His Wife To Keep

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Zara

I’m so screwed.

The words echoed in my head as I yanked the last of my clothes from the closet and shoved them into my overstuffed suitcase. The zipper fights me, teeth catching on the fabric the same way my heart keeps catching on memories of him.

Of us.

Of the two years I apparently hallucinated.

“We grew apart, Zara. This move was about my career, and I think we both knew things were already fading.”

Fading?

We just got engaged six months ago. He put a ring on my finger and told me I was his future. Then the job offer came, a city twenty-eight hundred miles away from everything I knew, and he asked me to come with him. Promised me we’d build something new together.

Like an idiot, I said yes. Because that’s what people who love each other do, right? They sacrifice. They follow. They believe in the future.

Stupid. So fucking stupid.

I took one last look around the apartment—his apartment, technically, since his name is on the lease—and all I saw were the pieces of a life I tried to assemble out of scraps.

The thrift store furniture. The half-dead plant I kept watering, even though it clearly wanted to die.

The photo of us at the beach last summer, my head on his shoulder, both of us laughing.

I yanked the picture out of its frame, crumpled it, and threw it in the trash. No point in keeping ghosts.

Everything I owned in this city, which wasnt’t much, now rests inside a suitcase.

A few good dresses for work, jeans that are starting to fray at the knees, and the same worn-out sneakers I’ve had since college.

My crappy marketing job pays just enough to cover coffee and ramen, but I’ve been living off credit cards and hope.

I have no savings. No backup plan. No family to call and say, “I messed up, can I come home?”

Maybe I am just broken in ways that make me impossible to keep.

My father left when I was eight—one day he was there, the next he was a ghost with a forwarding address in another state.

My mother worked double shifts to keep us afloat and love became something I associated with absence.

With waiting. With never being quite enough.

I’ve been chasing that feeling my whole life. Trying to earn affection from men who always had one foot out the door.

And now here I am. Twenty-one years old, homeless, broke, and fresh off another failed attempt at love.

I don’t even have a car. Nathan’s was the only one we used, and he made it very clear I couldn’t keep it. So now I’ll somehow have to take the bus to Marcus’s place in the Lower East Side.

Marcus was my knight in shining armor and also the world’s greatest gay best friend.

When I called him crying, he immediately offered me a place on his couch until I could figure things out.

Unfortunately for me, he’s on a flight back from London and won’t be home until later tonight.

That leaves me with five hours to kill and nowhere to go but a bar.

Great. Just great.

By the time I made it outside, the city was alive with evening traffic, headlights cutting through the gray dusk like veins of gold.

I managed to make my way to the bus stop in a series of awkward, stumbling drags. My arms were now tired from the weight. My sneakers so thin that the sidewalk feels like concrete grinding through the soles.

Twenty minutes later, the bus came. I heaved the suitcase up the steps, fumble for change, and drop into a seat near the back. The driver doesn’t even look at me. To him, I’m probably just another sad girl with luggage and nowhere to go.

The bar Marcus recommended was called The Gilded Cage, and it was just a few blocks from his apartment.

It’s in the nicer part of the city, the kind of place with dim lighting and expensive cocktails and a dress code I was probably violating in my worn-out hoodie and leggings.

But Marcus said the bartenders don’t judge, and they make a mean margarita. Cheap enough for my budget, too.

Because as if my day wasn’t already rough, I had sixty-three dollars to my name until next payday, which was six days away. Sixty-three dollars for food, transportation, and now alcohol.

Collecting my thoughts, I got off the bus and yanked my bag down beside me. At some point, I passed a couple holding hands outside a steakhouse. She wass laughing at something he said, her head tilted back, her hair catching the light, and I have to force myself to look away.

That feeling must be nice.

I don’t know if I’ve ever truly had that.

I don’t know what love feels like—the real kind, the steady kind, the kind that doesn’t leave. I’ve had glimpses. Hints. Moments where I thought, this is it. But it always fades, like a photograph left in the sun.

Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I sabotage things because I don’t believe I deserve to keep them. Or maybe I just keep picking the wrong men.

It had been a topic of focus between my therapist and me before I moved out of state and found out that meant she could no longer see me. Abandonment wounds, she’s called them. Yet, no amount of psychological terminology or self-reflection managed to fix it.

Yup, we can add that to the list of shitty things in the life of Zara Cruz.

Before I got too deep into my spiral, the bar appears on the corner, with black iron signage and a gold cage emblem. Without thinking, I pushed the door open and dragged my suitcase inside.

A few heads turned as I entered, their glances like needles in my skin. A girl with a suitcase and a haunted expression probably doesn’t blend in with the after-work crowd in their blazers and heels.

Trying to hide, I found a stool at the far end of the bar, near the corner, where the shadows are thicker.

I hoisted the suitcase next to me and let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding just as the bartender appeared from lining the shelves with bottles I couldn’t even afford to name.

She’s maybe thirty, with short blonde hair and a nose ring. “Rough day?”

I laughed bitterly. “Rough life.”

She didn’t push. Just nodded before speaking. “What can I get for you?”

“I’ll take a spicy margarita,” I said. “But make it the cheap version, if you have one.”

She smiled, small and knowing. “I’ll take care of you.”

And when she walked away to make my drink, I was left alone with my thoughts.

Around me, the bar hummed with low conversation and clinking glasses, and I’m stuck wondering how I got here. How I managed to lose everything.

No savings. No security. No one who loves me.

I was so fucked.

Almost as a miracle, the margarita appeared in front of me, pale yellow with a single slice of jalapeno floating on top. The first sip wass tart and strong, burning down my throat in a way that almost feels good.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last long before I was back in my head, thoughts spiraling endlessly.

I didn’t know what came next. I didn’t have a plan.

I didn’t have a safety net. All I had was this drink, this stool, and the knowledge that somewhere in this city, there are people who wake up every morning feeling wanted.

And I’m not one of them.

I took another sip and let the burn settle into my stomach. The night stretched ahead like a dark road with no headlights. And I’d just have to keep walking.

The bartender glanced my way again, as if checking to make sure I was still breathing, and all I could muster is a weak smile.

I’m fine.

Well, I’m not really fine.

But I’m still here, for whatever that’s worth.