Chapter 10
Miley
Friday came with the inevitability of a train you can hear but can’t outrun.
Trisha arrived with the contract.
She walked into the kitchen where I was making breakfast, set a brown folder on the counter, and said, “Light reading. Coffee?”
I opened the folder. Twelve pages of legal language so dense it needed its own translator—clauses, subclauses, terms that made my eyes cross. I read it at the kitchen island with a cup of coffee going cold beside me.
Ninety days. Public appearances as Christopher’s wife.
I would attend events, maintain the appearance of a stable marriage, and live in his household.
In exchange, a lump sum at conclusion, health coverage, and a wardrobe budget for public appearances.
The contract included a mutual NDA; neither party discloses the arrangement.
“You’re free to ask me questions or any clarifications,” she said.
I nodded. She’d been three seconds too late. I’d already signed it with unsteady fingers. My signature stared back at me, and I hoped the universe wouldn’t find a way to make it bite me in the butt.
The gala was that evening.
The Annual Vale Industries Charity Gala.
Three hundred guests. Investors, board members, press, and enough wealth in one ballroom to solve most of the world’s problems. Trisha told me about it like she was briefing a soldier for deployment, which, based on the dress code and the guest list, wasn’t far off.
Eleanor selected my gown. A gold, floor-length dress that moved like water when I walked and made me look like someone who belonged in rooms I’d never been invited to.
I stood in front of the mirror in the guest suite, turning slowly, trying to recognize the woman looking back at me—hair pinned high with soft pieces escaping at her jaw, mouth painted into something more confident than I felt.
She looked like she’d been poured into someone else’s life and was waiting for the owner to come back and reclaim it.
Christopher was at the bottom of the stairs when I came down. Black suit. Perfect fit. His hair was styled in that deliberate, careless way that took effort to look effortless, and his cufflinks caught the light when he moved. He looked up when he heard my heels on the stairs.
His expression did something quick. A flash of something I couldn’t name before his face settled back into its default composure.
“Ready?” he asked, smiling.
“No. Not really.”
“Good. Neither am I.”
We drove to the venue in silence. My hands were in my lap, fingers twisting the fabric of the dress.
His hands were still. I envied that. I envied the way he could sit in a car heading toward three hundred strangers who were about to watch him lie about his life and look like he was going to a dentist appointment.
Mildly inconvenient. Entirely manageable.
The ballroom was enormous. Crystal chandeliers threw fractured light across marble floors, and in one corner a live quartet wove Vivaldi through the murmur of conversation.
Champagne flutes circulated on silver trays carried by waitstaff who moved with practiced invisibility.
The women wore gowns and diamonds; the men wore suits and confidence. Everyone smelled expensive.
I had never been in a room like this. I’d cooked for rooms like this.
I’d plated food that was served in rooms like this.
But standing in one, dressed like I belonged, with Christopher Vale’s hand on the small of my back?
That was a different experience entirely.
It was the experience of pretending to be someone you’re not in front of people who could tell the difference.
I stayed close to Christopher’s side, smiled, and shook hands.
Answered questions about myself with the warm vagueness of someone who was internally counting ceiling tiles to keep from screaming.
A woman in a silver dress asked what I did.
I said I was a chef. She said how lovely and immediately turned to talk to someone more important.
Two women near the bar caught my eye. They were watching me with sharp interest, two women who’d formed an opinion and were enjoying it.
One leaned toward the other and said something behind her champagne glass.
I couldn’t hear the words but I could read the body language—the eyebrow raise, the smirk, the dismissive glance that traveled from my dress to my shoes to my face and found all three wanting.
I caught a fragment as I passed. “…another one. Give it a month.”
The other woman laughed. “A week. He cycles through them faster than his cars.”
I kept walking. My cheeks burned. Christopher’s hand was still on my back, steady and warm, and he either didn’t hear them or didn’t care.
Halfway through the evening, Christopher’s phone buzzed. He checked it. His expression went taut.
He looked across the room at Trisha. She was standing near the bar with a glass of sparkling water, looking exactly like a woman who’d been waiting for a signal. Their eyes met. Trisha gave a nod so small that if you weren’t watching for it, you’d miss it entirely.
Christopher turned to me. “I need you to trust me.”
“What?”
“For the next five minutes, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
“That depends on what happens in the next five minutes.”
He took my hand. His fingers closed around mine and he led me through the crowd, past the bar, past the quartet, toward the small stage at the front of the ballroom. People parted. A few turned to watch. The woman in silver nudged her friend.
Christopher leaned close. His mouth near my ear, his breath warm against my skin. My pulse hammered so hard I could feel it in my fingertips.
“Just go with it,” he whispered.
He stepped onto the stage.
He picked up the microphone. The quartet stopped playing. Three hundred faces turned toward him, and the room went so quiet I could hear the champagne bubbles.
“Thank you all for being here tonight,” he said. His voice was smooth and warm, his delivery polished from addressing crowds his entire career. The man was a natural. “This foundation does incredible work, and your generosity makes it possible.”
He paused. His gaze swept the crowd, then settled on me.
“I have a personal announcement.”
Three hundred people went still.
“Most of you know me as an actor. Some of you know me as the new interim CEO of Vale Industries. But tonight, I want you to know me as something else.” He extended his hand toward me. “Miley, would you come up here?”
Three hundred people were watching me. Three hundred. I could feel every single pair of eyes. My legs moved of their own accord, carrying me forward as I took his hand. He helped me onto the stage, where I stood in my gold dress under the chandelier light, trying to remember how to breathe.
Christopher dropped to one knee.
The gasp that went through the room was collective and audible. The woman in silver grabbed her friend’s arm. Trisha’s expression didn’t change, which told me everything about how long she’d known this was coming.
He opened a small box. The ring inside caught the light and threw tiny prisms across my dress.
“Miley Torres.” His voice was steady. His eyes were locked on mine.
“I’ve spent my life performing. Playing roles.
Being whoever the room needed me to be. And then I met you, and for the first time, I wanted to be myself.
Because myself was who you saw. Not the actor.
Not the name. Just me.” He paused. “I know I don’t deserve you.
But I’m choosing to try. Every day. For as long as you’ll let me. ”
His words touched a part of my heart I wasn't prepared to expose. I knew it was a performance. I knew it was calculated, timed, designed for maximum impact on the three hundred people in this room, and the board members among them. I knew all of that.
But his eyes. His eyes looking up at me from one knee, holding mine with an intensity that didn’t feel performed. That didn’t feel calculated. His hand, the one holding the ring box, had a faint tremor. Was that real, or was he that good? I couldn’t tell where the truth ended and the lie began.
“Just go with it,” he whispered, quiet enough that only I could hear.
I looked at the man who gave me a chance when no one else would. The man who wrote me a quote in his own handwriting and didn’t ask why it mattered.
I can’t believe I did.
But I said yes.
The room erupted. Applause, camera flashes, champagne glasses raised. Christopher slid the ring onto my finger, stood, and kissed my cheek. The crowd saw a love story; I saw a transaction. But the ring was real and warm on my finger, and the word “yes” wouldn’t stop replaying in my head.
The woman in silver was staring at me with her mouth open, her friend gone completely still. I didn’t look at them for long. I didn’t need to.
The courthouse ceremony happened two days later.
A small, private affair in a judge's office that smelled like old wood and filing cabinets.
Eleanor wore pearl earrings and a navy dress, clutching a tissue she insisted was for allergies.
Trisha wore her blazer over a t-shirt that read “HAPPILY EVER AFTER (terms and conditions apply)” and nobody commented on it because that would require acknowledging that Trisha was the only honest person in the room.
Christopher wore a charcoal suit and said his vows like he was reading terms of service he’d already memorized—steady, clear, emotionless. Like he was signing a contract, which, technically, he was.
I said mine with a voice that was almost steady until the word husband came out and the absurdity of it hit me mid-syllable. I had to swallow a laugh that would have been wildly inappropriate and deeply honest.
“You may kiss the bride,” the judge said.