I can't breathe.
This isn't Dominic. This isn't the man who brought me peonies and remembered my coffee order and held me when I cried about my father. This is someone else entirely—someone cold and calculating, someone who talks about me like I'm a tool, an asset, a thing to be used.
Easy to manage.
Learn her place.
Too trusting for her own good.
I press my hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound. My whole body is shaking now, tremors running through me that have nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with the dawning, horrifying realization that I almost married a stranger.
I don't know what Dominic really is. I don't know what "good cover" means or why cash transactions matter or what exactly I've been too naive to figure out. But I know that voice. I know that cold, dismissive tone. And I know—with a certainty that settles into my bones like ice water—that if I walk down that aisle, I will never escape.
I run.
The service entrance is at the back of the estate, past the kitchens, through a door that's propped open for the catering staff. No one stops me. No one even looks twice at the bride in the designer gown slipping out into the afternoon sun—they're too busy ferrying trays back and forth to notice.
The desert stretches ahead of me. Endless. Empty. Nothing but scrub brush and red earth and a horizon that shimmers with heat.
I should go back inside. Find my phone. Call someone—my mother, my best friend, the police. But my phone is upstairs in the bridal suite, and half the guests out there are people I've never met—Dominic's friends, his business associates, people who looked at me like I was an outsider at my own engagement party. I used to tell myself I was imagining it. Now I'm not so sure whose side any of them are on.
My heels sink into the dirt with my first step. These shoes—strappy, delicate, made for walking down an aisle—are useless out here. But there's no time to take them off. No time to think.
I run.
The sun beats down on my bare shoulders. The dress catches on everything—rocks, brush, my own desperate feet. Within minutes, I've torn the hem. Within an hour, I've destroyed it completely, ivory silk streaked with dirt and dust, beading scattered somewhere behind me like breadcrumbs.
I don't look back.
The afternoon bleeds into evening. The heat starts to fade, replaced by the first hints of desert cold. My feet are screaming—blisters burst and bleeding through my ruined shoes, every step a fresh agony. But I keep moving. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know if anyone's following. I just know that stopping means getting caught, and getting caught means?—
I don't let myself think about what getting caught means.
The sun sets in streaks of orange and red, painting the desert like a wound. I stumble more than walk now, my body running on nothing but adrenaline and terror. The road appears like a mirage—a dark ribbon cutting through the emptiness, impossibly distant and impossibly real.
I make it to the edge of the road and stop.
The asphalt stretches in both directions, empty. No cars. No headlights. Nothing but the dark ribbon of road cutting through miles of nothing, and the last glow of sunset bleeding out along the horizon.
I'm alone.
The reality of it hits me all at once—the weight of everything I've been outrunning finally catching up. My feet are destroyed. I have no phone, no money, no plan. I'm standing in a ruined wedding dress in the middle of the desert, and I have no idea what to do next.
I crouch down at the roadside, my legs giving out, the torn silk pooling around me in the dirt. The first sob catches me off guard—a raw, ugly sound that tears out of my throat before I can stop it. Then another. Then I'm crying for real, my whole body shaking with it, tears streaming down my face and dripping onto the expensive fabric I'll never wear again.
I bury my head in my hands.
What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?
I don't know how long I stay like that. Long enough for the last light to start fading from the sky. Long enough for the cold to seep into my bones. Long enough to feel completely, utterly hopeless.
Then I hear it.
An engine. Distant at first, then growing louder, cutting through the silence like a growl.
I lift my head, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, and see it—a single headlight. A motorcycle, coming from the east, moving fast.
For one horrible moment, I'm sure it's someone from the wedding. Sure I've been found. Sure this is where it ends?—
