CHAPTER ONE
IVY
Hospital time is its own creature. Rubbery, slow, and sticky. It operates by a distinct set of rules, separate from the way time moves in the rest of the world. Out on the street, minutes are currency, spent on emails and red lights and coffee orders. Here, minutes are something to be endured, stretched thin until they snap.
The analog clock on the wall reads 6:42. I watch the second hand jerk forward in tiny, mechanical spasms, clicking loudly enough to be heard over the hum of the ventilation. Each click feels like a gavel coming down.
I watch him from the uncomfortable metal-framed chair in the corner, the thin upholstery scratching against my skin like sandpaper, my body rigid, my heart hammering a jagged rhythm against my ribs.
I shouldn't be here.
Legally, morally, ethically. Pick a framework, and I am violating it. I should be in an Uber speeding toward the state line. I should be hiding in my apartment with the blinds drawn, ignoring my phone. At the very least, I should be anywhereother than Room 304 of River Bend Memorial, wearing a ruined bridesmaid dress and watching the chest of the man I assaulted rise and fall.
I look down at my wrist.
A plastic bracelet circles it, printed on thermal paper that is already starting to curl at the edges. I twist it, the sharp edge digging into my skin, grounding me in the terrifying reality of the last two hours.
Visitor: Ivy Sullivan. Relationship to Patient: Fiancée.
The word stares up at me in bold, black, pixilated letters. It mocks me. It screams of fraud. It is a lie so massive, so impulsive, and so incredibly stupid that I still can't quite believe the syllables left my mouth.
I didn't plan it. I am a planner, that is my job, my identity, my entire reason for existing on the payroll of Ever After, Inc.I get paid to mitigate disasters ranging from sudden downpours and vendor no-shows to warring relatives and wardrobe malfunctions. I have contingency binders for my contingency binders.
But I did not plan for this.
It had been a reflex. A pure, unadulterated survival instinct hijacking my frontal lobe.
I had been standing in the crushed gravel driveway of the estate, shivering in the cool evening air, watching the red strobe of the ambulance lights bounce off the manicured hedges. The EMTs were moving fast, loading the stretcher into the back of the rig.
And then I had seen him—Mason.
Mason Kincaid. My best friend's fiancé. A brilliant lawyer who is lovely at dinner parties but knows the penal code better than I know the color wheel. He was standing near the garden gate, phone pressed to his ear, his face set in a grim, pale expression I had never seen directed at me before.
He wasn't angry. He looked terrified for me.
"I know," I'd heard him say into the phone, his voice low and urgent. "I saw the whole thing. It's bad, Henry. If Taylor presses charges, it's battery. Maybe felony assault depending on the medical report. I can't fix this if the police file a report tonight."
My blood had turned to ice.
Mason is the calmest person I know. If Mason thinks it's bad, it's catastrophic.
In that split second, the future had played out before me like a horror movie. The police report. The mugshot. The headline: "Wedding Planner Goes Rogue, Assaults Venture Capitalist at Altar." It would be the end of everything. Ever After, Inc.would be buried under litigation. Maddy and Savvy would lose the business we'd built from nothing. I would be unemployable, bankrupt, and dragging my friends down with me.
And then, twenty minutes later at the hospital intake desk, the barrier had come down.
"Ma'am? You can't go back there," the triage nurse had said, blocking my path to the double doors. She looked exhausted, holding a clipboard like a shield. "We're still stabilizing him. Policy is strict for head trauma—immediate family only."
Immediate family only.
The words echoed in my head. If I stayed in the waiting room, everything unraveled. Brooks would wake up alone. He would be confused, then angry, then vengeful. He would call his lawyer. He would call the police.
I needed a few minutes alone with him to explain, to beg, to convince him that ruining my life wasn't worth the paperwork.
Get in the room, my brain screamed.Just get in the room.
So I had opened my mouth, and I had lied.
"I'm his fiancée," I'd said, and that was close enough to family for them.
