Chapter 1

The white lace felt stiff around Sarah' s shoulders, a little too tight.

Her wedding dress, a dream since she was a girl, now felt like a costume.

Ethan, her husband of three hours, paced their honeymoon suite.

He hadn't looked at her, not really, since they left the reception.

"Ethan, is something wrong?" Sarah asked, her voice small.

He stopped, his back to her.

The city lights glittered outside the panoramic window, a celebration she wasn't part of.

"Everything is wrong, Sarah," Ethan said, his voice flat, cold.

He turned, and his face was a stranger's mask, handsome but empty of warmth.

"This was a mistake."

Sarah's breath caught. "A mistake? What do you mean, the suite? We can call the front desk if you-"

"No, not the suite," he cut her off, sharp. "Us. This marriage."

Her heart pounded, a painful drum against her ribs.

"I don't understand, Ethan. We just got married. Our families, our friends..."

He waved a dismissive hand. "Appearances. That's all it was."

"Appearances?" she whispered. The word tasted like ash.

"I don't love you, Sarah."

Each word was a precise, deliberate blow.

"I thought I could," he continued, looking past her, at the door. "I tried. But I can't."

Tears welled in her eyes, hot and sudden. She fought them back.

"But... you said you did. This morning, at the altar..."

He shrugged, a small, cruel movement. "People say things."

"So, what now?" she asked, her voice trembling despite her efforts.

"Now? Now we get an annulment," Ethan stated, as if discussing the weather. "Clean. Quick. Like this never happened."

"Never happened?" The room spun a little. "Ethan, this is our wedding night."

"And it will be our last night," he said. "I've already spoken to my lawyer. He'll draw up the papers. False pretenses, irreconcilable differences, whatever works."

A cold dread seeped into Sarah, chilling her to the bone. "False pretenses? What are you talking about?"

He finally met her eyes, and there was something calculating there, something she'd never seen before or had refused to see.

"Let's just say I realized I was coerced. Pressured into this. That I wasn't in my right mind."

"Coerced? By whom? Me?" Disbelief warred with a rising anger.

"It doesn't matter who," he said smoothly. "It just matters that it ends. I'm not going to be tied down."

Sarah remembered a fleeting image from the reception, Ethan talking animatedly with Brittany Smith, her former intern, Brittany's eyes gleaming with a triumph Sarah hadn't understood then.

Now, a sickening suspicion began to form.

"Is there someone else, Ethan?"

He hesitated for a fraction of a second. "That's irrelevant. This is about us, or rather, the lack of 'us'."

He picked up his suit jacket from the back of a chair.

"I'll be staying at my parents' tonight. You can... stay here. Or go back to your parents. I don't care."

He walked to the door.

"Ethan, wait," Sarah pleaded, a raw pain in her voice. "Please, don't do this."

He paused, hand on the doorknob, but didn't turn.

"It's already done, Sarah."

Then he was gone.

The click of the latch echoed in the sudden, crushing silence.

Sarah sank onto the edge of the king-sized bed, the pristine white comforter cold beneath her.

The beautiful room, meant for love and celebration, felt like a tomb.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. Her mother.

She couldn't answer. Not yet.

How could she explain that her marriage was over before it even began?

The news would spread like wildfire through their small town.

The pitying looks, the whispers, the judgment.

Sarah Miller, jilted on her wedding night.

The humiliation was a physical weight, pressing down on her, stealing her breath.

She looked at her reflection in the dark window, a pale ghost in a white dress.

The resilient woman her friends called her felt very far away.

Tonight, she was just broken.