Chapter 1 The Marriage Certificate

Stella's POV

I woke up with a headache that felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my skull.

The leather couch beneath me was unfamiliar, the kind you'd find in any decent Boston apartment. I blinked against the afternoon light streaming through the windows, trying to piece together where the hell I was.

My costume from last night—a ridiculous fairy princess dress that Lucy had insisted I wear to Jenny's Spring Break masquerade—was wrinkled and uncomfortable, the tulle scratching against my thighs.

Then I saw it. The piece of paper on the glass coffee table, official and stark.

State of Rhode Island. Certificate of Marriage.

My hands shook as I picked it up. Two signatures stared back at me, both unmistakably real. Stella Harper. Ethan Blackwood. The date stamp read 3:47 AM, just hours ago.

What the fuck did I do?

The sound of a coffee machine whirring to life made me jump. I looked up to see a tall figure moving around an open kitchen, his back to me. Even from behind, I recognized that build—broad shoulders, dark hair with just enough curl to look effortlessly perfect.

No. No, no, no.

"Professor... Blackwood?" My voice came out as a croak.

He turned around, and those steel-blue eyes locked onto mine. For a moment, neither of us spoke. The man who'd been a mysterious stranger in a Venetian mask last night was now very clearly my Strategic Management professor, looking just as shocked as I felt.

"Miss Harper." His voice was carefully controlled, but I caught the edge of something underneath. "It appears we're both sober now."

I stared at him, then back at the certificate, then at him again. This couldn't be real.

"This isn't real, right?" The words tumbled out before I could stop them. "This is some kind of joke."

He walked toward me with two mugs of coffee, and I took one automatically when he offered it.

"I wish it were." He sat down on the opposite end of the couch. "Unfortunately, this is entirely legal and binding."

He pulled out his phone and turned the screen toward me. The photo made my stomach drop. There we were, standing in what was clearly a small chapel, complete with fake flowers and cheap wooden pews. I was grinning like an idiot, my arms around his neck, my mask pushed up on top of my head. He had one hand on my waist, the other holding up the marriage certificate.

We looked happy. Stupidly, recklessly happy.

"Oh my God." I set down the coffee before I could spill it. "Where is that?"

"Providence. Rhode Island." His tone was flat. "After you suggested it would be 'romantic' to get married under the stars. Apparently I informed you that Rhode Island has no waiting period for marriage licenses."

Fragments started surfacing. The Spring Break masquerade at Jenny's place. Too many drinks. A masked stranger asking me about Chopin. His hand on my back as we'd stumbled toward a car—not a taxi, I realized now, but something else. Something expensive. The highway lights blurring past. His hand on my thigh. My head on his shoulder.

"We drove to Rhode Island," I said slowly, the memory coming back in pieces. "At 2 AM."

"I called a car service." He pulled out his phone, showed me a receipt. "I wasn't going to drive in that condition."

"How responsible of you," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "You hired a driver to take us to another state so we could drunkenly get married."

"When you put it that way, it does sound insane."

"Because it is insane." I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to block out the reality of the situation. "We need to get an annulment. Right now. Based on alcohol impairment or whatever the legal term is."

"I looked into it this morning." He ran a hand through his hair, and I noticed for the first time how tired he looked. "Rhode Island law requires either mutual consent or court proof of fraud, coercion, or incapacity. The time window is limited, and given that we both signed legal documents, answered the officiant's questions coherently—"

"So we're screwed."

"Potentially." The first real crack in his composure showed. "There's also the matter of discretion. If this becomes public knowledge, the ethics committee will have questions."

The full weight of it hit me then. He was my professor. I was his student. If anyone found out, his career would be over. Mine too, probably.

"Fuck."

"Indeed."

My eyes drifted to the coffee table, where a Venetian mask lay abandoned next to the marriage certificate. Gold and black. I picked it up, and something clicked.

"I played Rachmaninoff last night," I said suddenly. "At the party. The Prelude in C-sharp minor."

"I know." His voice softened slightly. "I was there."

The memory sharpened. I'd been at the piano in Jenny's living room, half-drunk but still able to play, pouring all my frustration into the keys. The room had gone quiet. And then, when I'd finished, someone had walked up to the piano.

"May I have this dance?"

I'd looked up to see a man in a mask, tall and imposing, with eyes that seemed to see straight through me. He'd offered his hand, and I'd taken it without thinking.

We'd talked for hours. About music, about the difference between performing and creating, about whether art could truly change people. He'd quoted Schopenhauer. I'd argued back with Nietzsche. We'd laughed at the same obscure jokes, finished each other's sentences.

It had felt like meeting someone I'd known my entire life.

And there'd been something else. Something I couldn't quite name. When he'd stood close, the air had felt different—charged, almost. Like standing too near a live wire. I'd chalked it up to attraction and alcohol, but now...

"I thought you were just some guy," I said, still holding the mask. "Some random attractive guy at a party."

"I thought you were just some brilliant musician who happened to have opinions on German philosophy."

"When did you realize?"

"When you took off your mask at the chapel." He met my eyes. "You?"

"About thirty seconds ago."

The absurdity of it should have been funny, but I couldn't laugh. We'd spent an entire night together, connected in a way I'd never experienced before, and neither of us had known who the other really was. Now we were legally married, and the man I'd felt so comfortable with was someone I had to call Professor Blackwood in class.

I set down the mask and stood up, needing to move. "Look, we both know this was a mistake. A huge, career-ending mistake. So let's just... let's get a divorce. Clean break. We pretend this never happened."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

When I looked up, Ethan had gone completely still. His expression had shifted into something I couldn't read—something cold and sharp that made my breath catch.

He stood and walked toward me, each step deliberate. I found myself backing up until my legs hit the couch, and suddenly he was right there, towering over me at his full six-foot-two height. Those steel-blue eyes pinned me in place.

The air pressure changed. That same charged feeling from last night slammed into me, but stronger now, focused. My knees went weak, and for one insane second my body wanted to drop, to kneel, to—

I locked my legs and swallowed hard, fighting against the overwhelming instinct.

"You think being married to me is that embarrassing?"