Chapter 1: The Ring, the Toast, and the Flooded Memory
The rooftop terrace hummed with the particular frequency of people performing happiness for an audience of their peers. Laughter clinked against champagne flutes. Golden string lights swayed overhead, casting everyone in that flattering, forgiving glow that made even the most exhausted faces look like they belonged in a lifestyle magazine. Below us, the city sprawled in neon and distant sirens, indifferent to the small dramas unfolding on its rooftops.
I was marrying Marcus in eleven months. The ring on my finger caught the light every time I moved my hand, which was often, because I couldn't stop touching it. A nervous habit, maybe. Or maybe I just liked the weight of it. The promise. The solid, uncomplicated future it represented.
"Merciful Christ, Scarlet." Priya grabbed my hand and yanked it under the string lights, tilting the diamond toward her face like she was appraising stolen goods. She whistled low. "Marcus really went for it, didn't he? This thing could blind a small aircraft."
I laughed and pulled my hand back. "He has good taste."
"He has expensive taste. There's a difference." She sipped her champagne, her dark eyes scanning the crowd of Marcus's friends—all of them grinning beneath the weight of their own carefully curated futures. "Speaking of expensive taste, did you see the caterer? I think I saw him wink at the shrimp."
"Priya."
"What? I'm just saying. If the shrimp is flirtatious, imagine the oysters."
I snorted into my glass. This was why I kept her around. Priya had spent the last decade calling me on my bullshit with the precision of a surgeon and the vocabulary of a dockworker. She'd been there through every bad decision, every three a.m. phone call, every tearful confession that started with "I don't know why I did it" and ended with "don't tell anyone."
She knew about Oliver.
Not everything. Not the details. But she knew enough to know that when I said I was over him, I was lying.
Marcus chose that moment to rise from his chair, flushed with wine and the particular glow of a man who had recently secured the affections of a woman he considered out of his league. He raised his glass, and the table quieted.
"I want to make a toast," he announced. His voice carried the warm, earnest quality that had first drawn me to him—the kind of voice that made you believe in things like stability and kindness and men who actually called when they said they would. "To Scarlet. My future wife. The best thing that ever happened to me."
A chorus of awws rippled through the table. I smiled. I did. I smiled so hard my cheeks ached.
"You know," Marcus continued, swaying slightly, "I think about this sometimes. About how lucky I am. Because every single one of her exes screwed it up. Every one. They had her, and they let her go, and I just want to say—" he paused, pressing a hand to his chest in mock solemnity, "—thank you, gentlemen. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your loss was my gain."
Everyone laughed. Glasses clinked. Someone slapped Marcus on the back.
And across the table, Priya's eyes snapped to mine.
Oh really, her expression said. Every single one?
I felt the champagne fizz in my ears. The world tilted, just slightly, like the roof had shifted beneath my chair. I took a breath. Another one. Tried to anchor myself in the present—the string lights, the city sounds, the warmth of Marcus's hand finding mine under the table.
But the past had already hooked its fingers into my ribs and was pulling.
---
Nineteen years old. The supply closet at the back of the old theater, the one that smelled like bleach and dust and something vaguely like mothballs. I was supposed to be helping Ollie find props for the second act. Instead, I was pressed against a metal shelf, my spine digging into the edge of it, and his mouth was hot on my neck.
We'd been dancing around it for weeks. Months, maybe. The kind of tension that builds so slowly you don't notice it until it's already consumed you. Every accidental brush of hands, every lingering look across the rehearsal space, every moment of silence that stretched a beat too long.
He'd cornered me after everyone else had gone home. Said he needed help with something. I'd known it was a lie. I'd followed him anyway.
"You belong to me," he whispered against my skin, and the words burrowed into me like they'd always been there, waiting for him to say them. His hands were on my hips, fingers digging into the fabric of my jeans. "You know that, right? You've always known."
I should have pushed him away. I should have laughed it off, made a joke, reminded him that we were just friends, just castmates, just two people who happened to be in the same place at the same time.
Instead, I pulled him closer.
His mouth found mine in the dark. He tasted like coffee and mint gum and something underneath that was just him—that particular Ollie flavor I'd been craving without admitting it. His hands slid under my shirt, palms flat against my stomach, and I arched into him like a reflex. Like gravity.
He lifted me onto the shelf. The metal groaned. I didn't care.
"You're going to have to be quiet," he murmured, unbuckling my jeans with steady fingers. "Can you be quiet for me?"
I nodded. I would have agreed to anything in that moment. The world had narrowed to the space between us—the heat of his body, the rasp of his breath, the way he looked at me like I was the only thing in the room worth seeing.
He pushed inside me slow. Deliberate. Like he wanted me to feel every inch, every moment, every second of the way he was taking me apart.
"Fuck," I breathed, and he kissed me to swallow the sound.
The shelf creaked with every thrust. I bit down on my own wrist, teeth sinking into skin, trying to keep from screaming as he fucked me deep and steady, his rhythm relentless, his mouth never leaving mine. My back scraped against the wall. I didn't care. I couldn't care. I was too busy trying not to come apart, trying not to let the whole goddamn theater hear me fall to pieces.
He knew what he was doing. He always knew. He angled his hips just right, hitting that spot that made my vision blur, and I had to bite harder to keep the moan trapped in my throat.
"Look at me," he said. "I want to see you when you come."
I looked. I couldn't not. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, and there was something in his expression that I didn't have a name for. Something possessive. Something hungry. Something that said this wasn't just sex, wasn't just a hookup, wasn't just two kids fooling around in a closet.
This was inevitable. This was the collision of two bodies that had been hurtling toward each other since the moment we met.
I came with his name on my lips and his hand clamped over my mouth, muffling the sound. My whole body shuddered. He didn't stop. He kept going, kept pushing, kept fucking me through it until I was limp and trembling and completely his.
When he finally finished, he pressed his forehead to mine and breathed out a laugh.
"Told you," he said. "You belong to me."
---
"Scarlet?"
Marcus's voice cut through the memory like a blade.
I blinked. The rooftop terrace snapped back into focus—the lights, the laughter, the clinking glasses. Marcus was looking at me with concern, his brow furrowed, his hand squeezing mine.
"You okay? You spaced out there for a second."
I forced a smile. "Just thinking about how lucky I am."
It wasn't a lie. Not exactly.
But across the table, Priya was still watching me. And her expression said everything I couldn't.
She knew. She'd always known.
The champagne fizzed in my glass, and somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled—the faintest hint of rain, just enough to make the air electric. Like the night itself was holding its breath.
I took a sip. Tried to pretend my hand wasn't shaking.
And wondered, not for the first time, if Ollie was still out there somewhere, thinking about the night he'd claimed me in a supply closet and ruined me for anyone else.