Ryan was making that terrible burnt coffee he insisted on every Sunday morning, the kind that stayed bitter no matter how much sugar you dumped into it. I was sitting on the kitchen counter, watching him commit the same crime against coffee he'd committed for the last three years.

"Ryan, that smells horrible."

"It's fine," he said, without looking up.

"It is not fine. It smells like something died in the filter."

"You're being dramatic."

"I'm being accurate. There's a difference."

I leaned over to steal the mug from his hand, but he shifted it just out of reach without even looking at me. Still stirring. Still completely unbothered. I was halfway off the counter, stretching for it, when something wrapped around my waist from behind and pulled me back.

The kitchen disappeared.

I woke up.

For three long seconds, I just stared at the ceiling. Wrong ceiling. Wrong room. Then I felt the arm, an entire arm draped over my waist, attached to a man still asleep behind me.

I want to be very clear that I did not scream.

I didn't move. I barely breathed. I lay perfectly still while my brain conducted a frantic review of the previous night and came up with almost nothing useful. A crowded bar. Music. A laugh that definitely wasn't Ryan's. Then blank.

I, Melissa, twenty-two years old, who had never once spent the night with any man, including the boyfriend of three years who had been endlessly patient and never once pressured me, had apparently spent the night with a complete stranger.

Fantastic. Excellent. What a spectacular way to start a Thursday.

I lifted his arm off me with the precision of someone defusing a bomb. When he shifted, I froze, counting silently to five until he settled again. My dress lay crumpled on the floor. I slipped it on, found my heels beside the door, my bag on the chair, and crossed the room like every floorboard was waiting to betray me. I eased the handle down, opened the door, and slipped into the hallway.

I never looked at his face.

That was a deliberate decision, and I still stand by it. If I didn't know what he looked like, then this could stay one terrible morning instead of becoming an entire disaster.

The elevator ride down lasted twelve floors, twelve floors of staring at my reflection in the mirrored doors while giving myself the sternest lecture of my life.

Okay. You're going home. You're taking a shower. Then you're finding Ryan and telling him exactly what happened, because you don't keep something like this from someone you love. He deserves the truth. It'll be awful. It'll probably ruin everything. But you're telling him today, not tomorrow. Today.

I'd rehearsed the entire speech before the cab even reached my house.

Ryan's message arrived before I could send mine.

Babe!! Shares hit an all-time record overnight. Best first anniversary gift the company could've asked for honestly lol. Got you something for tonight, check your door. Come looking gorgeous, yeah? Big night.

I read it twice.

Ryan was the one thing in my life that had ever truly felt like mine. Not something expected of me. Not something handed to me. Just mine. And I had possibly set fire to it. That felt like a lot for nine in the morning.

The venue buzzed with conversation. Ryan's company had just smashed its one-year record, and everyone wanted to be close to that kind of success. For twenty minutes I smiled until my cheeks hurt while being introduced to people whose names evaporated the second they said them. Someone's wife complimented my dress. Someone's business partner asked what I did.

"I'm finishing my degree."

He nodded with the polite smile people wear when they've already stopped listening.

Then I saw Jade. She stood across the room in a red dress I'd never seen before, laughing at something a man in a grey suit had said. I frowned. What was she doing here? Jade had never cared about Ryan's work events, never knew his colleagues, never asked about the company. She laughed again and rested a hand lightly on the man's arm, and nothing about the picture made sense.

She caught me looking. Smiled. Looked away.

I immediately told myself I was imagining things. Guilt had a funny way of making every shadow look suspicious.

The lights dimmed just after nine. Ryan stepped onto the small stage, and conversations faded until the room settled into silence.

"Tonight is a big night."

He smiled at the crowd, then said he had a personal announcement, something more important to him than any business milestone. My heart lurched. Years ago, lying on the sofa with takeout containers balanced on our laps, we'd made ridiculous promises about the future. Ryan had laughed and said the day his company's shares hit a record was the day he'd finally propose. I hadn't thought about that promise all evening, and now it was the only thing I could think about.

I glanced across the room. Jade wasn't there anymore.

A smile tugged at my mouth before I could stop it. He's doing it. He's actually doing it. I straightened without realising. Waited.

Ryan extended his hand.

Jade stepped onto the stage.

My sister. She slipped her hand into his, and Ryan looked at her the way he used to look at me. Then he lifted her hand for the room to see.

"This," he said, smiling at her, "is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with."

I pushed through the crowd before I had even decided to move.

Ryan and Jade were still at the front of the room, smiling as people I had met barely twenty minutes ago congratulated them, and I walked straight toward them without thinking about what I was going to say, I just knew I had to get to them, and when I got close enough Jade saw me first, her smile never slipped, not even for a second, and Ryan turned, saw me, and looked away almost immediately, like he'd been waiting for this moment and still wasn't ready to face it.

"Melissa," he said.

"Outside," I said. "Both of you. Now."

Jade rested a hand on my arm before Ryan could speak, then guided me toward the side door and into the corridor, and I let her because the last thing I wanted was to fall apart in front of a ballroom full of strangers.

The door clicked shut behind us.

"You need to calm down," she said.

"Don't tell me to calm down," I shot back. "How long, Jade, how long has this been going on?"

"This isn't the place."

"No, answer me." I looked at her hand, then at the ring on her finger. "You're wearing his engagement ring, when did he give you that, before or after he called me this morning and told me to wear the dress he bought me?"

"Melissa..."

"No." I cut her off. "You're my sister, you're supposed to be my sister."

She gave a small shrug.

"Adopted," she said. "Let's not pretend we're more than that."

I stared at her.

Three years. Three years with Ryan. Three years believing every promise he made me.

Jade smiled and said, "You really thought he was going to choose you?"

My hand moved before I even thought about it.

The slap echoed down the corridor.

Her head snapped to the side, then she turned back so fast that I barely caught her wrist before she could hit me.

"You thief," I said, my voice shaking as I held on. "You've spent your whole life taking things from me, and now you've taken the only good thing I had, the only thing that was actually mine. You and your parents never stopped finding new ways to hurt me, and I'm tired, Jade, I'm so tired of all of you."

She looked down at my hand around her wrist, then back into my face.

"I wonder what Ryan would say," she said, "if he found out his perfect little girlfriend, the one who was saving herself for marriage, spent last night in a hotel room with a man she doesn't even know."

I froze.

"How do you know that?"

She smiled.

That was all it took. I saw it all at once. She knew because she'd planned it. Every piece of it. Every single piece.

I swung at her again, but she was quicker, she slapped me hard across the face and shoved me at the same time, and I lost my balance, my knees hit the floor, and before I could get back up she was standing over me, looking down like I was something she'd scraped off her shoe.

"Don't you ever put your filthy hands on me again," she said. "Do you hear me? My family took you in when you had nothing, and now you're standing here acting like everything belongs to you."

She smoothed the front of her dress as though nothing had happened.

"You're a slut, Melissa."

She said it so casually that it sounded like she was talking about the weather, then she turned, opened the door, and walked back into the ballroom.

I stayed where I was.

The applause on the other side of the wall carried into the corridor, loud enough to remind me exactly what everyone inside was celebrating.

I never went back in.

I sat on a bench outside the venue for three hours because I had nowhere else to go and no idea what to do next, and I replayed the whole night over and over, Jade walking onto that stage, Ryan refusing to look at me, the way everything had gone so smoothly, and the more I thought about it the clearer it became that this hadn't happened overnight, it had been going on for a long time, and everyone had known except me.

The cab home cost almost everything I had left in my purse.

I saw my luggage before I saw the house, two bags sitting neatly outside the front door, zipped up and waiting for me, and I stood on the path looking at them because Jade's mother was home, which meant she knew exactly what had happened.

After a moment I walked up and knocked.

Jade's mother opened the door. She was already wearing her dressing gown. She'd been expecting me.

"What is this?" I asked.

"I think you already know," she said.

"You can't throw me out tonight," I said. "I have nowhere to go, I barely have any money, you can't just do this."

"We don't need you here anymore," she said. "Jade has found her future, and your place in this family was always tied to Ryan, now that's over."

"I've lived here for fifteen years," I said, and my voice came out louder than I meant it to. "Fifteen years. I cooked, I cleaned, I kept this house running while Jade did whatever she wanted. I helped Ryan build that company from the ground up, I stayed awake working when I should've been asleep, and now you're standing there acting like I'm nothing."

"You're ungrateful," she said. "After everything this family has done for you, the least you can do is let your sister enjoy her happiness."

"My sister's happiness?" I laughed, but there wasn't anything funny about it. "Where was this family when I was the one suffering? Where were any of you when..."

She stepped back. The door closed in my face.

I knocked again, harder this time.

"My piggy bank is still inside," I called through the door. "My savings are in this house. Just give me what's mine and I'll leave, I'll leave tonight, I promise, just give me my money."

I heard footsteps.

The door opened again.

Jade's mother stood there holding a bucket. For a second I just looked at it, trying to work out why she was carrying it, then she threw the water straight at me.

It hit me full in the face. Ice cold.

I stumbled back, soaked from head to toe. She looked at me without a shred of guilt.

"The next bucket will be hot," she said. "So I'd suggest you get away from my door."

She stepped inside again. The lock clicked.

I stood there on the doorstep, dripping wet, my eyes burning from impact of the water and glue from my eyelashes, my bags sitting beside me, and I stayed exactly where I was because I honestly didn't know what I had left anymore.

After a while I picked up my bags. Then I started walking.

I walked for what felt like hours, without paying attention to where I was going, just putting one foot in front of the other because standing still felt worse, and I tried not to think about anything because thinking meant replaying the whole night, and the cold air clung to my wet clothes, my shoes rubbed painfully against my heels, but I kept walking.

I didn't notice the car until the headlights were almost on top of me and I was standing right in the middle of the road, and I'm not proud to admit that I didn't move, I just stood there, then two hands grabbed my arms and yanked me backward so hard my feet left the ground for a second.

The car shot past and the wind knocked into me and I stumbled backward into a solid body my hands touching something hard, it was someone's chest.

I looked up.

Tall. Dark. Looking down at me with an expression that made my heart do double jumps in few seconds I felt they would erupt, his hands were still on my arms making sure I was steady.

The driver leaned out his window, his voice bringing me out of my daze.

"Are you blind?" he shouted. "Watch where you're going!"

He drove off before I could respond.

The man holding me let go of me and I took a step back my body still reacting to his touch earlier, why was I insanely attracted to this man.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Fine," I said.

His eyes moved over my face once and said nothing.

"I've had a bad night," I said.

"I noticed."

I frowned.

"How did you notice?"

"I was at the Blackwell event tonight," he said. "I saw you."

I stared at him.

"I have a proposal for you," he said.

"A proposal," I repeated.

"Yes."

"You just pulled me off death’s door and now you have a proposal."

"That's correct, get in the car," he said.

I looked at him for a moment.

"I'm not getting in a car with a stranger," I said.

"You were just standing in the middle of the road ready to die."

"That's my business."

"It stopped being your business when I had to pull you out giving you a chance to live."

I had nothing to say to that so I said nothing.

"Get in the car," he said. "I'll explain on the way."

"No."

He didn't push. He just stood there, completely unbothered, and the rain that had been hanging in the air all evening finally made up its mind and started coming down.

He glanced up at the sky.

Then at me.

Then at my bags.

"Most people," he said, "find out who I am and get in the car immediately."

"I don't know who you are and I don’t care." I lied

"I know." He said.

"good because I'm still not getting in."

"You have nowhere to go," he said simply.

"You don't know that."

" you've been roaming on this street for hours," he said. "Where are you going?"

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

"They took everything from you tonight," he said. "Your boyfriend, your home, are you really going to let that be the end of it?"

I looked at him, has he been stalking me, but did it really matter at this point? He wasn’t lying I really needed help.

"What kind of proposal," I said looking at my feet.

"The kind that requires you to get in the car."

I picked up my bags with a sigh.

Not because I trusted him. Because I had two bags, no money, nowhere to go, and it was raining, and at least he had a face worth looking at. I was allowed to be practical.

I got in.

The car was warm and quiet and I sat with my bag on my lap and looked straight ahead and said nothing and he got in on the other side and started the engine and I felt him look at me.

I looked back.

He was staring.

"What," I said.

"Nothing," he said.

"You're staring at me."

"Am I."

"Is something on my face?"

He didn't answer. He just leaned toward me, and my heart started beating fast which was embarrassing because he was a stranger and I had literally just watched my boyfriend propose to my sister, but he was very close and I sat there and did not move and genuinely waited with my eyes closed, and then I heard a click and felt the seatbelt pulled across my chest and locked into place.

"Safety first," he said, and sat back.

I cleared my throat in embarrassment and looked out the window.

The rain picked up. He drove without music, I caught my reflection in the side mirror and looked away immediately because my mascara was everywhere and my hair was messy and I was wearing a dress a man had bought me so I could watch him propose to someone else, I looked like a patient that escaped an asylum, which man would kiss such an ugly sight.

"You still haven't told me your name," I said, after a while.

"No," he said.

"Are you going to?"

"When we get there."

I looked at him.

"Where is there?"

He didn't answer, and I was too tired to push, so I went back to looking out the window, and he drove, and the city moved past in the rain, and slowly the buildings got bigger and further apart and the streets got quieter, and then we turned through a gate and up a long driveway and at the end of it was the kind of house that made you forget what you were about to say.

"Is that a mansion," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"You live there."

"Yes."

He parked and we got out and a man in his middle age was already at the front door before we reached the steps, and we walked into a foyer that was bigger than every room in my house put together, and I stood in the middle of it in my damp dress with my bags and looked at the stranger who had brought me here.

"Okay," I said. "What do you want."

He looked at me for a moment, and then he closed some of the space between us, just enough, and said looking into my eyes, his voice deeper than earlier it brought tingles to my stomach, "Be my wife."