The world outside the rehearsal hall was a blur of indifferent city lights and cold, damp air that did nothing to cool the fire searing my skin.
I didn’t remember walking out. I didn’t remember grabbing my keys. All I remembered was the look on Marcus’s face—a chasm of confusion cracking open across his kind, familiar features.
And his question, a single, polished stone thrown with enough force to shatter my entire glass house.
Are you in love with my best man?
The words echoed in the ringing silence of my car, ricocheting off the leather seats. They followed me up the three flights of stairs to my apartment, growing louder with each step, each gasp for breath that felt like swallowing shards of ice.
Inside, I slammed the door shut, the sound a dull thud that offered no finality. I leaned my back against it, sliding down the cool wood until I was a heap on the floor. My sanctuary. My perfectly ordered, minimalist apartment, a space where every object had a purpose and every surface was clear.
Tonight, it felt like a mausoleum. A monument to a life that had just been declared dead on arrival.
My phone, abandoned on the quartz countertop, began to buzz. A relentless, angry vibration.
I didn’t need to look. It was Chloe, unleashing a fresh torrent of fury via text. Or Marcus, demanding the answer I couldn’t give him. Or my assistant, frantic, because the lead planner of the Thorne-Wexler wedding had just been publicly eviscerated and fired.
Or it was him. Rhys.
The thought of his name on the screen sent a fresh wave of nausea through me. He was the epicenter of this earthquake, the chaos agent I had so foolishly let into my meticulously controlled world. And God, the worst part was, I had invited him in. I had unlocked the door and held it wide open.
I crawled on my hands and knees to the kitchen island, my movements sluggish, as if wading through tar. I ignored the vibrating phone and reached for my laptop.
Control. I needed control. This was a crisis. A catastrophic, multi-level failure. And what did Ava Morgan do in a crisis. She made a plan. She opened a spreadsheet. She broke the problem down into manageable components.
My fingers, clumsy and trembling, tapped the power button. The screen flared to life, illuminating the stark planes of my face.