Chapter 5

Jamie's POV

Late at night at a private hospital.

When the doctor cut open my clothes, she went quiet.

The knife had gone in deep, close enough to the nerve that it had nearly done permanent damage. Worse, because I had waited so long, the wound had bonded with the fabric fibers. Cleaning it out was going to be brutal.

"Ms. Shaw, I need to give you a local anesthetic before I suture this."

"Don't." I stared up at the surgical light. My voice was weak but absolute. "Just stitch it."

"But..."

"I need to feel it."

I needed this pain, clean, physical, undeniable, to finally cut me loose from twenty-two years of something that had always been a dream.

The pull of needle and thread through skin was precise and awful. I gripped the edge of the table until my knuckles went white. I bit through my lip. I didn't shed a single tear.

I thought about being five years old, pushed into a cold swimming pool, flailing in the water, certain I was going to die.

And him, arriving like the whole sky had opened up, pulling me back from the edge.

I thought about being fifteen, kneeling on the hard ground outside because I hadn't done my stepsister's homework. My stepmother's punishment: no dinner, no coming inside.

And him, climbing over the wall with a paper bag, pressing a warm macaron into my hands, his voice fierce: "Anyone who touches you, you tell me. I'll make them sorry."

Those moments of warmth had been the only light in a very bare life.

But they had also built the cage. Woven it wire by wire, year by year, until I had walked in willingly and called it love.

Now it was time to walk out.

The doctor wanted to keep me for observation. I declined, took a car home to the house that technically still had my name attached to it, and let myself in.

Every light was on.

Ethan was on the couch on a phone call, his voice liquid-soft: "Okay. Don't be scared, I'll come over soon. Don't get the bandage wet, and make sure you use the ointment the doctor gave you... you're not bothering me. Stop saying that. When have I ever found you annoying?"

He looked up when he heard the door.

"You're back." Casual. His eyes swept over me once.

I'd put on a dark coat before leaving the hospital. It covered everything.

He noticed nothing.

"Yeah." I slipped off my shoes. Every small movement sent fire shooting across my back.

"How'd it go? Did you get the press handled?" He stood up and moved toward me, reaching out to clap me on the shoulder out of habit.

I stepped back without thinking.

His hand hung in the air. His brow furrowed.

"What's wrong? Are you mad? Are you seriously upset that I left with Sophia?"

He looked genuinely baffled.

"Jamie, you're not usually like this. The situation was critical. Sophia has never been through anything like that. She nearly had a panic attack. You've handled things like this before. I trusted you to manage it, that's why I left it with you."

Trust, again.

I looked up at him. My eyes were perfectly still, like a lake with no wind.

"Ethan. If that blade had hit my head tonight, I would be dead."

He stared at me. Then laughed a little.

"Don't be dramatic. You're fine, aren't you? And honestly, the way you took that guy's wrist out with a chair? You're not dying anytime soon. You're too tough for that." He was still smiling. "Hell would send you back."

Still laughing. Still treating the whole night like a minor plot point. Still utterly certain that I was built to absorb whatever the world threw at me.

I looked at his handsome, familiar, completely foreign face and felt a tiredness so deep I had no words for it.

I was done explaining. Done justifying.

Some people, you can't wake them up. They have to stay asleep.

Maybe it was guilt about earlier. Ethan reached into his jacket pocket and tossed me a velvet box.

"Here. Picked this up at an auction a while back. I thought the necklace was nice. You never really wear jewelry. Think of it as hazard pay for tonight."

I opened it slowly.

An emerald necklace. Antique design, clearly expensive. But the style was heavy, ornate, old-fashioned. The exact kind of thing my stepmother always wore.

"What do you think? I'm good to you, right?" Ethan looked pleased with himself. "My mom used to wear something similar, very elegant. You always dress so plainly. This might help."

I looked at the necklace.

He had never once known what I actually liked.

"Thank you." I closed the box.

"Oh, and..." Ethan shifted gears, and something new crossed his face, a rare, slightly shy smile I had almost never seen on him. "Are you free tomorrow? I want you to come somewhere with me."

My fingers tightened on the edge of the velvet box.

"Where?"

"To pick out a ring." His smile deepened. "I want to propose to Sophia. Properly. I owe her that and more after five years. And you have the best taste. You know what she'd love. She's going to say yes."

Even though I had known this was coming, even though I had prepared myself for every version of this moment, I still heard it.

The sound of something cracking.

Like ice splitting, one sharp, clean sound, and then the whole world breaking apart.