Chapter 6

I sat there on the couch, barely breathing.

My nails dug into my palm until the pain turned sharp.

A thousand roses.

Picking her up at the hospital himself.

Calling her little troublemaker.

Laughing like that.

None of that was ever mine.

I couldn’t even picture the Ethan I knew in an apron, standing in a kitchen.

I was still trying to come up with an excuse to leave when lightning split the sky outside.

A second later came the low roll of thunder.

I covered my ears on instinct.

But the violent crash I braced for never came.

I slowly lowered my hands.

Tiffany smiled at me.

“Doctor, are you scared of thunder too?”

I nodded.

It wasn’t fear so much as trauma-driven terror.

She pointed proudly at the windows.

“You’re fine in this apartment.”

“Honestly, even if a bomb went off outside the door, you wouldn’t hear a thing.”

“When Ethan found out I’m scared of thunder, he had the whole place upgraded with top-tier soundproofing.”

“The thunder barely gets through.”

I just stood there.

And the way I’d covered my ears seconds earlier felt pathetic.

When I was a kid, I survived a major car accident in a thunderstorm.

After that, heavy rain and loud thunder always triggered me.

I shake, break out in cold sweats, and want to curl into a ball.

I told Ethan about it once over text.

He just laughed it off.

“Come on, Clara. It’s not that bad. You just miss me, don’t you?”

“Baby, I’m about to jump into an international meeting. Get some sleep. Goodnight.”

That was it.

On those stormy nights, I wrapped myself in blankets and shook through it alone.

Sweat soaking the pillow.

Biting my hand so I wouldn’t cry out.

So no, he did believe me.

He just didn’t care.

Because I wasn’t the one he cared about.

Dazed, I reached for the glass on the coffee table.

My hand slipped.

Water spilled onto a stack of papers nearby.

A title flashed across the page.

Accident Investigation Report.