Chapter 3

I met Sebastian at one of those charity dinners packed with important people pretending to be humble while holding champagne glasses that cost more than a month's rent.

I hated that kind of event.

Tight dresses, fake smiles, and conversations so hollow they practically echoed through the ballroom. I was about to fake a headache and leave when Sebastian showed up.

And for the first time that night, someone seemed... real.

He talked to me like I was a normal person — not "the heiress daughter of the Beaumont family." We talked about art, travel, music, and even argued over which dessert was the best. He defended tiramisu with a passion that was almost offensive.

I ended up laughing more that night than I had in months.

After that, we started seeing each other regularly. Dinners, short trips, late-night phone calls — everything happened naturally. For the first time in a long time, I felt like someone actually saw me beyond my family's money.

Two years later, he proposed.

It was at a seaside restaurant, lit by candles and the golden reflection of the moon on the water. It felt like a scene from a movie — too romantic to be real. When he got down on one knee and opened the ring box, my heart felt like a bird trapped behind my ribs, desperate to break free.

And I said yes.

Now we're engaged.

But there's something about me that not many people would understand.

We still haven't gone all the way.

Not because I don't love him.

And not because he's never tried. Sebastian kisses me, holds my waist, strokes my face — sometimes I can see the desire in his eyes, burning low and quiet, like a fireplace lit in an empty house.

But I just don't feel ready.

I want to wait until the wedding.

Maybe it's cliche. Old-fashioned. Too conservative for these days. But it's important to me. It wasn't religious pressure or something my family pushed on me. It was my choice.

My body has always been watched by people. Comments, stares, comparisons to my mother — I grew up feeling like everything about me was being examined like a piece in an exhibition.

So maybe I want the first time to be entirely my decision. No pressure. No fear. No doubts.

And Sebastian... he waits.

Sometimes I catch a flash of frustration in him — quick, like a shadow passing across a wall. But he's never forced anything. Never crossed my boundaries.

At least not so far.

And deep down I think:

If he really loves me, then he'll keep waiting.

Because real love shouldn't work like a clock counting down.

We got along really well.

Truly.

Sebastian was always patient with me, affectionate, attentive to every detail. He knew exactly how to calm me down after a fight with my stepmother. He knew when I needed silence and when I needed to escape that suffocating house to eat dessert at two in the morning at some random cafe.

That's why I started noticing when he changed.

It was gradual.

First came the delayed texts. Then the phone calls he'd end the moment I walked into the room. Small absences. Small silences. Small cracks.

Sebastian started feeling distant even when he was right next to me.

Sometimes I'd catch him staring into nothing, lost in thought. Other times he seemed irritated for no reason. When I asked what was going on, he'd just say:

"It's the wedding stress."

But my intuition has never failed me.

And it was screaming inside my head like a fire alarm.

Something's going on.

He still kissed me.

Still held my hand.

Still said he loved me.

But sometimes it felt automatic. Like someone repeating rehearsed lines in a play too expensive to walk out on in the middle.

And then I started noticing other things.

My half-sister smiling too much around him.

Sebastian defending her in petty arguments.

The two of them exchanging quick glances that vanished the second I caught on.

Maybe I was being paranoid.

Maybe years of living in that house had turned me into someone too suspicious.

But there was one specific night I could never forget.

I was coming downstairs to get water when I heard quiet voices coming from the kitchen. Sebastian and my sister were in there. I couldn't make out the whole conversation — just muffled laughter and then sudden silence when they noticed I was there.

My sister smiled first.

That smile of hers — beautiful on the outside and poisonous underneath.

Sebastian looked nervous.

He said they were just talking about the wedding.

I pretended to believe him.

But that night, lying in the enormous bed in my room, staring at the dark ceiling, I felt something strange pressing against my chest.

Like my life was about to flip upside down.

And the worst part?

A part of me already knew it, even before the truth came out.

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