CHAPTER FIVE: THE MORNING AFTER NEVER CAME
AVA MONROE'S POV
The morning after our wedding, I didn't wake up beside Ethan.
I didn't wake up in his arms. I didn't even wake up in the same wing of the estate.
Instead, I woke to the scent of espresso and the soft clicking of heel, Diane, bustling around my suite with a tablet in hand and a
schedule that read more like a corporate itinerary than a honeymoon plan.
"Good morning, Mrs. Kingsley," she chirped with an efficiency that made my teeth ache.
I sat up slowly, the silk sheets sliding off my shoulder. "Drop the Mrs., Diane. I'm not ready to wear it like a badge yet."
She paused, just a flicker of something behind her glasses,
then resumed typing.
"You have a press briefing at eleven, followed by a board
luncheon with Kingsley Global execs. Your stylist will arrive in."
"I'm not going."
Diane blinked. "Excuse me?".
I swung my legs out of bed and stood, my robe trailing behind me like the ghost of yesterday's vows. "I said I'm not going.
Call it rebellion.
Call it post-wedding blues.
But I need a moment to remember who the hell I was before I became his wife."
Before Diane could argue, I slipped into the bathroom and locked the door.
I didn't see Ethan until late that evening.
The house was quiet, the kind of silence that felt curated, like
everything was paused just so we could fill it with whatever new performance the day demanded.
He found me in the music room, fingers trailing over the ivory keys of the grand piano though I hadn't played in years.
"You skipped the luncheon," he said, no preamble.
I didn't look up. "Did the sky fall?."
He stepped closer, the scent of his cologne sharp and clean. "You can't disappear just because you're overwhelmed."
"And you can't micromanage me like one of your employees."
Silence stretched between us.
Then, surprisingly, he sat beside me on the bench.
"You used to play?"
I nodded. "Before life got messy.
He reached forward and pressed a single note. A low A. It echoed through the room like a question.
"Play something," he said.
I shook my head. "I'm not a jukebox."
But my hands betrayed me. Slowly, hesitantly, they moved, one chord, then another. And then the melody came. A soft waltz I used to play for
my mother.
When I finished, Ethan didn't clap. He didn't comment. He just sat there, the flicker of something unreadable in his eyes.
"Why did you marry me?" I asked before I could stop myself.
He didn't flinch. "Because I needed a solution.
You were the only one honest enough not to disguise your desperation as affection."
"Charming."
"And you?" he asked. "Why'd you sign the contract?"
I hesitated.
"For the same reason people jump from burning buildings. It wasn't the safest option. Just the least deadly."
He looked at me for a long moment, then stood.
"The least deadly can still kill you, Ava."
He walked away again, and I realized something that hadn't
occurred to me before.
We were married. Legally bound. Publicly paraded. But emotionally?
We were miles apart.
And the bridge between us had yet to be built.
That night, a package arrived at my door.
Inside was a red leather-bound journal. Blank. Unwritten.
A note was tucked inside.
"For the parts you can't say out loud. E"
It was the first gift he'd given me that wasn't for show.
And for reasons I couldn't explain, I cried.
But not because I was sad.
Because for the first time, I realized he might be just as lost as I was.
And maybe, just maybe, that was the beginning of something
neither of us had planned for.