SLOANE POV
The first thing I think is: am I in hell? Because heaven — heaven feels like a reach given the circumstances, years of allowing a man to mooch off me while he left bruises on my ribs, years of smiling at Gregory even when he used me, I am not naive enough to think any of that earns you a stay in heaven as I squeeze my eyes shut.
Please, I think, with the specific desperation of someone who has never been particularly religious but is willing to negotiate. Please not hell. I know I was stupid. I know I stayed too long and forgave too much and drove into an intersection I didn't see, but I have genuinely suffered a considerable amount already and I would really appreciate it if that counted for something.
Nothing happened, I opened one eye. The ceiling is unfamiliar. Definitely not hell, I doubt hell has crown molding as I sit up slowly.
The room is large and cold and beautiful. Heavy drapes, pale walls. A window with grey morning light pressing through silk curtains.
Okay, I think. Okay. You've woken up confused before, you were in an accident. You're in a hospital. Except hospitals don't look like this, I raise my hands in front of my face but they are not my hands as I freeze.
Then I get up, walk to the mirror, and look at a face I have never worn — auburn hair, grey-green eyes, golden skin, objectively beautiful in a way that produces a laugh from somewhere in my chest. My laugh but coming out of her face.
I'm dreaming, I think. I hit my head in the accident and I'm in a coma and this is what a coma feels like. I press my fingers to the mirror. It's solid and cold and real then I press it on my own face, her face and feel the pressure both ways.
Okay, I tell the mirror. What do you actually know?
What I know: I am in a body that is not mine, in a room I have never been in, in a house I cannot identify, and I am wearing a cotton nightgown that costs more than my last three paychecks combined.
On the nightstand: a note. Don't embarrass us.
On the back of the door: a wedding dress.
I sit down on the edge of the bed because my legs have stopped cooperating. The wedding dress is ivory silk, structured at the waist, and there is a veil folded over the hanger beside it like it expects to be used today.
I stare at it for a long moment. Something is pressing at the back of my mind — some snagged corner of something I should remember — but I can't reach it yet.
I think about Brett instead, which is not a choice. My chest does something complicated and I let it, because I am apparently a woman in a stranger's body in front of a wedding dress.
He's gone, I think. Brett is gone. Gregory is gone. The documentation file, the HR meeting, the pitch I was building — all of it is gone. Whatever that intersection took from me, it took everything.
I sit with it for a few seconds exactly, counting my own breaths, the way I used to in the bathroom at Vantage when I needed to get through the next few hours without falling apart. Then I stand up, because sitting down is not a strategy.
I go to the wardrobe and open it, and the thing that's been snagging at the back of my mind finally catches.
I go back to the mirror and look at the face once again.I tilt my head, she tilts hers.
I know this face as my stomach drops. Vivienne Holt.
I go back and sit back down on the bed with shaky legs.
A few months ago on a red-eye home from a work trip I was too tired to sleep through.
I downloaded a romance app and found a completed webnovel called A Vow of Silk and Silence.
The story had the full character portrait gallery at the top as I scrolled through all of them in about ten seconds, filed them away as generic romance novel casting, and started reading. It had two hundred chapters and I read the whole thing in one sitting, increasingly furious, and when I finished I turned to the stranger in the seat beside me and said, entirely unprompted: "She had a heart condition for two hundred chapters and told nobody. She organized the man's mother's birthday party while running a fever. She died apologizing, who wrote this."
The stranger put in his earbuds as I deleted the app.
Vivienne Holt, I think again. Who is sweet and selfless and completely without spine. Who enters a contract marriage with a cold CEO, mothers his orphaned nephews with quiet warmth, falls silently in love over approximately a hundred and ninety chapters, and then collapses while apologizing with her last breath.
I read all two hundred chapters in one sitting. I told myself it was because the writing was compulsive. I told myself I was furious at the author.
I was furious at myself. I just didn't know it yet.
I know it now.
I look at the wedding dress as the wedding dress looks back at me.
"Absolutely not," I say out loud, to the dress, to the room, to whatever version of the universe has decided this is funny.
My voice is different. Softer with a slightly lower register than I'm used to. I clear my throat, which helps nothing, and then I pick up the contract from the nightstand because in the book there is a contract and I have read the whole book.
I find the non-contact clause and read it twice. No physical contact unless initiated by her.
Good, I think. That's something, a place to start.
I need to think. I need to think carefully about what I know and what I don't know and what chapter this is and what is coming, because the woman who lived in this body went gently through every one of those two hundred chapters and arrived at the ending the author wrote for her, and I am not going to do that. I have bruised ribs in a life I will never go back to and years of swallowed rage and a documentation file I never got to use, and if the universe — or whatever this is — has put me here then it has also, accidentally or not, handed me the only thing I've wanted for years. A second chance to be as angry as I should have been the first time.
Three small faces appear in the doorway, they all look almost identical. I know their names from the book. Jasper, Emmet, Rowe. Six years old.
The one on the left has his hands folded like a small diplomat.
The one in the middle is crying slightly and looks furious about it.
The one on the right is holding a frog.
I look at the frog as the frog looks at me.
"Does he have a name," I hear myself say, "or are we doing a catch-and-release situation."
The one on the right — blinks as they all stare at me.
Then my brain short-circuits completely and I say, "Hiii boys."
All three of them slowly raise their eyebrows at exactly the same time. It's eerie how synchronized it is but nobody speaks.
"What?" I say.
More silence.
"That's a bit rude," I say. "I said hello."
The one on the left — whose hands are folded like a small lawyer tips his head slightly. "You said hiii."
"That's still a greeting."
"You stretched the i."
"I was being friendly."
"It was strange," says the one from the right who is holding a frog.
The one in the middle, is crying slightly and looks furious about it. He doesn't say anything, just sniffles aggressively and maintains eye contact.
I know who they are already. I know all three of them — their names, their habits, the exact weight of what they've been carrying since their father died. But they don't know that. And something about the way they're looking at me — makes me want to hear them say it themselves.
"Okay," I say. "What are your names?"
The one on the left straightens slightly. Hands folded like a small lawyer. "Jasper."
"Emmet," says the one in the middle, with great dignity for someone whose eyes are still wet.
The one on the right says nothing for a moment. Just look at me. Then, "Rowe."
"Okay," I say. "Jasper. Emmet. Rowe." I point to each of them in turn. "I'm Vivienne."
"We know," Jasper says.
"We were told," Emmet adds.
Rowe just looks at me and the frog shifts in his hands.
"Right." I pause. "Does the frog have a name?"
All three of them blink. Like that was not the expected follow up question.
"Gerald," Rowe says finally.
"Good name."
"He eats flies," Rowe offers.
"Efficient." I lean against the nightstand. "Is Gerald coming to the wedding?"
"Uncle Caelan said no," Rowe says.
"Gerald is banned," Emmet confirms, with some heat.
"That seems harsh," I say. "Gerald has done nothing wrong."
Rowe looks at me for a long moment with the flat careful expression of someone taking very thorough attendance. Then he tucks Gerald more securely into the crook of his elbow. That's all. But I get the sense I've passed something.
Jasper steps forward. "You're the one marrying our uncle."
"That's the current plan, yes."
"He doesn't want to get married."
"I know."
"He said this arrangement was temporary and contractual and we were not to become attached."
I look at him. "He said all that to six year olds?"
"He says everything to us like we're in a board meeting," Rowe says.
"We have a lot of board meetings," Emmet adds, apparently deciding his feelings about the crying are resolved. "Last Tuesday he made a PowerPoint about bedtime."
"Was it a good PowerPoint?"
"It had a pie chart," Jasper says. Very seriously.
"About bedtime."
"About sleep cycles."
I look at all three of them as they look back at me.
"Are you scared?" Jasper asks.
I consider lying. I look at his face — the careful watching diplomat face — and decide against it.
"Yes," I say.
He nods slowly. Like that was the correct answer. "The last three were scared too."
"The last three what?"
"Nannies," Emmet says cheerfully.
"We've had eleven," Rowe says.
"Eleven?"
"Two left the same week," Jasper explains. "That was a difficult period."
I look at the wedding dress on the back of the door. Then back at Jasper.
"Did you run them off?"
He blinks. Perfectly innocent. "We were simply ourselves."
"That's very diplomatic."
"Thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment."
The corner of his mouth moves. Just barely. "You're different from how I thought you'd be."
"Good or bad different ?"
He considers this with great seriousness. "I haven't decided."
"Fair enough." I say. "Shall we go watch your uncle not look at me during his own wedding?"
Emmet frowns. "He does that."
"I don't know," I say. "Come on then. Gerald's invited."
Rowe and the rest are already moving, I pick up the pen from the nightstand and look at the contract one more time — I sign my name, her name. The name I am wearing for now.
In my old life, men like Gregory and Brett used me until I was convenient and disposable. Cheap, Brett had called me, good enough for a placeholder.
This time, I was going to use them right back. Starting with the man Caelan Maddox.