Chapter 1

Ariana POV

Twenty-five candles. That's what I kept thinking, standing in a dress I'd altered by hand at one in the morning three nights running, in a club where the cheapest bottle probably cost more than my rent. Twenty-five candles, and somewhere behind that gold curtain, Ethan was setting up my birthday like a man who actually loved me.

I should've known better. I did know better, if I'm honest some small stubborn animal part of me had known for weeks that something was off. The way he'd go quiet mid-sentence when his friends texted.

The way his eyes did this quick, calculating flick whenever he caught me watching him instead of the other way around. I ignored it. Typical me. Ignore the smoke till the fire's already eaten the roof.

The private room at Lumen was bathed in that particular gold light expensive places love, buckets of champagne sweating untouched on ice, laughter drifting from behind the curtain that didn't sound like a surprise.

It sounded like an inside joke. I just didn't know yet that I was the punchline.

"Ari, babe, they're finishing the cake, give it a sec," Priya said, her hand warm on my arm. Priya was Ethan's cousin, the only one in his circle who ever looked at me like a person and not like the help who'd wandered into the wrong party. "You look gorgeous, by the way. Seriously."

I gave her a real smile. She deserved that much, at least.

"Thanks." I smoothed the hem of my dress, thinking of the sale rack, of the seam I'd hand-stitched twice because the first attempt puckered at the hip.

Nobody here would ever guess. That had been the whole point of tonight, hadn't it.

Just passing.

I went looking for a bathroom and found the truth instead, the way you stumble into a table sideways when you're not paying attention.

Ethan's voice, easy and warm, drifted from behind the curtain except this time it wasn't aimed at me at all. "Relax, I've got two more weeks. She's basically in love with me already."

Someone laughed, a short ugly bark of a sound.

"Two weeks, my ass. Pay up now, Ash you're not gonna make her cry and dump her by her birthday. That was the bet."

The bet. Wait, I was a bet?

Two words. That's all it took to drop the floor out from under eight months, out from under every soft good morning and I-love-you I'd swallowed whole because I wanted, so badly, for someone to choose me without an angle.

"Watch me," Ethan said, grinning. I could hear that smug little curl in his voice I used to find charming.

"Twenty grand says I make her cry happy tears tonight and dump her tomorrow. Crying on her birthday, that's the whole bit. It's poetic."

Poetic. As if he couldn't degrade me any further. He thought breaking me open was poetic.

I don't remember deciding to walk in there. I remember the curtain fisted in my hand, gold fabric rasping against my palm, six faces turning toward me in that slow, sickening unison of people caught mid-crime. Ethan's smile froze somewhere between charming and cornered.

"Ari babe, it's not what it"

"Don't." Steadier than I felt, which might've been the only mercy I got all night. "Don't you dare call me babe."

I didn't stay for the rest of the sentence. Couldn't. Eight months, and it took four seconds, four seconds to understand that every one of them had been a lie wearing good cologne.

What I didn't know yet, standing there with my whole life rearranging itself around one ugly sentence, was that Ethan Ashford did not lose gracefully.

Men who bet on women rarely do. That was a lesson still waiting for me down the road, one humiliation at a time.

I don't remember walking out of Lumen, honestly. I could only remember the valet's face, full of pity.

Did he know too? Guess I was the only fool in the building.

I remember the cold slap of November air against my cheeks, and realizing somewhere around the corner that I was crying the ugly kind the kind that ruins mascara and whatever dignity you had left, while strangers on the sidewalk looked at you like you needed rescuing.

Which……fine. Very much true.

I could've called my mother. Could've called Priya, who probably would've hunted me down with an apology that wasn't hers to give. But I was done being the goody-two-shoes who absorbed everyone else's mess and said thank you for the privilege.

Maybe it was time I did something carefree, something keep-your-head-down Ariana never does.

I walked into the first bar I found and ordered something I couldn't even name. Vodka, it turned out. Of course it was vodka.

"Rough night?" The bartender didn't look up, just kept polishing a glass that was already clean.

"You have no idea."

Three drinks in, the ache hadn't dulled so much as gotten louder, and that was when I saw him, no not saw at first I felt him walk in. His presence was charged like the air before a thunderstorm

He didn't sit beside me. He simply existed a few feet away, dark suit, darker eyes, a jaw that looked like it had never once apologized for anything in its life.

Why is that the thought your brain lands on right now, Ari.

His head turned, just his head, like moving the rest of himself would've been a concession he wasn't prepared to make. Those eyes found mine and held there.

No pity in them. Just attention. Full, unhurried, a little terrifying.

He said something to the bartender, emphasis on unhurried, and then he was closer, close enough that I had to tip my chin up to keep looking at him.

"Boyfriend issues?" he asked.

"Ex-boyfriend." I laughed, short and humorless.

"Guess I'm that easy to read, huh."

The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile.

"And you're trying to forget. Which is why you've been drinking." It wasn't a question, and something about the certainty in it went straight through me.

"Buy me a drink, then," I said. "And tell me your name."

He looked at me for a long moment, then shook his head. "No."

"No?" That annoyed me more than it should have.

"Are you a coward?"

Something darkened behind his eyes at that. I'd landed a hit, and I felt an ugly little flare of satisfaction over it. Good. Let someone else feel off-balance for once.

"I'm not buying a woman a drink when she's already drunk," he said, and there was an edge under the calm now, something that made it very clear this wasn't a suggestion, it was a decision, and he'd made plenty of those in his life without asking anyone's permission first. "That's not a kindness. That's an opening for someone worse than me to walk through."

I stood up to prove him wrong and nearly went straight to the floor for my trouble. He caught me before I landed, one arm hard around my waist, and I ended up with my face against his chest, breathing in cedar and something darker underneath, like leather left out too long in the sun.

"Easy," he said, quiet, and I felt the word more than heard it, some low vibration against my cheek.

I should have stepped back right then. The old Ariana would have. But Ethan had killed her an hour ago in a gold-lit room, and I'd decided somewhere between the third drink and this stranger's arms that I was the one who got to bury her.

"Make love to me," I said, low, and I was sure he heard it, because his whole body went still against mine.

"Here?" He sounded almost surprised, which felt like a small victory. Like maybe I could still catch a man like this off guard, even wrecked, even three drinks past sensible.

"Anywhere. Your place. I don't care." I fisted my hand in his shirt, desperate in a way that should've embarrassed me and didn't. "Just don't let me go home tonight and think about any of it."

He didn't answer with words, he tipped my chin up instead, studied me the way a man studies something he intends to be careful with, and then he offered me his hand instead. No grabbing, no pulling, just opened his palm, waiting to see if I'd take it.

I took it because for the first time in eight months, I wasn't the one being lied to.

I was choosing this. Whatever it cost me. Whatever came after.

I just didn't know yet how much that would turn out to be or how far Ethan Ashford would go, once wounded pride convinced him he still had a claim on something he'd only ever treated like a game.

Only one way to find out