Chapter 2

"Ms. Holloway. You win."

I was staring out at the dark. My voice came out flat.

"He never gave me his heart."

"A bet's a bet. I'm leaving for graduate school overseas."

"Go, then. Who's stopping you? Sebastian can't wait to see the back of you."

Serena laughed into the receiver and cut the line.

I set the phone down.

A scene from years ago drifted up in my head.

Serena had made a bet with me, once: Sebastian would never really love me, and the day I figured that out, I'd step aside.

I'd never believed he'd married me out of spite. So I'd taken the bet.

Life had slapped that confidence out of my mouth.

He'd married me to get under Serena's skin.

On our wedding night, I'd waited in the bridal suite in my dress. He'd waited at the arrivals gate at JFK.

Two people. Each one up all night, waiting for somebody else.

Six years of a marriage in name only had put me into severe depression.

Then came the drunken night that produced a pregnancy, and the mood swings I couldn't control, and my grandfather's death — the one person in this world who'd actually loved me — and, after Logan was born, a postpartum collapse that never quite lifted.

I couldn't do it anymore. I swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills.

It was Sebastian who'd grabbed me in the dark. His hands were slick with my blood as he forced my mouth open, crying, saying the same thing over and over:

"It's okay, Nora. I'm here. I'll be with you and the baby forever. Please — please don't die."

The panic in his eyes hadn't looked fake, that night.

I held on to that one hug for three more years.

I took my medication. I smiled when I was supposed to. I tried not to hurt anyone else.

Until one afternoon the baby was screaming because he was hungry, and I was locked in the bathroom cramming painkillers into my mouth by the handful.

Sebastian smashed the pill bottle against the tile and roared at me:

"Are you trying to drive me crazy? Are you trying to drive your son crazy? Why don't you just do it already? You can't even take care of him — why did you have him?"

The man who'd kissed the scars on my wrists and sworn he'd spend the rest of his life loving me — he was gone.

That sentence had been sawing across my chest ever since.

I drew a long breath and pushed the heat back behind my eyes.

I'd barely managed to fall asleep next to Logan when footsteps started up downstairs — messy, too many of them.

I threw on a robe and stepped out of the nursery.

Serena, propping up a blackout-drunk Sebastian, was just walking into the foyer.

She was wearing his oversized overcoat and reeking of liquor.

She dumped him onto a couch and climbed the stairs to me.

"Her flight's tomorrow."

She kept her voice low, and it was all victory.

"I'm counting on you to keep your word. Leave Sebastian."

"Don't worry. I'm not the kind to cling."

I walked past her toward the nursery. "I'll be gone by tomorrow."

Serena let out a pleased little breath and turned back to the master suite with a pack of Sebastian's friends trailing behind her.

Before long, the sound of dice striking a hard surface rang out through the door. Hoots. Laughter.

Somebody yelled, "Truth! Sebastian — your wife or Serena, pick one!"

Sebastian, drunk and grinning, said, "Seriously? Everyone knows the answer." The room exploded.

Somebody else shouted dare. Serena squealed — too theatrical to be real — and her little gasps threaded through the men's wolf whistles.

One of them jeered, "Come on, Serena, one more round. Lose the next layer too!"

Then the sound of fabric being pulled. Bigger laughter.

A whistle: "Sebastian, buddy — who gave you that mark on your neck? Here — let me give you a matching one!"

More laughter, louder, looser.

The sound bled straight through the wall. In the dead of the night it felt twice as loud.

Logan woke up.

He started squirming in his crib, and then he was crying.

I hurried over and lifted him into my arms.

I pressed my hands over his little ears as hard as I dared.

I hummed a fragment of a lullaby, over and over.

Until he settled again against my shoulder.

I sat in the dark for the rest of the night.

At 5 AM I was getting up to fix his bottle when someone knocked on the nursery door.

Sebastian. Rumpled shirt. Hair a mess.

"This is about when he wants his bottle."

He held out the one he'd already made.

"I got used to being the one who gets up for it."

I didn't take it.

My eyes had found the two bright hickeys — one at the corner of his jaw, one on the side of his neck.

He followed my look and brushed the side of his neck.

Panic flickered.

"Last night. We were just messing around. Drank too much."

He cleared his throat, trying to explain.

"Somebody got handsy as a joke. Don't make a thing of it."

I looked at his clumsy lie and didn't have the energy left to call it what it was.

I took the bottle from him and tested the temperature on my wrist.

"That's fine."

I turned my back on him and walked toward the crib.

"I don't care anymore."