Chapter 1

When the ambulances arrived, my deputy, Scott Browning, naturally waved Logan Callum over to ride with me. After all, everyone knew how devoted the two of us were.

But Logan acted as if he hadn't heard. He anxiously carried the girl into a different ambulance.

Scott looked at my ashen face and squeezed out a few stiff words of comfort, "Natalie, don't overthink this. I'm sure Logan's just doing his job. He probably wants to give the hostage some crisis counseling..."

Crisis counseling?

But everyone had just seen it. Logan, the calmest man any of us knew, had been holding that girl with trembling fingers.

At the hospital, my palm took eleven stitches, and I didn't make a single sound of pain. Even the doctor remarked, "You search and rescue people really are made of steel."

Once my wound was dressed, I slowly made my way to the room next door.

The girl was burrowed in Logan's arms, her whiny voice full of undisguised dependence.

"That was so scary! The knife was so close to me. If it had been just a little later, it would've cut my face. If it left a scar, I wouldn't be pretty anymore..."

Logan gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and coaxed her, "Don't be silly. You're beautiful no matter what. Besides, I promised you. Whatever happens, I'll never let anything happen to you."

The draft sweeping down the hallway cut straight through my thin clothes, and I shivered from head to toe.

I lowered my gaze to my right hand.

How could it not hurt?

It was just that no one cared about my pain, so I had no choice but to hide all of it.

A nurse's scolding voice came from behind me.

"Why did you run off? Your hand's stitched up, but the cut on your face hasn't even been disinfected yet! A gash that long will scar if you don't get it treated right away!"

I lifted a hand to my cheek, and my fingertips met something sticky. Only then did I realize my face had been cut too. It burned the instant I touched it.

I shook my head at the nurse, pushed open the door, and walked straight in.

The cozy atmosphere in the room froze at once.

At the sight of the two of them snuggled together, rage and humiliation shot straight to my head. I couldn't hold myself back anymore. I slapped Logan across the face.

The blow split his lip, but he didn't even bother to wipe away the blood. Instead, he instinctively pulled the girl behind him, as though terrified I would hurt her.

My breath caught. It felt like a dull knife was sawing through my heart.

"Aren't you going to explain?"

Before he could open his mouth, the girl cried out, "Why did you hit him? Honey, let me see..."

Logan froze. Guilty and mortified, he avoided my eyes. He carefully helped the girl lie back down, his gaze filled with a tenderness I couldn't put into words.

"Alison, don't get so worked up. Be careful, or you'll hurt the baby."

With that, he pulled me out of the room and wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Natalie, please, I'm begging you. Just go home first, okay?

"Alison's emotionally unstable. She can't handle any more stress. Once I've taken care of things here at the hospital, I'll come home and explain everything properly. I promise."

He called me a car and forced me to leave.

Back home, the more I thought about it, the more something felt wrong. I dug our marriage certificate out of the cabinet.

The day we got it, Logan had stood in front of the mirror before we left, solemnly fixing his hair for ages.

How could it possibly be fake?

I opened the state records website, gritted my teeth, and typed in the certificate number.

[No matching marriage record found.]

...It was fake.

The marriage was fake. The wedding was fake.

Every "I love you" he'd ever said to me might have been fake too.