The System Admitted Its Mistake, So I Offered Him a Divorce novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cake and the Error
At her own wedding reception the System admits Justine was never the woman Rafe had to be won over by, so she offers him a divorce after a year, and he locks the door and says he let her scheme him.
I was cutting my own wedding cake in front of two hundred guests when the System told me it had made a mistake.
My husband's cousin held the knife out to me handle first.
"Go on, Justine," he said. "First cut's the bride's. Welcome to the family. I mean that."
He had paid for the string quartet himself.
He had also walked the ballroom with the florist that afternoon, so everything in it was where he wanted it.
Rafe stood at my left and laid his hand over mine on the handle.
His hand was warm and completely steady.
Across the room his grandmother lifted her champagne glass at me. She was seventy-eight and she hadn't smiled at anyone all night.
That afternoon Rafe had moved my chair at the head table from under the big centre chandelier to the wall.
He had walked me in the long way round, away from the scaffolding the band had left by the stage.
I'd thought it was the seating plan.
Then a chime rang inside my head, and only I could hear it.
"Correction notice," the System said in its flat voice.
Two hundred phones came up to film the cake. I smiled at all of them.
"The System has reviewed the assignment of Host Justine Pierce. Host is not the woman Rafe Holloway must be won over by. The assignment was issued in error."
I pushed the knife down through the bottom tier.
"The System apologizes for the inconvenience," it said.
Inconvenience.
I had loved Rafe Holloway for fifteen years.
I had never told him, because everyone knew I wasn't his type.
The System had promised me he would fall if I went after him.
So I had stood on a chair at his grandmother's party and called myself his fiancée.
He said yes.
It had worked, I thought, until the same voice called the whole thing an error.
Across the room Jarrett caught my eye and raised his glass a second time.
I lifted my fork to him like a toast.
My hand was shaking, and the cousin who had paid for everything saw it.
His smile widened a little.
"Smile, Justine," Rafe said low, next to my ear. "You've gone pale."
"It's the cake."
"Eat something."
His thumb moved once across the back of my hand.
Every kind thing he'd done this month was about his grandmother Lorna's rule.
Rafe had to be married by his thirty-ninth birthday and still married twelve months later, or the voting shares in his family's hotels went to his cousin Jarrett.
That was the only reason he had said yes.
The knife came out of the cake clean.
I put a slice on a plate and handed it to my husband, and the guests clapped.
The guests clapped again when he kissed my forehead for the cameras, and I felt it like a door closing.
I decided then.
I would not take his company and his freedom both.
So I would give him his divorce.
The suite on the top floor had white roses on every surface and a bed turned down by someone who had never met either of us.
It was after midnight when the door shut behind us.
I stepped out of my heels and stood at the window with my back to him.
"Rafe, I have to say something before tonight goes any further."
"Say it," he said.
He hadn't taken off his jacket.
"You need a year of marriage to keep the shares. You'll get it. I'll sit next to you at every dinner, and I'll smile at your grandmother and your cousin."
I turned around.
"After the twelve months we divorce. I won't take a dollar from you. I'll sign whatever you send me."
He didn't answer.
He stood in the middle of the suite with the city lights behind him, and every muscle in his face had stopped.
"I forced you into this," I said. "I put you on a spot in front of eighty people and you said yes because you had to. I'm not going to keep you in it past the year."
"You think I said yes because I had to."
"Didn't you?"
"Justine."
He crossed the room and stopped an arm's length from me.
He looked up at the ceiling first.
Then he looked at me.
"Fifteen years I let people say you weren't my type," he said. "You really thought I couldn't see you coming?"
My mouth opened and nothing came out.
He turned back to the door and slid the chain across it.
"I saw you stand on that chair," he said. "I had four seconds, and I used all of them to say yes."
"Rafe."
"There's no divorce in this marriage. I let you do this, Justine."
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