She built herself into someone he could never touch again. He built himself into someone who never has to feel anything at all.Aria Wood hasn't spoken his name in twelve years. Not since the hallway, not since the laugh that followed her out of Fairview Prep and into every room she's walked into since — the laugh that taught her exactly how much a person's loyalty is worth. She rebuilt herself from that hallway up: unshakable, precise, the kind of woman who reads every contract twice and trusts no one on the first pass.Stan Montenegro doesn't talk about that day either. He's spent twelve years making sure no one gets close enough to matter, running an empire with a version of himself he built specifically so the boy who sold out his best friend to survive would never have to exist again.Neither of them planned on the gala. Neither of them remembers all of it. But Aria wakes up in Stan's bed with no memory of how she got there and every reason to hate that she did — and before she's even out the door, two words change everything: *positive* and *evidence*.A pregnancy neither of them chose. A blackmailer who's been waiting for exactly this. And the one person Aria swore she'd never need again is now the only person standing between her and losing everything a second time.Some marriages start with a promise. This one starts with a hallway that never healed — and it might just end with the truth neither of them ever said out loud.

One tequila shot too many. One signature neither of them remembers. One marriage certificate Elena finds folded in her clutch the next morning, next to a stranger's phone number and a dog leash that isn't hers.She's supposed to be planning her wedding. Not undoing one.Elena has spent her whole life color-coding her way to control: the perfect job, the perfect fiancé, the perfect five-year plan. Julian Croft is everything that plan promised: wealthy, magnetic, safe. Then she wakes up next to Jax, a dog walker who can't keep track of his own keys, let alone a marriage, and finds out the annulment isn't as simple as either of them hoped.So they lie. They fake it. They pretend it never happened.But Jax has a past he's spent years running from, and Elena is the first person who gets close enough to notice the cracks: the way his hands move like he's playing something only he can hear, the way one word from a stranger can turn his whole face to stone.The more Elena tries to fix her mistake, the more it starts to feel like the only thing in her life that isn't one.Some marriages start with a promise. Theirs started with a hangover, and it might just end with the truth neither of them saw coming.