He had expected her to refuse.
Instead she had asked practical questions.
Will he treat me decently?
I think so.
Will he tell me the truth?
I told him he had to.
Will it stay private?
As private as marriages involving Taylor King ever do.
She had known it was humiliating. She had known it was foolish. But there was a part of her—small, tired, shamefully hopeful—that wanted six months inside a life where she would not come home to silence every night. Six months of being chosen, even artificially. Six months of pretending the ring meant something while her future felt like it was narrowing to medical charts and sympathetic looks.
She had told herself she could handle the lie if she named it clearly.
She had not accounted for this: for him changing shape in front of her, little by little, until she no longer knew which part was performance and which part was the man.
