The next seventy-two hours became the longest of Evelyn’s life.
She told no one the truth — not even Zara.
When her best friend called later that afternoon, excited and curious about how the meeting with Damien Blackwood had gone, Evelyn kept her answers vague and carefully rehearsed.
“It went okay,” she said, forcing lightness into her voice while sitting on her bedroom floor. “He gave us three more days to come up with a counter-proposal. It’s not much, but it’s something.”
Zara sounded skeptical. “Three days? That’s it? Girl, you walked into the lion’s den and that’s all you got?”
“Yeah… that’s all,” Evelyn lied. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words contract marriage. The idea still felt too surreal, too humiliating, too terrifying to speak aloud. If Zara knew, she would eit
