On our fifth wedding anniversary, my husband smiled, kissed my forehead, and announced in front of twenty laughing friends that he had lost a game of Truth or Dare, so his punishment was to divorce me. Then, as if ending a marriage were no more serious than losing a hand of poker, Nick Mercer pushed a handsome stranger toward me and said, “Don’t worry, Ella. He can keep you company until we get remarried.”
Chapter 1
For several seconds, I thought I had misunderstood him. The private dining room at an upscale restaurant in Boston was still decorated for our anniversary, with white roses, champagne glasses, and a five-tier cake bearing our initials. Nick’s friends had spent the evening drinking expensive bourbon and teasing one another, and I had tolerated their game because Nick seemed happy.
Now every face had gone still.
“Come on, Nick,” one of his friends said. “It was a joke. Pick another dare.”
Nick slipped his hands into his pockets. At thirty-four, he was still striking enough to command a room without trying, with dark hair, a confident smile, and the kind of charm that had once made me believe I was the luckiest woman alive.
“A bet’s a bet,” he said. Then he looked at me with mild impatience. “Ella, don’t make this awkward. It’s just a game.”
“Divorce is a game?”
“We’ll remarry.”
He said it with such certainty that something inside me shifted.
Then he nodded toward the stranger beside me. “Ethan can keep you entertained. I’m not jealous.”
A few people laughed nervously.
I did not.
“I need the restroom,” I said.
I walked out before the tears could fall.
The hallway outside the dining room was quiet, but before I could turn the corner, I heard voices behind the partially closed door.
One of Nick’s friends sounded uneasy. “Are you seriously doing this? And what’s with giving your wife another man? Aren’t you worried she’ll actually sleep with him?”
Nick laughed softly.
“Ella? Please. She’s practically religious about fidelity. She wouldn’t touch another man if I disappeared for ten years.”
My hand froze on the wall.
Then another voice asked, “So this really is about Selena?”
Every sound inside me stopped.
Nick sighed. “She’s back.”
Selena Hart.
I knew the name.
Everyone who had known Nick before me knew Selena’s name.
They had grown up together in Connecticut, gone to the same schools, spent summers at neighboring lake houses, and dated briefly in college. Selena had rejected Nick’s proposal when they were twenty-six and moved to Paris. Nick always described her as ancient history.
Apparently history had bought a return ticket.
“I married Ella when I was furious about Selena leaving,” Nick said. “I thought I could get over it. And Ella was there. She adored me.”
There was a pause.
“So you lost the game on purpose?”
“Obviously.”
My knees nearly buckled.
Nick continued, almost conversationally. “I want one chance to see if Selena and I still have something. If she doesn’t want me, I’ll remarry Ella.”
“And if Selena does?”
“Then Ella gets Ethan. Everybody wins.”
A few men laughed.
Nobody objected strongly enough to leave.
“Does Ella know any of this?”
“She never will. And none of you are telling her.”
I walked away before they could say more.
In the restroom, I stared at myself under cruel fluorescent lights. My face looked pale and unfamiliar.
Five years.
Five years of waking beside Nick. Five years of packing lunches when he forgot to eat, rubbing his shoulders when work gave him headaches, remembering birthdays for relatives he barely called, sitting through business dinners, moving twice for his career, believing every sacrifice belonged to something permanent.
I had met him when I was twenty-eight.
Three drunk men had cornered me outside a bar, and Nick intervened. He got punched in the mouth protecting a woman he didn’t know. Two weeks later, flowers arrived at my apartment.
He pursued me with such determination that I mistook intensity for certainty.
Six months later, he proposed.
I thought I had been chosen.
Now I understood I had been convenient.
I washed my face, reapplied my lipstick, and walked back into the room.
Nick was leaning near the bar, smoking where he wasn’t supposed to. Ethan, the stranger Nick had pushed toward me, stood awkwardly beside the table.
I walked directly to him and linked my arm through his.
Nick’s eyebrows rose.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “Nine o’clock. Courthouse.”
He blinked. “You’re serious?”
“You wanted a divorce.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“Nine o’clock.”
Then I turned toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Nick called.
I looked back.
“On a date with my new boyfriend.”
The room went silent.
Nick’s friend Mason gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Ella, come on. Don’t overreact.”
Nick recovered quickly. His familiar confidence returned.
“Let her go,” he said. “She’s trying to scare me.”
I looked at him one last time.
He truly believed that.
He believed five years of devotion had made me incapable of leaving.
Outside, Ethan gently removed my hand from his arm.
“You don’t have to keep pretending,” he said.
His voice was calmer than I expected. He looked younger than Nick, perhaps twenty-seven, with light brown eyes and a serious face that didn’t match the absurd role he had been hired to play.
“I’m not pretending,” I said.
He studied me.
“What happens now?”
My phone rang before I could answer.
Dad.
I almost ignored it.
Instead, I picked up.
“Ella,” my father said without greeting, “when are you finally bringing your husband home?”
My stomach tightened.
For five years, Nick had refused every invitation to visit my family. He claimed work was too demanding, travel was inconvenient, holidays were complicated.
My father had finally stopped asking politely.
“You’ve avoided this long enough,” he said. “If this marriage of yours is real, bring him home. Otherwise, you know what our agreement was.”
I looked at Ethan.
My father continued. “Three days, Ella.”
Then he hung up.
Ethan lifted one eyebrow.
“Problem?”
“You could say that.”
I stared at him for a moment.
Then an idea came to me that was either brilliant or insane.
“Ethan, how much did Nick pay you?”
He hesitated. “Not enough for whatever you’re about to ask.”
“Probably not.”
I took a breath.
“Marry me.”
His eyes widened.
I expected him to laugh.
Instead, after a long silence, Ethan said, “Okay.”
And for the first time that night, I was the one who was shocked.
