse — something that suggested he had already made up his mind and was simply waiting for me to catch up.

I pressed my eyes shut and exhaled through my nose. "Zane. I need to go home, get dressed, and pretend none of this ever happened. Please."

"Before you go." He straightened, clasping his hands in front of him in that infuriatingly composed way he had. "I think you should see what I'm offering."

"Offering." I repeated it flatly. "What are you — what does that even mean?"

The door opened.

One of his men stepped in, silent and efficient, carrying a sleek black suitcase with both hands. He set it on the coffee table, nodded once at Zane, and disappeared as quickly as he'd arrived.

My eyes moved to the suitcase. Then back to Zane.

He reached inside his robe pocket and produced a folded document, extending it toward me with the casual ease of a man who had never once in his life been told no.

I snatched it from his hand.

The paper crinkled as I unfolded it. My eyes skimmed the top line, then the second, then shot back to the top because surely — surely —

A marriage contract.

My name. His name. Terms and conditions, neatly printed in clean black ink, as though a human life could be summarized in clauses and sub-sections.

"What—" My voice came out strange. Thin. "What is this?"

"What does it look like?"

"Zane—"

"Just read it." His tone was patient in the way that powerful men are patient — not because they are calm, but because they already know how the story ends.

My hands were trembling as I read. And the further I got, the heavier the paper felt in my fingers.

Tears came without warning.

Not the pretty kind. Not the kind I could blink away and pretend hadn't happened. They fell fast and hot down my face, and I didn't have the energy to stop them.

"Do I look cheap to you?" My voice broke on the last word. I looked up at him, and for the first time since I'd walked into this room, I stopped caring about composure. "Is that what you think of me? A poor girl who needs saving? A debt to be paid off and a problem to be solved with a signature?" I slapped the contract against my palm. "I have worked for you for years, Zane. Years. And this—" I shook the papers, "—this is what I'm worth to you?"

Something shifted in his face. Almost imperceptible. Almost human.

"Skylar—"

"We had one night." I cut him off, my voice dropping, the anger hollowing into something rawer underneath it. "One night that neither of us planned. Can we please, for the love of everything, just move on from it?"

He was quiet for a moment. Then he exhaled slowly, uncrossed his arms, and said the one thing I hadn't expected.

"Your mother."

I went still.

"The debt doesn't go away because you ignore it." His voice was measured, but softer now — not gentle, exactly, but careful. Like he was handling something he knew was breakable. "I also notice things, Skylar. The same four pairs of shoes rotating every week. The way you check your phone every time a bill notification comes in. I'm not saying that to humiliate you." He paused. "I'm saying it because this contract helps you. More than it helps me, if we're being honest. My mother stops setting me up with women I have no interest in. You—" He tilted his head slightly, "—you breathe again."

The silence between us stretched.

I hated him for knowing. I hated him more for being right.

I hated myself most of all for the way my resolve was cracking at the edges, hairline fractures spreading out from the center of my chest.

Many girls would kill for this, a voice whispered at the back of my mind. And here you are, crying over it.

I looked down at the contract. My name, printed neatly beside his. The pen he'd left on the table glinted under the morning light.

Slowly, I reached for it.

My fingers closed around it.

And then something inside me slammed on the brakes so hard I nearly stumbled.

What are you doing?

I set the pen down.

I set the contract down.

And I walked out of the room.

"Skylar."

I kept walking.

"Skylar, I'm your boss. You are walking away from a direct—"

The front door. The driveway. The cool morning air hitting my face like a slap I desperately needed.

I got into the car, shoved the key in the ignition, and pulled out of the gate before he'd even made it down the front steps. In my rearview mirror I caught a glimpse of him — Zane Hills, billionaire, the man who made grown men sweat in boardrooms — actually jogging after the car for a few seconds before he slowed, stopped, and stood there watching me drive away.

I almost laughed.

I almost cried.

I did neither. I just drove.

By the time I hit the middle of Donald Street, I had no memory of deciding to stop. My hands just turned the wheel and parked outside a bar with a neon sign that buzzed and flickered like it couldn't commit to staying on.

I sat in the car for a long moment, both hands on the steering wheel, staring at nothing.

My boyfriend left me.

I slept with my boss.

My boss just handed me a marriage contract.

All before 9am.

I got out of the car.

The bar was dim and smelled like old wood and poor decisions, which felt appropriate. I slid onto a stool, set my bag on the counter, and stared at the rows of bottles lined up against the mirror behind the bar like a wall of liquid solutions.

"What can I get you?" The bartender barely looked up.

"Something that works fast."

He poured without another word.

I wasn't a drinker. I didn't like the taste, didn't like the way it blurred the edges of things. But tonight — this morning, whatever this was — I needed the blur. I needed the edges gone. I needed to stop replaying Zane's hands in my hair and his name on my lips and that contract with my name on it and Ray's voice saying I never regretted it—

"Hey." The bartender's voice cut through the fog. "You've had four. You almost went off the stool just now. I think you should—"

"One more."

He hesitated. Then reached for another bottle, because the job description of a bartender apparently did not include saving people from themselves.

But before the glass reached the counter, a hand intercepted it.

Long fingers. Dark suit sleeve. The kind of effortless precision that didn't belong in a place like this.

"I think she's done."

The voice was low. Unhurried. The kind of voice that didn't need to raise itself to be heard.

I turned — too fast, the room tilting slightly — and blinked up at him.

He was tall. Impossibly, inconveniently tall. Dark suit, dark eyes, skin that caught the dim bar light and did something entirely unfair with it. I couldn't quite pull him into focus, but even blurred at the edges, he was the most irritatingly attractive thing I had seen since I woke up in Zane Hills' bed this morning.

"Give that back," I said.

"Go home," he said.

"I don't want to go home."

"I don't particularly care what you want right now."

I stared at him. Something about the steadiness of him — the complete, immovable calm — cut through the alcohol haze just enough to make my next thought surface before I could think better of it.

"Are you available?" I asked.

He blinked. "Sorry?"

I leaned forward on the stool, dropping my voice to what I believed was a whisper. "To take me home. And by home I don't mean—" I waved my hand vaguely, "—home. You know what I mean."

His expression didn't change. Not even slightly. "I don't think those words are coming from you."

"They're absolutely coming from me." I tilted toward him, and his hand shot out immediately, steadying me before I could list sideways off the stool. The contact was brief and impersonal and somehow still managed to send warmth shooting up my arm. "Smell my breath. I'm barely even drunk."

I leaned toward his face.

He turned — just slightly — and somehow, impossibly, his mouth caught the corner of mine.

It lasted half a second.

It felt like considerably longer.

When I pulled back, blinking, the whole room had gone a little quieter in my head. The fog, the noise, the grief of the morning — all of it briefly replaced by the singular, overwhelming realization that this stranger's lips tasted better than anything I'd put in my mouth all night.

He stepped back. Jaw tight. Something careful moving behind his eyes.

"I don't do this," he said quietly. "I'm sorry." And then he was gone, back into the scattered crowd, leaving me gripping the edge of the bar with both hands and staring at the space where he'd been standing.

The room wobbled.

I wanted to go after him.

I wanted to go home.

I wanted Zane's hands and that stupid contract and Ray's voice to stop living rent-free in my skull simultaneously.

"Did you mean what you said?"

I turned.

He was back.

Standing a careful two feet away, hands in his pockets, watching me with an expression I couldn't decode — cautious, curious, something underneath both of those things that he wasn't letting through yet.

"Yes," I said.

"I'm James." A pause. "And I don't need your money."

Something reckless and warm bloomed in my chest. The bar, the morning, the marriage contract, Ray, Zane — all of it receded just slightly. Just enough.

"Skylar," I said.

And before the sensible part of my brain could register what was happening, I closed the two feet between us.