Chapter 1

My life with Mark was built on a foundation of my unwavering devotion. For years before we were anything, I was the one who stayed late to help him with projects, the one who remembered his coffee order, the one who saw the potential in him when no one else did. He was brilliant but scattered, and I was the quiet force that organized his world. Our dynamic was set long before he ever saw me as more than a friend. It was an unbalanced thing, me giving and him taking, but I called it love.

Then came the awakening. It wasn't a dream, it was something sharper, more terrifying. We both woke up one morning in a cold sweat, the same knowledge downloaded into our minds. Our lives, our meeting, our future-it was all the plot of a trashy romance novel titled Destiny's Embrace.

And I, Sarah Miller, was not the heroine. I was the tragic side character, the successful but doomed first wife.

Mark was destined for a woman named Emily Davis.

The realization hung in the air between us, thick and suffocating.

"It's not real, Sarah," he said, his voice shaking as he pulled me into his arms. "It's a delusion, some kind of shared nightmare."

But we both knew it was more than that. The details were too specific, the future events laid out with chilling clarity. The novel said he would marry me, build a business with my help, and then cast me aside when the true heroine, Emily, appeared.

"I won't let it happen," I whispered into his chest, wanting to believe him. "We can fight it."

He held me tighter. "There's nothing to fight. The only person I love is you. The only person I will ever love is you."

But the script said otherwise. I tried to pull away, to put distance between us, to escape the pre-written tragedy. If we weren't together, the prophecy couldn't come true.

"Let's just... take a break, Mark," I said, my voice thin. "Let's not see each other for a while. Let this feeling pass."

His face hardened. He gripped my shoulders, his eyes intense.

"No," he said, the word a command. "That's letting it win. That's surrendering. We are not surrendering, Sarah. We're going to get married. Right now. We'll prove this whole thing wrong by living our lives, together."

He was forceful, overwhelming my fear with his certainty. He insisted his love was real, a force strong enough to defy a written destiny. Against my better judgment, against the cold dread in my gut, I let him convince me. I chose to believe in his love over the terrifying script.

We got married a week later.

And for three years, it seemed he was right. We defied the narrative. With my strategy and his innovation, we built tech giant Innovate Dynamics from the ground up. Our lives were a whirlwind of success and what felt like genuine happiness. We were partners in every sense of the word, our days filled with shared ambitions and our nights with what I believed was real affection. He was the perfect husband, attentive and loving. The memory of that strange awakening faded, becoming a weird story we never spoke of. I allowed myself to believe we had won.

Then, Emily Davis applied for an internship.

She was exactly as the book described her: young, with wide, innocent eyes and a vulnerability that seemed to draw people in. Mark hired her personally, citing her "raw talent." I felt a flicker of the old dread, but I pushed it down. It was a coincidence. I was being paranoid.

The book's plot, however, had its own timeline.

A month later, a fire broke out in the server room on the top floor of our office building. It was late, and only a few of us were still there. I was in my office next door when the alarm blared. My first thought was the central server, the one holding the prototype data for our biggest project yet. It was Mark's life's work.

I ran towards the smoke, my lungs immediately burning. I saw the server rack, flames licking at the cables nearby. I grabbed a fire extinguisher, trying to fight back the blaze enough to pull the main drive. A burning ceiling tile crashed down, and a sharp, searing pain shot through my leg as a piece of shrapnel embedded itself deep in my calf. Another piece struck my arm, and I fell to the ground, gasping.

Through the haze of smoke and pain, I saw Mark running down the hall.

"Mark!" I cried out, my voice raspy. "Help me!"

He saw me. His eyes met mine for a fleeting second. I saw the horror on his face, the recognition of my injury. But then his gaze shifted past me, down the hall in the other direction.

Emily was there, coughing near the stairwell, much farther from the real danger.

He didn't hesitate. He ran right past me, his footsteps echoing in the roaring chaos. He scooped Emily into his arms, his voice a frantic cry of her name.

"Emily! Are you okay?"

He carried her towards the emergency exit, leaving me on the floor of the burning room, bleeding and alone. The pre-ordained destiny, the one I had tried so hard to forget, crashed down on me with the weight of the collapsing ceiling. The pain in my leg was nothing compared to the agony that ripped through my heart. The script was real. And he had just followed it perfectly.