Chapter 2

"Shut up!" Ethan snapped, clamping a hand over her mouth.

My nails dug into my palms. "Let her talk. I want to hear it."

Sienna pulled free, glanced at him, then back at me.

"You were sedated. The doctors said you'd sleep until morning." Her voice was soft, almost apologetic. "Ethan went down to the parking garage, and he was crying. I went to check on him. I just wanted to comfort him."

"It happened in the back seat of his car."

"After that, we couldn't stop. We tried. We really tried."

Each word landed like a fist to the stomach.

That night, I had woken at three a.m. with an empty womb and an empty chair beside my bed. When Ethan came back, his eyes were red and his shirt was buttoned wrong. I thought it was grief. I held him while he shook.

I had comforted him.

The memory sliced through me so cleanly I couldn't breathe.

"And London?" I asked. My voice sounded far away. "Why did the Royal College of Art reject me?"

Ethan sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, like I was a child asking a silly question.

"They didn't reject you, Claire. They offered you a full scholarship. I emailed them from your account and declined."

The floor tilted.

"Sienna was struggling. She needed me here. And you'd have gone. You'd have outgrown me." He shrugged. "So I made the call. You're too gentle for that world anyway. I took care of you."

That scholarship had been my dream since I was fifteen. I'd spent three years building that portfolio—every sketch, every model, every all-nighter. When the "rejection" came, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried until I threw up. Ethan had sat outside the door all night, telling me they were idiots, telling me I was brilliant, telling me he'd build me a career himself.

And he had. He'd built Hale & Co.—his "boutique design firm."

Using my designs. And the trust fund my grandmother left me as seed money.

I'd signed everything over because I loved him. Because he'd cried and said he wanted us to build a future together.

Now I understood. He hadn't been scared of losing me to London.

He'd been scared of losing access to Sienna.

The pieces snapped together, one after another. The Saturdays he "worked late." The way Sienna stopped answering my texts on those same Saturdays. The broad-shouldered man in the back of her Instagram stories who always turned his face away from the camera.

Sienna stepped forward, hands pressed to her still-flat stomach.

"Claire, I never meant to take him from you. I swear. You don't choose who you fall for."

"I just don't want my baby growing up without a dad the way I did. You know what that did to me. You can still be Mrs. Hale. In public, nothing has to change."

I stared at her. My sister. The girl who used to sleep in my bed when the nightmares came.

She was offering me my own husband like a timeshare.

A laugh tore out of me—ugly and bitter.

I didn't argue. I didn't cry. I pulled out my phone and scrolled to a contact I had never once let myself text. No photo. Just a single letter.

D.

Two years ago, at a design conference, a man had pressed his card into my hand after I'd defended a project he'd torn apart in front of two hundred people. He'd looked at the wedding ring on my finger for a long moment, then said quietly:

"If you ever need out, Claire—call me. No questions."

I'd thrown the card away. But I'd saved the number.

My thumbs shook as I typed.

You said if I ever needed out. I need out.

The reply came in under ten seconds.

Twenty minutes. Don't sign anything. Don't cry in front of them.

I slid the phone into my pocket.

Ethan's eyes narrowed. "Who are you texting?"

"No one you'd know."

He laughed, low and amused, like I'd told a cute joke.

"Claire. Baby. Look at yourself. You're eight months pregnant, you have no job, no savings, and no friends I didn't introduce you to." He leaned close, his breath warm against my ear. "Nobody is coming for you."

For the first time all day, I smiled.

"We'll see."