Chapter 3

Just a week ago, my life was perfect. Or at least, it seemed perfect on the surface. I was standing in the garden with my mother, the late afternoon sun warm on our skin. She was helping me plan the seating chart for the wedding, laughing as we debated where to put our more eccentric relatives.

"Put Cousin Harriet next to Mark's uncle," she'd said with a wink. "They can complain about the modern world together."

My father came out to join us, carrying a tray with three glasses of iced tea. He kissed my mother's cheek, then mine. "How are my two favorite girls doing?" he asked, his eyes twinkling. "Is the groom-to-be behaving himself?"

"Mark is fine, Dad," I said, though even then, a small part of me knew it wasn't entirely true. Mark was more interested in the merger between his family's company and my father's than he was in the color of the napkins. My parents saw it too. They were too polite to say it outright, but I could see the worry in their eyes. They wanted more for me than a business transaction disguised as a marriage. That's why they'd approached Liam's family. They saw him as a stable, kind alternative, a boy they had known his whole life. They thought they were protecting me. They had no idea they were lighting a fuse.

That happy afternoon felt like a century ago. The memory was now tainted, a beautiful picture with a crack running through it.

The day after the accident, Mark stood before me, his face a mask of cold practicality. "This is a disaster, Ava," he'd said, not even bothering to sit down. "My investors are skittish. A tragedy of this magnitude... it creates uncertainty."

"Uncertainty?" I repeated, my voice hollow. "My parents are dead."

"And I'm sorry for that, I truly am," he said, the words sounding rehearsed and empty. "But this changes things. The company, the inheritance... it's all going to be a mess for months, maybe years. We can't build a future on that."

He looked at me then, truly looked at me, and I saw only calculation in his eyes. I wasn't his partner, his love. I was a line item on a balance sheet that had suddenly turned red. He was cutting his losses. That single, cruel moment had shattered my belief in the life I was about to build.

I was trying to hold myself together, making calls, signing papers, moving through a fog of grief and shock. Relatives drifted in and out, offering food I couldn't eat and platitudes that felt like stones. I was drowning, and no one could see it.

Then Liam appeared.

He walked into the chaos and created a bubble of calm around me. He took the phone from my hand, his touch gentle. "Let me handle this," he said. And he did. He made the difficult calls, his voice firm and compassionate. He stood between me and the prying eyes of the world, a solid, dependable shield.

"You're not alone in this," he told me, his gaze so full of sincerity it hurt. "I'm here. I'll always be here for you."

In my vulnerability, I clung to him like a lifeline. He was the one person who seemed to understand, the one person who wasn't afraid of my grief.

The night he proposed, I was sitting on the sofa, wrapped in my father's old blanket. Liam knelt before me, his face earnest. "I know the timing is insane," he said, "but my feelings are not. I love you, Ava. I have for so long. Let me be the man who stands by you, who helps you rebuild. Marry me."

I looked into his eyes, searching for the boy I used to build forts with, the friend who knew all my secrets. I saw him there, or I thought I did. I saw a future, not the one I had planned, but a future nonetheless. A future where I wasn't alone.

"Yes," I whispered.

The relief on his face was immense. He pulled me into a hug, and for a moment, I let myself believe. I let myself feel a sliver of hope. I thought I had been saved from the wreckage of my life.

I was so naive. I was a drowning woman who had mistaken a shark for a lifeboat. The hope he offered wasn't real. It was bait. And I had taken it without a second thought, blinded by sorrow and desperation. The realization, when it came, was more devastating than the initial loss. It was a betrayal that cut deeper than grief, a poison that seeped into the very core of my being.