I Walked Into the Wrong Room and Married the Right Man

I woke up empty.

Not emotionally empty—though God knows I was that too—but physically, tangibly empty. The space beside me on rumpled sheets was cold. He'd left at some point, and I'd slept through it like the desperate, exhausted woman I was.

Moonlight filtered through heavy curtains. Enough to see my clothes scattered like casualties across expensive carpet.

Move. Now.

I slid from the bed on legs that trembled. Not from fear. From something far more embarrassing— satisfaction. My body hummed with it, traitorous and loose in ways I hadn't felt in years.

Stop it.

My trench coat lay crumpled near the door. I grabbed it, fingers shaking as I shrugged it on over skin still flushed. My other clothes—where were my clothes?

I didn't have other clothes. I'd worn nothing under this coat.

Right. That had been the plan. Seduce the lawyer. Win custody. Simple.

Except I'd seduced the wrong man. A stranger with hands like vices and a mouth that made me forget my own name.

A cheap pearl earring caught on something—the bedsheet, maybe—and the wire snapped. The fake pearl rolled somewhere into the shadows, lost forever in this stranger's room.

Like my dignity.

Like my self-respection.

Like my entire goddamn plan.

I didn't look for it. Didn't look back. Just tightened my coat and slipped out the door on bare feet, the carpet soft beneath my soles as I escaped into the hallway.

Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. I kept my head down, heart hammering against my ribs. Anyone could see me. Anyone could recognize me.

Skylar Love, former A-list actress, current cautionary tale.

My broken-down Honda waited in the parking lot like a faithful dog. I slid behind the wheel and drove home on autopilot, my mind spinning through everything that had gone wrong.

And everything that had gone right.

Stop it. The man's jaw under my fingertips. The way he'd lifted me like I weighed nothing. That mouth on my —

STOP.

The drive took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of fighting memories that made heat pool low in my belly despite everything.

My basement apartment crouched beneath a renovated Victorian, half-sunk into the earth like something trying to hide. The rent was cheap. The neighbors were quiet. The privacy was absolute—nobody expected a fallen star to end up somewhere so profoundly mediocre.

I fit right in.

The door wasn't even locked. I pushed inside, and my phone buzzed in my coat pocket.

Damon's name lit up the screen.

My ex-husband. The architect of my destruction. The man who'd taken my postpartum depression and weaponized it into a media circus that ended with me in rehab and him with custody of our daughter.

I answered anyway.

"Skylar." His voice was smooth. Pleased. "I thought you'd want to know."

"Know what?" My throat was raw. Had I been screaming last night? I couldn't remember.

"The court order. It's official." A pause, timed for maximum cruelty. "Lily's custody transfers to me at two p.m. today. My lawyer just confirmed."

My knees buckled.

I hit the concrete floor hard, cold seeping through my thin coat. The phone pressed to my ear like a lifeline, though the voice on the other end was anything but.

"Are you there, sweetheart?" Damon's tone dripped false concern. "You sound upset."

"I hired a lawyer." The words scraped out. "I was supposed to meet him last night. I had a plan—"

"Mr. Wright?" Damon laughed. The sound was ugly. "He called my office yesterday. Said you never showed.

Another missed appointment, Skylar. How many is that now?"

I'd gone to the wrong room. I'd fucked a stranger instead of the lawyer who could have saved me.

"I can explain—"

"Save it." Dismissal. Finality. "You had your chances. The judge has seen enough. Two p.m., Skylar. Don't make a scene."

The line went dead.

I sat on the freezing floor of my basement apartment, clutching a dead phone, wearing nothing but a trench coat that smelled like cedar and whiskey and sex with a stranger.

Lily.

My daughter's face materialized behind my eyelids. Dark hair like mine. Her father's eyes. A dimple in her left cheek that appeared when she smiled.

I hadn't seen her smile in six months.

My nails bit into my palms. Pain grounded me when nothing else could. Red crescents bloomed where skin met pressure.

I should cry. Every part of me ached with the need to cry—the sting behind my eyes, the tightness in my chest, the hollow feeling where my heart used to be.

But the tears wouldn't come.

They hadn't come in months. Not when the judge ruled against me. Not when the tabloids called me unstable. Not when my ex-husband's lawyers painted me as a danger to my own child.

Dry-eyed and empty, I crawled to my feet.

My reflection caught in the small bathroom mirror. Pale. Hollow-cheeked. Mascara smudged under my eyes like bruises.

Look at you. Pathetic.

My daughter was being taken from me in less than twelve hours, and I'd spent last night moaning under a stranger.

Worse—I'd enjoyed it.

Something hot and sharp sparked in my chest. Not despair this time. Something angrier.

Damon had taken everything. My career. My reputation. My daughter.

He wasn't going to win.

I moved through the tiny kitchen on autopilot. The knife block sat by the stove—a housewarming gift from better days, back when I'd had a house to warm.

I pulled out the paring knife.

Small. Sharp. Dangerous in the right hands.

My hands were shaking.

I dropped it into my purse beside my wallet and keys. The metal clinked against my phone.

If Damon wanted a fight, he'd get one.

I'd already lost everything there was to lose. What was one more desperate act from a desperate woman?

The afternoon sun was too bright as I stepped outside. My Honda waited, patient and rusting.

Two p.m. at the courthouse.

But first—a stop.

Damon's law firm occupied the top three floors of downtown's shiniest skyscraper. Glass and steel and money, all of it built on the backs of people like me who couldn't afford to fight back.

I'd been scared my whole life. Scared of failing. Scared of being forgotten. Scared of losing the people I loved.

Look where fear had gotten me.

I slid behind the wheel and started the engine.

Time to stop being scared.