My Escape: A Marriage of Convenience

For five years, I was the perfect girlfriend. I stood by Adler when his family lost everything, helping him build a tech empire from scratch. I thought our love was real.

But one night, I heard him moaning another woman's name in his sleep-Annika, the ex who abandoned him the second his money was gone. I realized with horrifying clarity that I wasn't his love. I was his placeholder.

The cruelty was a slow burn that became an inferno. When a chandelier fell at a party, he instinctively saved her, leaving me to be crushed. He left me bleeding on the side of the road after a car crash to go comfort her.

He chose her. Every single time. He told me he loved me, but his actions screamed that I was disposable. His love wasn't a home; it was a cage built of comfortable lies.

After he abandoned me on a yacht to save Annika from her own staged drama, I was finally done. So when his sister begged me to help her escape an arranged marriage to a monstrous, disfigured recluse, I saw my escape. I texted her back, "Don't worry. I'll marry him."

Chapter 1

The first sign was a deep shudder that ran through Adler' s body.

I stopped, my hand resting on his back. "Are you okay? Do you have a fever?"

His skin was slick with a thin layer of sweat, but it wasn't hot. He was just... tense. Every muscle in his body was coiled tight. We' d been together for five years, lived together for three. I knew every line of his back, every shift in his breathing. This was different.

"I'm fine," he murmured, his voice strained. He didn't turn to look at me. "Just tired. Long week at the office."

I tried to ease the tension in his shoulders, my fingers working the knots I found there. "Let me get you some water. Maybe some aspirin?" My mind raced through possibilities. The pressure of his company, Monroe Tech, was immense. He had single-handedly resurrected his family's name from the ashes of a financial scandal, building an empire from nothing. He carried the weight of it all.

"No, Hazel. Don't," he said, his tone gentle but firm. He shifted away from my touch. "Just... let me sleep."

He turned his back to me completely, pulling the covers up to his chin. The distance he created felt wider than the few inches of mattress between us. I lay there in the dark, listening to the sound of his breathing, which was too ragged for sleep. A cold knot formed in my stomach. Something was wrong.

I gave him an hour before I slipped out of bed. I needed to finish a graphic design proposal for a client, and the unease in the room was making it impossible to rest. I padded barefoot into the living room, retrieved my laptop from my bag, and settled onto the sofa. I' d just started to work when I realized I' d left my favorite pen in the bedroom.

Tiptoeing back to the doorway, I stopped.

A sound came from the bedroom. A low, guttural moan. It wasn't a sound of pain. It was something else. Something private.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I froze, hidden in the shadows of the hallway.

Then he said her name.

"Annika."

The name was a ghost, a whisper of a past I thought we had buried. Annika Morse. His ex-girlfriend. The narcissistic socialite who had abandoned him the second his family' s fortune evaporated. The woman who was now, suddenly, back in our city, her face plastered across gossip sites now that Adler was a tech mogul again.

I leaned forward, my body trembling, and peered through the sliver of open doorway.

The moonlight cut a stripe across the bed. Adler was on his back, his eyes closed, one hand moving under the sheets. His face was a mask of desperate longing, an expression I had never seen directed at me. Not once.

"Annika," he breathed again, his voice thick with a raw, agonizing need. "Please..."

The sound ripped through me. It was a violation. He was in our bed, the bed we shared, and he was fantasizing about another woman. Not just any woman, but her.

In all our years together, through all our moments of intimacy, he had never shown this kind of feverish, all-consuming passion. With me, it was warm, comfortable, and steady. He was a perfect boyfriend on the surface-attentive, generous, the man who rebuilt his family' s legacy. But this... this was an obsession. This was a sickness.

And I saw with horrifying clarity that I wasn't his love. I was his comfort. I was the stable ground he stood on while he yearned for a storm. I was his substitute.

The coldness in my stomach spread through my entire body, a creeping ice that settled deep in my bones. I felt hollowed out, a spectator to my own life's demolition.

The shrill ring of his phone on the nightstand shattered the moment.

Adler' s eyes snapped open. He fumbled for the phone, his voice groggy but instantly alert when he saw the caller ID. "Cory? What' s up?"

Cory Vinson was his business partner and closest friend. He was also the only one who ever dared to call Adler out.

"Are you insane?" Cory' s voice was sharp, even through the phone. "I just saw Annika' s latest post. She's at that new club downtown, telling everyone you' re still wrapped around her finger."

Adler sat up, running a hand through his hair. "It' s not like that."

"Isn't it?" Cory shot back. "You publicly humiliated Hazel at the gala last week to run after Annika when she 'tripped.' You left Hazel standing alone on that yacht when the engine caught fire because you had to make sure Annika was safe first. Now this? Adler, what are you doing?"

I squeezed my eyes shut. The yacht fire. He' d told me he was just making sure everyone got off safely. A lie. It was always about Annika.

"Annika is... complicated," Adler said, his voice dropping. "I owe her."

"You owe her nothing! She left you with nothing but debt and a broken heart. Hazel stood by you. Hazel helped you rebuild. She loves you, you idiot."

A long silence stretched out. I held my breath, my entire future hanging on his next words.

"I know," Adler finally said, and the two words were devoid of all emotion. "Hazel is good. She' s kind. She's stable."

"But you don't love her," Cory stated, his voice flat with resignation.

"I can't," Adler admitted, his voice cracking. "With Annika... it was everything. It almost destroyed me. I can' t go back to that. I won't. Hazel... Hazel is safe. It' s better this way."

"So you're just using her? You're just settling? That' s cruel, Adler. She deserves more than to be your goddamn placeholder."

"It's not like that," Adler insisted, but his voice lacked conviction.

"It's exactly like that," Cory said. "You're going to lose her. And when you do, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life."

"She won't leave," Adler said, a chilling certainty in his tone. "She loves me." He paused. "Even if she did, it would be for the best. I can' t give her what she wants."

The line went dead.

I backed away from the door, my movements silent and mechanical. I stumbled into the living room, the city lights outside the panoramic window blurring into a meaningless smear.

He wouldn' t care if I left.

He was waiting for it.

He said I was safe. A safe harbor. But a harbor is just a place a ship waits before it sails off to where it really wants to be.

I sank to the floor, my back against the cold glass of the window. The memories flooded in, a torrent of carefully constructed lies I had mistaken for a life. Our first meeting was at a university party. I was a quiet graphic design student, dragged along by my best friend, Charley Monroe-Adler' s younger sister. The air was thick with the scent of cheap beer and perfume.

Then he walked in.

Adler Monroe wasn't just handsome; he was electric. He had a way of standing in a room that made everything else fade into the background. He wore a simple black t-shirt and jeans, but he carried himself with an innate confidence that drew every eye.

I was instantly, hopelessly captivated.

"That's my brother," Charley had whispered, rolling her eyes. "Try not to stare. He hates it."

He was a legend on campus. Smart, driven, and notoriously aloof. Girls threw themselves at him constantly, and he rejected them all with a polite but unbreakable coolness. I was just another face in the crowd, content to admire him from afar, my sketchbook filled with secret portraits of him.

Then Annika Morse arrived.

She was everything I wasn't: loud, flashy, and relentlessly aggressive in her pursuit of him. She chased him for months, a vibrant, demanding force of nature. To everyone's shock, Adler, the untouchable prince, finally relented.

He didn't just date her; he worshipped her.

I saw them once, cutting across the main quad. He was laughing, a full-throated, joyful sound I had never heard from him before. He lifted her up, spinning her around as if she were the center of his universe. He bought her a car for her birthday, paid off her student loans, and even got into a fistfight with a guy who insulted her at a bar. He was a man possessed by love.

I was possessed by a quiet, searing jealousy.

Then the Monroe family fortune collapsed. His father was caught in a massive embezzlement scandal, and they lost everything overnight.

The day the news broke, Annika packed her bags. She told him she couldn't be with a "charity case" and walked away without a backward glance.

Adler shattered. He dropped out of school, locked himself in his tiny apartment, and refused to see anyone. Charley was frantic. She begged me to check on him, to bring him food, to just make sure he was alive.

So I did. For weeks, I left meals outside his door. I slipped notes of encouragement under it. I just... stayed.

One day, he finally opened the door. He looked gaunt, his eyes hollow. He stared at me for a long moment.

"You're still here?" he asked, his voice rough from disuse.

I nodded, unable to speak.

"Why?"

I just looked at him, my years of silent adoration written all over my face.

He let out a long, weary sigh. "Do you like me, Hazel?"

I nodded again.

"Fine," he said, stepping aside to let me in. "Let's be together. Maybe you can help me forget her."

I knew, even then, that I was a rebound. A tool for his recovery. But I was so in love, I didn't care. I thought my devotion could heal him. I thought my quiet, steady love could eventually replace her loud, destructive passion.

For five years, I believed it was working. I supported him as he worked three jobs, paid his bills, and helped him launch his first small tech startup. When Monroe Tech finally took off, he became the man he was always meant to be: powerful, successful, brilliant. He showered me with gifts, took me on lavish vacations, and told the world I was the woman who had saved him.

He was the perfect boyfriend. He was kind. He was my best friend's brother. He was the love of my life.

I thought I had won. I thought I had healed his heart.

But I hadn't healed it. I'd only put a bandage on a wound that was still festering underneath. And the moment Annika returned to the city, rich and successful again, she ripped that bandage right off.

He started acting strangely. He' d cancel our dates at the last minute. He' d be on his phone, smiling at a text, and I' d see her name flash on the screen. He started going to parties he knew she' d be at, all while telling me he was in late-night meetings.

The auction was the first public crack. He was being honored at a charity gala, and he' d "donated" an evening with Annika for the auction, a sick, twisted game of power and revenge. He wanted to show her that he was now the one in control, the one with the money. But as he stood on that stage, watching men bid on her, his eyes held not triumph, but a familiar, desperate longing. He was still obsessed.

Now, sitting on the cold floor of our apartment, the pieces of my life clicked into place, forming a picture of unbearable clarity.

All his kindness, all his generosity-it was all a performance. It was a lie he told himself, and a lie he told me. He wasn't trying to hurt me. In his mind, he was being good to me. But his version of "good" was a cage built of comfort and stability, designed to keep me from leaving while his heart remained chained to another woman.

He never loved me. He loved the idea of me. He loved that I was easy, that I was loyal, that I wasn't Annika.

I was nothing more than a ghost, a placeholder for the one he could never truly have or truly let go of.

I looked at my reflection in the dark window. My face was pale, my eyes wide with a pain so deep it felt like it had physically carved a hole in my chest. For five years, I had molded my life around him, believing my love was enough.

It was never enough. It was never even in the running.

I stood up, my legs shaking. I walked to the bathroom and stared at my face in the mirror. The woman looking back was a fool. A loving, devoted fool.

A tear slid down my cheek, hot and stinging. Then another. I didn't sob. The pain was too profound for that. It was a silent, internal scream.

I would not be a substitute anymore. I would not be his safe harbor.

I took a deep breath, the decision settling in my soul like a block of ice. I would leave. I would disappear from his life so completely it would be as if I never existed.

My phone buzzed on the counter. A text from Charley.

Heard from Mom. The Mccalls are finalizing the marriage contract. I have to marry that monster. Hazel, I can't do it. Please, help me.

The arranged marriage. A deal struck years ago between the Monroes and the powerful, old-money Mccall family to secure a business alliance. Charley was supposed to marry the heir, Christian Mccall-a man rumored to be disfigured and cruel, a recluse who hadn't been seen in public for a decade. Charley was desperately in love with her musician boyfriend and was terrified.

An idea, insane and terrifying, sparked in the wreckage of my heart.

It was an escape route.

I picked up the phone, my fingers typing a message that would change everything.

Don't worry, Charley. I'll handle it. You won't have to marry him.

I will.