Chapter 1
Avery POV
I was ready.
Ready to surrender my virginity to my fiancé, just one day before our wedding. He’d always wanted that.
Everything felt wrong, but I inhaled a deep breath and reminded myself I had to do this.
For the sake of everyone and everything.
The key card clicked in the lock of room 1201, the little green light flashing like an invitation to my ruin.
My hand froze on the door handle.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
I had to do this.
I glanced away for a moment, my vision blurring.
One more night of freedom—that’s all I had left.
Because by this time tomorrow, I’d be Mrs. Avery Sutton, wife to a man whose last name I still stumbled over when introducing myself.
The heavy brass handle felt cold under my palm, as cold as the dread pooling in my stomach.
This was the presidential suite. Our suite for the next forty-eight hours before we left for our honeymoon. Axel’s family had booked the entire Cloud Hotel, as if they owned the sky itself.
He’d already planned the entire honeymoon too.
He hadn’t even asked where I wanted to go. He never asked me anything. Not what I dreamed about. Not what scared me. Not if I was happy.
My shoulders ached from holding them so tight, tomorrow’s weight pressing down like a physical thing trying to crush me.
I drew a shaky breath and pushed the door open.
The suite stretched before me in muted grays and deep burgundies—colors chosen by someone who’d never asked what I liked. I slid the card into the electricity socket, and dim yellow-orange light revealed heavy curtains concealing floor-to-ceiling windows.
When I pulled the rope, they spread open gradually. The entire city stretched out before me—lights twinkling like earthbound stars at midnight, beautiful and distant and utterly indifferent to the girl standing in this gilded cage.
A king-sized bed dominated the room, its crisp white sheets waiting to witness my surrender. On the low table by the couch, a bottle of champagne sat in a small ice bucket beside two crystal flutes, mocking me with their elegance.
I dropped my overnight bag beside the bed and kicked off my heels. The small act of defiance did nothing to ease the tightness in my chest.
This was his world, not mine. It would never be mine, no matter how many papers I signed or vows I spoke.
I didn’t belong here—not in this suite, not in this marriage, not in this life that felt like a beautiful prison.
But I’d said yes anyway.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my hands trembling in my lap. My gaze drifted to the champagne like a lifeline I was too afraid to grab.
I wasn’t a drinker, but something about tonight pulled me toward it—the promise of numbness, of forgetting, of becoming someone who could go through with this.
It wasn’t like he’d always been cold and distant. I remembered the night he’d proposed, how he’d pulled me onto the dance floor at his parents’ charity gala, spinning me until I laughed, whispering that he wanted to show me off to everyone who mattered. Three weeks ago, he’d shown up forty minutes late to our rehearsal dinner, reeking of scotch. When I asked if he was okay, he’d patted my cheek and said, “You worry too much.”
The shift had been so gradual I’d almost missed it. Canceled dinners became the norm. He forgot my birthday. Last Tuesday, I’d mentioned that Laura—the woman who’d raised me—was in the hospital. He’d nodded without looking up from his phone, then asked if I’d picked up his dry cleaning.
I should have called it off.
I didn’t.
Would have, if I’d had anywhere else to go. Anyone else to be. Laura’s medical bills were drowning me, and the Suttons had offered to handle everything—the hospital, the specialists, the experimental treatment that might actually save her. All I had to do was smile and sign my name beside Axel’s.
Everything to do with survival.
My throat tightened as I stared at the champagne. I stood and walked toward it, my fingers numb as they reached for the bottle.
The lock twisted on the door.
My heartbeat picked up speed, thundering so loud I was sure he’d hear it from the hallway. The bottle slipped from my grasp back into the ice bucket with a soft clink.
I wanted to run, wanted the earth and air to swallow me whole, wanted to be anywhere but here.
I froze halfway between the table and the bed, my breath quickening as I stared at the door, then at my trembling hands.
“Wait,” I called out before I could stop myself, my voice raw with everything I’d been holding back.
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