I’d begged— I’m not proud of it, but I’d begged. “Please, Nathan. We can make it work. I love you.”
And he’d looked at me with those kind, pitying eyes and said, “I don’t think you even know what love is, Zara.”
That sentence had carved a hole in my chest that was still bleeding.
Because he was right.
I probably didn’t know what love was. I’d never known. I’d spent my whole life trying to prove I was worth staying for. And I’d failed every time.
Nathan was just the latest in a long line of people who’d decided I wasn’t enough.
So, here I was.
I had no savings. I had a marketing job that paid barely enough to cover my half of the rent when I had one. I had no family to fall back on—not really. My mom was gone, my siblings scattered across the country, all of us too busy surviving to actually be a family.
And I was alone.
Completely, utterly alone.
I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, the apartment door was clicking open and Marcus’ voice was filling the space.
“Zara? Are you alive?”
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “Barely.”
The smell of greasy Chinese food filled the air as Marcus flopped down next to me on the couch. He was tall, perpetually put-together, the kind of friend who made you feel better just by existing.
“So,” he said, not looking up from his phone screen, “are you gonna tell me what’s going on with you, or do I have to drag it out of you like always?”
I groaned immediately. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“That bad?”
“That weird.”
His brow raised with interest. “Oh, I love weird. Continue.”
So I told him.
Not every detail. Definitely not the parts about the way Lorenzo touched me or how my pulse still jumped every time I remembered the look in his eyes.
But enough.
The breakup. The bar. The dangerously hot, rich, stranger who bought me dinner and looked at me with searing eyes.
And finally?—
“The man proposed marriage.”
Marcus froze mid-bite.
“I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “Thewhat?”
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. He asked you to marry him? Like, for real?”
“For real.”
His mouth dropped open. “Okay, no, because I leave for one week and suddenly your life turns into a Netflix thriller?”
