Chapter 1

• JEMIMAH
• "You are..." Jeriah's eyes dragged over me from head to toe, disdain curling the corner of his mouth. "My supposed bride, I see?"
• I nodded nervous and with utmost timidity. I was small in a body that had never once in my life been allowed to feel small.
• My wedding gown fit me like a punishment, the tummy tuck band cinched so tight beneath it that I could feel my own pulse in my stomach. I didn't dare breathe too deep. One wrong breath and the zipper at my back would give up on me the way everyone else always did.
• It was just the four of us ; me, him, the judge, and Amy.
• Amy, his girlfriend, stood close enough to him that her shoulder brushed his arm like she owned the space around him, which, in every way that mattered, she did. She shot me dangerous and dreaded looks, I'm sure if looks could kill I would've been dead by now. She was everything I was not; Beautiful, slim, classy and the perfect hourglass body shape.
• Lucky you, Jeriah Wellington, I thought. Lucky, lucky you.
• The judge wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. His hands trembled around his little book like he was afraid of catching something. Everyone was afraid of something in that room, and I was starting to understand that all of it, every ounce of fear, orbited around the man standing in front of me.
• Jeriah exhaled a short laugh and glanced sideways at Amy, who laughed with him, softly and knowing, like they were sharing a joke I wasn't smart enough to hear.
• "My father," he said, shaking his head, "has no eye for looks. Never has."
• The words landed exactly where he wanted them to land. I felt my face go hot, I felt the sting on my eyes, and I hated myself for letting it show.
• Then his amusement vanished. He turned to me fully, and all the laughter drained out of his face like someone had pulled a plug.
• He pulled a document from his lawyer's shaking hands and held it out to me. It was not the marriage certificate. Not yet.
• Instead , a prenup.
• I scanned it as fast as my blurring eyes would let me. He demanded an open marriage. His right to Amy, uncontested, unquestioned, and indefinitely
• . My silence must be guaranteed and that I would take no legal action, no public complaint, no protest, in exchange for the small mercy of being called his wife. It was all there in the cold, patient language lawyers use when they want cruelty to look like paperwork.
• I already knew why he was doing it. His father's deal with my father, which was made years ago when I was young enough to still believe love was something you were promised and not something you had to earn by disappearing. My father was dead now. He died three years ago. But the Wellingtons didn't let death cancel a contract, and old man Wellington intended to keep his word even if his son despised the price of it.
• The Wellingtons owned this town. They owned the roads, banks, half the hospital wing where my mother lay hooked to machines I couldn't afford without this marriage. My little brothers needed shoes, needed school fees, needed a sister who didn't flinch. If signing my name on a line meant my mother kept breathing and my brothers kept eating, then my name was cheap. I would spend it a hundred times over.
• My hand was shaking harder than the lawyer's had been. I signed it anyway. There was never really a choice — not for girls like me, born into families that owed men like the Wellingtons.
• The real marriage papers came next, and I signed those too, the pen slipping in my damp palm.
• The moment my name dried on the page, Jeriah snapped his fingers at his lawyer, then turned to me with a look that made my stomach fold in on itself.
• "Hey, you. Fat chunky." He said it lightly and easily, the way you'd comment on the weather. "Let's take a picture as a proof for my father."
• I wanted the marble floor to open up and swallow me whole. It didn't. Floors never do the one favor you actually beg them for.
• I walked toward him on legs that didn't feel like mine. He pulled me in close, his hand was firm and impersonal at my waist, and behind him shot Amy's glare could have set the whole courthouse on fire. The camera flashed. My cheeks ached from a smile I didn't feel.
• The second the photo was taken, he drew me even closer, close enough that our noses nearly touched.
• "My father will never hear about the prenup," he said, lowly, only for me. "Are we clear?"
• I nodded. Agreement and fear, tangled together so tightly I couldn't have separated them if I tried.
• He let go of me like I was something he'd only been holding out of obligation, which, of course, I was. Then he crossed the space back to Amy in two strides, wrapped his arm around her waist, and kissed her deeply.
• Right there in front of the judge, the lawyer, and the wife he'd just married few seconds into their marriage, like the kiss was an apology to her for the vows he'd just given to me.
• I stood there in my too-tight gown, in my borrowed happiness, in a marriage that was never going to be mine.
• "What a life," I whispered to myself, "what a life."
• The words hadn't even left my mouth before the zipper at my back gave out.
• It ripped clean off with a sound so loud it seemed to bounce off the marble walls, and my dress slit open right down my spine. I felt the cool air hit my skin before I understood what had happened, before I could even reach back to hold the fabric closed.
• All of them in the courthouse turned to me.
• Jeriah looked at me and sighed, long and heavy, like I was a problem he'd been warned about and was now being proven right on. Amy didn't even bother to hide it. She threw her head back and laughed, loud and delighted, like I'd performed a trick just for her.
• "What an embarrassment," she said, still laughing.
• Jeriah didn't laugh with her this time. His face had gone stern, unreadable, and the amusement from earlier had completely burned away. He pulled out his phone and made a call, with his eyes never leaving me, like he couldn't stand the sight of me a second longer than necessary.
• "Come and take this embarrassment out of here," he said flatly into the phone, already turning away before I could even respond, already walking back toward Amy like I'd never existed at all.