CHAPTER ONE

He was still inside me when his phone rang.

I lay there—his sweat still on my skin, his breath still in my hair—and listened to him say "Hey, baby" to someone who wasn't me.

Four years. Four years of secret dinners, locked doors, and a love he only spoke in the dark. Four years I poured into this man like water into a crack in the wall, believing—*stupidly, devotedly*—that one day the wall would open for me.

It didn't.

Nathan sat on the edge of the bed, his back to me—that perfect, sculpted back I'd traced with my fingers a thousand times—and laughed softly into the phone. A warm laugh. A public laugh. The kind he never used with me because I was the thing he kept in drawers.

"Yeah, the florist confirmed. Peonies. You'll love them."

Peonies.

My stomach folded in half.

"Who was that?" I asked when he hung up. My voice sounded foreign. Flat. Like someone had scooped the insides out of it.

He didn't even flinch. He stood up, pulled on his boxer briefs with the casual ease of a man who had never been caught at anything, because in his mind, there was nothing to catch.

"My fiancée."

The word landed like a surgical cut—so precise it took a moment for the blood to show.

"Your… *what?*"

"Victoria Hayes. We've been engaged for three weeks." He picked up his shirt from the floor. The same shirt I'd unbuttoned forty minutes ago with hands that actually trembled because I loved him that much. "The announcement's going out in the Journal on Friday."

Three weeks.

He'd been inside me six times in three weeks.

I sat up. The sheet fell away, and I felt suddenly, violently naked—not physically, but the other kind. The kind that makes you want to peel your own skin off.

"Then what am I, Nathan?"

He finally looked at me.Those grey-blue eyes. God, I used to think they held oceans. Now I saw exactly what they were: mirrors. Reflecting only himself.

"Rachel." He said my name the way. Irrelevant.

"It's been in the works for months. You know how these things go."

He paused. And I watched something flicker behind his face—something that might've been guilt in a man who could afford it. Then it was gone.

"You know what this is. You've always known."

"Say it."

"You don't have her last name." He buckled his belt. "You never will."

There it was.

Not a scream. Not a slap. Not the dramatic explosion the moment deserved. Just seven words that told me every late night, every whispered promise, every time he said *I need you*—it all had an asterisk. A footnote. Terms and conditions that read: This product is not intended for permanent use.

He kissed my forehead on his way out.

Like I was a child he was putting to bed.

The door clicked shut. The silence that followed was the loudest sound I'd ever heard.

I didn't cry.

I wanted to. The tears were right there, stacked behind my eyes like passengers waiting to board. But something had shifted. Some internal door had slammed shut, and behind it, a different version of me was already standing.

I ripped the sheets off the bed. Balled them up. Shoved them into the trash can with my bare hands. His cologne clung to the fabric—sandalwood and money and lies.

The shower was scalding. I turned it hotter. I scrubbed until my skin screamed, until every cell he'd touched was raw and new. The mirror fogged over, and when I wiped it, the woman staring back at me was blurred. Unfinished.

Good.

I was done being his finished product.

I sat at my laptop at 2:47 a.m., hair dripping on the keyboard.

I opened a different screen entirely—one I hadn't touched in four years. A private contact directory. A number I'd told myself I would never use again.

My fingers didn't hesitate.

I need the jet. Tonight. Usual runway.

Three minutes passed. Then:

Wheels up at 4:45. It's been too long, Miss Berg.

Not Nathan's girl. Not anyone's secret. Not a footnote.

Miss Berg.

I felt something crack open in my chest—not breaking, but the opposite. Like a room that had been sealed for years finally letting in air.

By 3:30, I’d packed everything I needed—my ID, my laptop, my documents. One backpack, holding the sum of four years in this place. By 4:00, my suitcase was zipped, my keys were on the counter, and my apartment looked like I’d never existed in it.

I was dragging my bag through the lobby when my phone lit up.

Nathan.

"Tonight was great. Thursday?"

I stared at that text for eleven seconds.

He didn't know. He had no idea I was already gone. In his mind, I was still in that bed, still warm, still waiting—because that's what I'd always done.

I deleted the message.

Then I deleted his number.

Then I walked out into a New York night that, for the first time in four years, had nothing to do with him.

The car to JFK arrived at 4:15.

I didn't look back.

—and into the beginning of something he was going to deeply regret.