Chapter 3

My fingers trembled as I dialed Ethan's number. The phone rang, and rang, and rang. My heart hammered against my ribs with each unanswered call. Finally, he picked up.

"Jocelyn? What is it? I'm in the middle of something."

His voice was clipped, annoyed. The usual warmth was gone.

"Ethan, where are you?" I asked, my own voice barely a whisper.

"I told you, baby. L.A. This shoot is a nightmare. I' ll be stuck here for at least three days. I miss you like crazy."

The lie was so smooth, so practiced. It slid into my ear and made me feel sick. I looked at the Instagram photo still glowing on my screen.

"Something happened," I lied, my mind racing. I needed to test him. I needed to be wrong. "I had a bad fall. I think I might have a concussion."

There was a pause. Not of concern, but of calculation.

"Shit. Are you okay? Look, I'll send Dr. Evans over right now. He's my personal doctor, he'll take care of you. I can't leave L.A., Jocelyn. It's impossible. Millions of dollars on the line."

His voice was cold, distant. He was dismissing me. A concussion, and he was sending a doctor instead of coming home.

"Okay," I whispered, my throat tight. "Okay, Ethan."

I hung up, the phone clattering onto the table. The devastation was a physical weight, pressing down on me, making it hard to breathe. I had to get out of the house.

I drove aimlessly, tears blurring the city lights. I ended up outside a bar he' d always described as "too pretentious." The kind of place he' d never take me. The Wicker Room.

I walked inside, the dim lighting and quiet murmur of conversations a stark contrast to the chaos in my head. I found a small, empty table in the back.

And then I heard it.

A laugh. A familiar, booming laugh that I knew as well as my own heartbeat.

It was Ethan.

He was here. In Austin. In a private booth not twenty feet away from me.

I slid lower in my seat, my body going numb. He was with a group of industry types, their voices carrying in the quiet bar.

"I'm telling you, it was genius," Ethan was saying, his voice thick with smug satisfaction. "I had to break her spirit first. That plagiarism scandal? My masterpiece. Hired a couple of online trolls, fed a fake story to a hungry blogger. It destroyed her. Made her so grateful when I swooped in."

Another man chuckled. "So the marriage is just a cover?"

"A five-year contract for an endless supply of Oscar-worthy material," Ethan bragged. "She just sits in her little room, writing these brilliant scripts for 'herself.' She has no idea. She thinks I'm her protector."

A woman' s voice, silky and amused, joined in. "And you just hand them over to Sabrina?"

"Every last word," Ethan confirmed, and the sound of his voice saying her name was like a knife in my chest. "Sabrina is the love of my life. Always has been. She gets the career, the awards, the life she deserves. And I get her. Jocelyn... Jocelyn is just the content farm."

The world tilted on its axis. The air left my lungs. The man I loved, the man who had "saved" me, had orchestrated my ruin. My life, my love, my safe space-it was all a lie. A carefully constructed prison.