The private jet touched down in Manhattan at 6 a.m., which is a fancy way of saying I'd been awake for thirty-one hours and was starting to hallucinate.

"Coffee?" Nathan asked, not looking up from his laptop.

"Divorce."

"We've established that's off the table for eleven months and twenty-nine days. Coffee?"

"You're counting the days in your head, aren't you."

"I have an app."

Of course he had an app. I was married to a man who had probably color-coded his own funeral.

He slid a manila folder across the leather seat. I stared at it like it might bite.

"What is this?"

"Our marriage."

"That's the least romantic sentence anyone has ever said to me, and I once got dumped via group chat."

"Open it."

I opened it. Inside was a laminated, laminated, timeline. Press events. Board meetings. A charity gala. A trip to his family's estate in the Hamptons for something called "Grandmother's Memorial Weekend," which sounded like a haunted house with catering.

"Page four," Nathan said.

I flipped to page four. It was titled: PUBLIC AFFECTION PROTOCOLS.

"No," I said immediately.

"You haven't read it."

"I don't need to read it. I saw the title and my skin filed a restraining order."

"Hand-holding: required at photo opportunities. Terms of endearment: maximum two per event, pre-approved. Kissing—"

"If the next word out of your mouth is 'mandated,' I'm opening the emergency exit."

"'Situational,'" he said. "I'm not an animal."

"You wrote a binder about fake-loving me."

"I wrote a binder about surviving Vanessa."

And there it was. The name that had been sitting between us like a live grenade since Vegas.

Vanessa Whitmore. His ex-fiancée. The woman who had attended our drunken wedding like it was a crime scene she was photographing for evidence, because it was.

"Has she posted anything else?" I asked.

Nathan turned his laptop toward me.

On the screen was the photo. THE photo. Me, mid-laugh, in a plastic tiara I did not remember purchasing, proposing on one knee to my boss while a man dressed as Elvis wept openly in the background. Two million views. Caption: "Congratulations to Nathan Cross and his... surprise bride. #WhoIsShe"

"Two million people have seen my drunk knee," I said.

"Your form was excellent, for the record. Very stable."

"Thank you. That's the only compliment I've ever needed."

"There's more." He clicked to an email from his head of legal. I skimmed it. Then I read it again, slower, because apparently my brain needed a second lap to process the words INVESTIGATION and FRAUD and WHITMORE & ASSOCIATES.

"Vanessa's father's firm filed a challenge," Nathan said, voice flat as a clipboard. "They're alleging the marriage is a sham to secure the inheritance shares. They're requesting discovery. Bank records, communications, a formal deposition."

"So they want proof we're really married."

"They want proof we're not. And if they get it, the shares default to Damien. He dismantles the company, sells the consumer division for parts, and roughly four thousand people lose their jobs. Including you."

"Including me," I echoed. "The woman whose entire job was to save that division."

"Convenient, isn't it."

"Nathan. Nothing about this is convenient. I got drunk-married to my boss in front of his ex. If my life were a movie, the critics would call it 'implausible.'"

"I'd watch it."

"You're IN it."

"I'd still watch it."

I stared at him. He stared back, completely serene, like a man who had never once experienced consequence.

"How do we beat the discovery?" I asked.

Something flickered in his face. Approval, maybe. It was the first time since Vegas that he'd looked at me like a colleague instead of a liability.

"That," he said, "is the correct question."

"I know it's the correct question. I've been asking correct questions since before you hired me. Question one: how long have we been 'dating' in our official story?"

"Four months. Since your second week at Cross."

"That's when I told the entire strategy floor that your Q3 projections were, quote, 'written by someone who has never met a customer.'"

"Yes."

"And your story is that made you fall for me?"

"My story," Nathan said, closing the laptop, "is that nobody else in that building had ever told me the truth."

The cabin went very quiet.

I hated that my heart did a small, traitorous hiccup. I hated it the way you hate a pop song you catch yourself humming.