A Note Not Mine (Embers #1)

PROLOGUE

The ring was thin, fake diamond catching hotel light like it didn't belong. Hadley sat on the bathroom floor in a borrowed robe, knees to chest, staring at it. Her head pounded. Mouth tasted like bad decisions.

She didn't remember the chapel. Didn't remember vows or rice or neon signs. Just flashes: Cal's hand on her back, Kei asking if she was okay, her friend laughing too loud with Holland.

Now this.

Cal stood in the doorway, boxers low, hair a mess. He looked at her left hand, then his own. Same cheap band.

"Shit," he breathed.

Hadley lifted her eyes. His were hazel, tired, a little scared.

"I don't remember saying yes," she said quietly.

"I don't remember asking."

Silence stretched. Heavy.

He slid down the opposite wall, sitting like her mirror image.

"We did though," he said.

"Yeah."

She thought of the kid waiting at home, her responsibility, her reason for every late shift, every ignored boundary. She couldn't afford to be a headline.

"I have someone depending on me," she whispered. "I can't do tabloid wife."

Cal nodded slow. "Then we undo it. Quiet. Before it blows up."

She searched his face for the lie. Didn't find it. Just found someone who looked as trapped as she felt.

"Okay."

Neither moved to pull the rings off.

Not yet.

Outside, phones were already buzzing. Blurry photos spreading. Captions screaming.

Cal Parker of The Ember marries mystery woman in Vegas

The world had claimed the story.

They just hadn't felt the price.

She was wrong.

Because in the world she had just stumbled into, every note, every decision, every heartbeat... belonged to someone else.

And she? She was just a note not mine.