Chapter 13: Cracks in the Heart

Laura's POV

The photographs lie scattered across the penthouse floor like accusations. Seventeen different wedding dresses, seventeen different men, seventeen different versions of myself wearing the same hollow smile. My stomach churns as I stare down at them, bile rising in my throat. Each image is a reminder of what I've become a professional bride, a woman who sells her vows to the highest bidder.

Andy hasn't moved from where he stands by the window. His reflection in the glass looks ghostly, translucent, like he's already disappearing from my life. The silence between us stretches taut, ready to snap. Isabella's laughter still echoes in my mind, sharp and victorious: How many husbands does it take, Laura?

"I can explain," I whisper, but the words sound pathetic even to my own ears.

He finally turns, and the look in his eyes makes my blood freeze. Not anger that I could handle. This is something worse. Disappointment. The kind that seeps into your bones and stays there.

"Explain what?" His voice is steady, controlled, which somehow makes it more terrifying than if he'd shouted. "That you've been married seventeen times? That everything I thought I knew about you was a lie?"

I want to tell him it wasn't all lies. That the way I melt when he touches me, the way my heart races when he says my name that's real. But the photos at my feet make mockery of every truth I could speak.

"It's not what you think"

"Then what is it?" He steps closer, and I catch the scent of his cologne woodsy, warm, nothing like the cheap aftershave of husband number three or the overpowering musk of husband number twelve. "Because what I think is that you're a stranger wearing Laura's face."

I'm eighteen, standing in a courthouse that smells like disinfectant and broken dreams. My first wedding dress is a twenty-dollar special from a thrift store, its yellowed lace scratching against my collarbone. The man beside me Gerald, I think his name was has sweaty palms and a nervous laugh. He's forty-three and lonely, willing to pay fifteen thousand for a six-month marriage contract. Fifteen thousand that will cover Mom's medical bills and keep the lights on for another year.

"Do you, Laura Marie Castillo, take Gerald to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

I sign the papers with a borrowed pen, my signature shaky and unfamiliar. Dad's voice whispers in my memory: "Find someone who stays, mija." But staying is a luxury I can't afford.

"My mother was dying," I say, the words tumbling out before I can stop them. "Lung cancer. The treatments, the bills we were drowning. I was eighteen and desperate, and someone told me about the marriage contracts. Quick money, no questions asked."

Andy's jaw tightens, but he doesn't interrupt.

"It was supposed to be just once. Just Gerald, just six months, just enough to save her." I laugh, but it comes out bitter. "She died anyway. Three months into the marriage, and I was stuck in this web I'd built around myself."

"Seventeen times, Laura." His voice cuts through my explanation like a blade. "This isn't about one desperate decision. This is about choices. Seventeen choices to keep lying."

The accusation hits harder than Isabella's slap ever could. Because he's right. After the first few contracts, it stopped being about survival and started being about something else. About never having to risk my heart again. About staying in control.

"You think I enjoyed it?" The words come out sharper than I intended. "You think I liked walking down aisle after aisle, promising to love men I barely knew? You think I liked being touched by strangers, kissed by people who saw me as nothing more than a business transaction?"

Something flickers in his eyes pain, maybe, or regret. But it's gone too quickly.

"I think you got comfortable with it," he says quietly. "I think you got so good at pretending that you forgot how to be real."

The words knock the air from my lungs. Because maybe, just maybe, he's right about that too.

I'm twenty-five, standing in my apartment that's become a museum of wedding dresses. Each one hangs in order, a timeline of my choices. The silk ones from the wealthy widowers, the simple cotton from the young immigrants needing green cards, the elaborate beaded gowns from the society marriages. My reflection stares back from the full-length mirror, and I barely recognize the woman looking back. When did I become this person? When did I stop being Laura and start being Laura Castillo, Professional Bride?

I touch the mirror, and my reflection touches back. But it feels like I'm looking at a stranger.

"I never meant for it to be you," I whisper, and the admission feels like stepping off a cliff. "I never meant to fall for someone who could actually matter."

Andy's breath catches, just slightly, but I hear it. "And what am I supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to believe anything you say when your whole life is built on lies?"

"Because this" I gesture between us, desperate now, "this isn't a lie. The way I feel about you, the way you make me feel like I'm worth something more than a contract that's the most real thing I've ever had."

He shakes his head, and I see the exact moment he starts to pull away. Not physically he doesn't move but something in his eyes goes cold, distant.

"I don't know what's real anymore," he says, and his voice sounds hollow. "I don't know if you know what's real anymore."

The penthouse suddenly feels enormous, an ocean of space between us that I can't cross.

Outside, the city continues its endless dance of lights and noise, oblivious to the fact that my world is crumbling.

"Andy, please"

"I need time," he says, and the words fall like stones into still water. "I need to think about this. About us. About whether there even is an us."

He starts toward the door, and panic claws at my chest. "Don't leave. Not like this."

He stops, his hand on the doorknob, and for a moment I think he'll turn around. That he'll come back and hold me and tell me we can figure this out together.

Instead, he says, "I don't even know who you are anymore."

The door closes behind him with a soft click, and I'm alone with the photographs scattered at my feet. Seventeen different versions of myself, all of them strangers now.

A loud bang echoes through the penthouse not from the door Andy just closed, but from somewhere else. The sound is sharp, sudden, like a gunshot in the silence.

Or maybe like someone else's door slamming shut.