CHAPTER 2: THE HUSBAND WHO CAME BACK

Nicholas stepped into the apartment with his gaze fixed on the bedroom doorway, as though he expected to find his wife exactly where he had left her, and he only noticed the brass lamp when it swung into the edge of his vision.

"What on earth are you holding that for?" Nicholas demanded, pushing the door shut behind him without looking at the lock.

Aria kept the lamp raised and let her eyes travel over him slowly, taking in the dark jacket, the sturdy boots and the clean hands of a man who had not been sleeping in stairwells. "I was about to ask you the same thing," she said, her voice steadier than her knees. "About why you're letting yourself into my flat like you pay the bills."

"Your flat?" He let out a short, impatient breath and rubbed his forehead with two fingers. "Have you lost your mind, Isabella? I've been gone a few hours, and you're acting like I'm a, like I'm some sort of stranger."

"Maybe you are."

The frown that creased his forehead was more irritation than concern, and he did not so much as glance at the bandage wound around her head. Instead his attention slid past her, toward the kitchen. "Put that thing down before you hurt yourself," he said, waving a hand at the lamp. "Have you at least packed the rest of the food? We haven't got long."

Aria did not answer right away, because she wanted to hear exactly what he had come back for, and she watched his shoes cross the rug in a straight line toward the cupboards. He stepped over the dried smear near the door without breaking stride, and she noticed that too.

"Where's the water?" Nicholas asked, wrenching open a cupboard and staring at the bare shelves.

"You took it," Aria said from the doorway, one shoulder pressed against the frame to hold herself upright.

"I took what we needed to survive." He turned, scowling, as though she had accused him of something unreasonable. "There's a difference."

"You took the food, the water and the emergency bag, so what exactly did you leave for the woman bleeding on the floor?" she asked, and her grip tightened until the brass bit into her palms.

His jaw shifted. "I told you, there wasn't time to argue, the building was, it was getting dangerous, and I had people depending on me."

"Funny," Aria said quietly, and the lamp dipped a fraction before she brought it back up. "I remember someone depending on you as well."

A muscle flicked beneath his eye, and for a moment she thought he might say something honest, but he only snatched a canvas bag from a hook beside the fridge and began to stuff it with the crackers, the peaches and the water bottles, one hard shove after another. "You always do this," he muttered, not looking at her. "Everything's a drama with you, everything's about how I've wronged you."

Please, Nick, I can't stand up. The memory rose again, so vivid that Aria's fingertips went cold against the metal.

"Nicholas?" a woman's voice called from the corridor, bright and faintly bored. "Are you coming? We haven't got all day."

He turned toward the door at once, and something in his shoulders loosened that had never loosened for Isabella. "Give me a minute, Vanessa," he called back. "I'm just collecting what we need."

The woman who appeared in the doorway wore a cream coat that did not have a single mark on it, and she carried a rucksack over one shoulder with the easy balance of someone who had never had to run. Her hair was smooth, her lipstick was fresh, and when her eyes landed on Aria they travelled slowly from the bandage to the bare feet and back again.

"Oh," Vanessa said, tilting her head. "She's still here?"

The name arrived with a flash from Isabella's memory, a hotel lobby and a laugh across a restaurant and a phone face-down on a dinner table, and Aria felt her stomach turn over. "How considerate of you, Nicholas," she said, her gaze never leaving the woman's face. "You've brought the replacement along."

"Excuse me?" Vanessa's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline.

Nicholas stepped between them with his palm raised. "Don't start this nonsense, Isabella. Vanessa has nothing to do with anything."

"Then why does she look so comfortable standing in my house?" Aria asked, and she did not blink.

Vanessa let out a small laugh and shifted the rucksack higher. "I'm only here to help him, darling, someone has to," she said.

"You're still my wife, Isabella, and I'd like you to remember that," Nicholas said, lowering his voice the way he might to a child who had embarrassed him in public.

Aria's eyes drifted past his shoulder to the bedroom doorway, where the edge of the silver frame caught the light from the window. "Is that what you remembered when you walked out and left me on the floor?" she asked.

"I did what I had to do." He dragged a hand through his hair and glared at her. "You were hurt, the building was a, it was swarming, and I couldn't risk staying there with you screaming."

"Yet you found time to pack your bags."

"Honestly, Isabella," Vanessa cut in, folding her arms across the clean cream coat, "you ought to be grateful he came back for you at all."

Aria turned her head slowly and looked at her. "If he'd left you on a floor with a broken head, would you still be standing in his doorway defending him?" she asked.

Vanessa's lips parted, and for a second nothing came out of them. She looked at Nicholas, and then at the carpet, and then at the rucksack strap in her hand.

"That's enough," Nicholas snapped, slapping the counter with his open palm. "I didn't come here to listen to your accusations."

"We need the rest of the supplies before we leave, so pack whatever's useful," Nicholas said, swinging the canvas bag onto the counter. "Food, water, any medical things you've got, all of it."

"No," Aria said.

He stared at her as though he had misheard. "What did you say?"

"I said no." She moved in front of the cupboard, though the room tilted when she did, and she planted her bare feet harder against the floorboards. "You can't take all of it, because I need it too."

"You can barely stand, Isabella." He gave a short, humourless laugh. "What exactly do you think you're going to do out there?"

"Whatever I have to do," Aria said, adjusting her stance and ignoring the throb behind her eyes, "it won't involve begging you to keep me alive."

"You've become very brave all of a sudden, haven't you?" He glanced at Vanessa, then back at her, and she watched him decide that she was bluffing. "The flat's half mine anyway, so everything in it is half mine, and I'm not arguing about this."

"Owning half a cupboard doesn't give you the right to take the food and leave me to die," Aria said.

A crash shuddered through the building from somewhere below them, followed by a long, wavering scream that cut off in the middle.

Vanessa flinched so hard that the rucksack slid off her shoulder. "Nick," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, "did you hear that? We need to go."

"Stay out of this, Vanessa," Nicholas said without looking round, and he reached past Aria for the bag.

"Don't touch it," Aria said, shifting the lamp into a firmer grip, though her arms had begun to shake from the effort of holding it.

"Move, Isabella." His voice had gone flat and quiet, the way it had in the restaurant, the way it did before a hand closed round an upper arm. "I won't ask again."

"Then don't ask again, because my answer isn't going to change." She drew a breath that rattled in her chest. "You walked away when I needed you, and now you're back to take the little I've got left, so what makes you think I'll just let you?"

"Because you've got nowhere else to go," Nicholas said, stepping closer until she could smell expensive cologne over the smoke on his jacket. "Whether you like it or not, you still need me."

Aria lifted her chin and looked straight at him. "Then you haven't understood anything," she said.

His face hardened, and he dropped the bag onto the counter and reached for her wrist. "Give me the lamp and stop making this so difficult."

She jerked her arm back, but the sudden movement sent a white-hot wave through her skull, and her free hand shot out to catch the edge of the counter while the kitchen swam. Nicholas saw it, and his fingers clamped around the lamp's neck before she could recover.

"Have you forgotten who you're dealing with?" he asked, and he pulled, and the brass slid in her sweating palms.

Aria stared at his hand, at the signet ring and the neat clean knuckles, and then she raised her eyes slowly to his face.

"No," she said, hoarse and low. "I'm beginning to remember exactly who you are."