CHAPTER ONE #2
He brushes his thumb between my eyebrows, smoothing away a crease that exists only in his imagination.
I catch his wrist and, for a moment, look at the dark-faced watch I gave him for his last birthday.
Alexander could buy as many as he wanted, but he wears that one every day because I chose it for him.
My gaze drops to the ring on my hand and, almost without permission, my thoughts move from a house and a wedding to an entire lifetime beside him, followed by the one absence we both know will be part of it.
Children.
The thought arrives quietly now, without the violence it once carried, but it still leaves a faint pressure beneath my ribs.
Alexander told me about his diagnosis three months into our relationship.
There was no dramatic attempt to conceal the truth and no vague suggestion that treatment might someday change things.
He waited until we were alone, sat beside me on the sofa, and explained that after an accident when he was twenty-three, doctors had discovered severe damage.
Further tests confirmed azoospermia, meaning there were no sperm cells at all.
It was not a matter of pregnancy being unlikely or difficult, nor was there any hopeful possibility buried somewhere in a doctor’s language.
The result had been unequivocal, and Alexander gave me the information while looking directly into my eyes, his shoulders rigid and his expression carefully blank.
He sounded as though he were presenting an objective fact, but by then I knew him well enough to understand what lay beneath all that control.
He expected me to leave, and worse, he believed he was giving me a perfectly reasonable reason to do so.
I did not.
Had I always imagined having children someday?
Yes, although the picture had never been particularly detailed.
There was a noisier house, drawings stuck to the refrigerator, and a child with scraped knees running down some corridor.
It was a possibility I had treated as a certainty only because I had never had any reason to question it, and letting go of that future hurt more than I wanted to admit.
But I already loved Alexander, and I could not exchange the real man sitting in front of me for a hypothetical family that might never have existed in the way I had imagined anyway. I stayed on that sofa, took his hand, and told him he did not get to decide for me what I was capable of accepting.
Months later, we talked about adoption, not as an immediate plan or a way to fill an absence, but as a door we might choose to open when we were ready. Someday, we said, without urgency and without turning the possibility into a promise we had to keep.
“You’ve gone somewhere else again,” Alexander murmurs.
I look up and find him studying my face. “I’m here.”
“Not entirely.”
I push the thought aside and smile. “I was thinking about the wedding.”
“Cancel it.”
My heart stumbles. “What?”
He holds my gaze with perfect seriousness. “The wedding.”
It takes me an entire second to understand that he means the event rather than the marriage itself, which is long enough for shock to turn into indignation. I smack my open palm against his chest.
“Idiot.”
Alexander catches my wrist before I can hit him again and laughs, a genuine, low sound that brings the little indentation beside his cheek back into view.
“Marry me tomorrow,” he says. “Just the two of us at some registry office. You, me, and two witnesses we can bribe if necessary.”
“Your family would have a collective breakdown.”
“Consider that an additional incentive.”
“My mother would kill you. She already threatened to over the guest list, and my mother doesn’t make empty threats.”
“That’s merely a logistical obstacle.”
“Edmund would emotionally disown me.”
“My grandfather likes you more than he likes me.”
“True, but he’d never forgive us for depriving him of the chance to put three generations of Thornes in the same room so they can all pretend they tolerate one another.”
Alexander tilts his head. “I still haven’t heard a compelling reason to wait twenty-three days.”
“My dress is almost finished.”
“I can buy you another one.”
“You can’t solve everything by buying something.”
“That’s still an unproven theory.”
I roll my eyes, but he kisses me before I can answer.
The kiss begins slowly, with the familiarity of someone who knows my body and yet still seems surprised every time he touches me.
His fingers tighten around my waist while my hand finds the nape of his neck beneath his dark hair, and for a few moments the smell of coffee, the warmth of the kitchen, and every obligation waiting for us that morning disappear.
When we pull apart, I rest my forehead against his chest and listen to the steady rhythm of his heart.
“Twenty-three days,” I remind him.
“Twenty-two if you stop counting today.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
His hand moves up my back and settles at my nape. “Isabella.”
“Mm?”
Something in his voice shifts so subtly that I might have missed it if I did not know him as well as I do. There is a caution there that makes me lift my eyes.
“You know you don’t have to do this.”
My smile fades. “Marry you?”
“Marry into all of this.”
Alexander does not need to explain what all of this means.
There is the famous surname, the family incapable of breathing without turning the act into some kind of competition, and the newspapers that published my biography before our engagement had even been officially announced.
There is Thorne Holdings, the events, the security, the photographs, and a fortune built by four generations of men who appear to have entered the world already wearing cufflinks.
“You told me that before you proposed.”
“I’m telling you again.”
“Why?”
His thumb brushes my cheek, although the tension in his jaw contradicts the gentleness of the gesture. “Because there’s still time to run.”
“Are you trying to push me away?”
“I’m making certain you’ve chosen to stay.”
Something inside me softens at the answer.
Beneath all that confidence, Alexander still carries the conviction that people remain beside him because of what he can offer them: power, money, protection, access.
The idea of being chosen without any of those things influencing the decision seems to bewilder him.
“I chose you a long time ago.”
His jaw tightens further.
Alexander has never been good at receiving things he cannot buy, control, or repay in equal measure, and love is one of them.
“Terrible judgment,” he says after a moment.
“Appalling. My reputation may never recover.”
I rise onto my toes and kiss the corner of his mouth, but as I pull away, my stomach turns.
The sensation comes quickly, a wave of nausea climbing my throat before disappearing almost as abruptly as it arrived. I close my eyes and remain still for a moment, waiting for it to pass, but Alexander notices immediately.
Of course he does.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“You made a face.”
I open my eyes. “I did not make a face.”
“You did.”
I step away and reach for my coffee, more to give my hands something to do than because I want to drink it. “Probably too much coffee yesterday and not enough dinner.”
He looks at the tray as though he has just discovered the solution to an international crisis. “Then eat.”
“Yes, sir.”
His eyes narrow. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That tone.”
“What tone?”
Alexander’s gaze drops to my mouth before returning to my eyes, and the shift is immediate enough to send a rush of heat through me that has nothing to do with the temperature of the kitchen.
“Isabella.”