Chapter 1: The Anniversary That Destroyed Everything

Aurora’s POV

The gift box was so small it disappeared inside my fist, and I kept squeezing it like it might vanish if I let go.

Three nights. I'd stayed up three nights finishing it, my fingers raw from the thread, and now the ribbon was already going soft from my sweat.

"Ma'am, are you on the list?"

The girl at the door had a tablet and a smile that didn't reach anything.

"Aurora Blackwood," I said. "It's my husband's event."

She scrolled. Her thumb went up, then down, then up again.

"I'm sorry, I don't see Blackwood."

"Try Bennett." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Aurora Bennett."

Her thumb stopped. "Oh. Here you are." She stepped aside like she was doing me a favor. "Enjoy the evening."

Bennett. Not Blackwood. On the guest list for my own anniversary.

I told myself it was a mistake, an assistant rushing through names, nothing.

I've told myself a lot of things this year.

Inside, the ballroom glittered so hard it hurt. Champagne towers, white orchids, a string quartet sawing away in the corner while people I half recognized laughed too loud at jokes I couldn't hear.

I looked for him. I always look for him first.

"Aurora?" A woman in emerald silk touched my arm, then pulled back like she'd touched something warm and wrong. "Oh. I didn't think you'd, um. I didn't expect to see you."

"Why wouldn't I be here, Diane?"

"No reason." She was already looking past me. "You look, ah. You look well."

She said it the way you tell a sick person they have color in their cheeks.

"Have you seen Damien?"

"He's around somewhere." Her eyes flicked toward the far end of the room, then snapped back to me, guilty. "You should get a drink."

"Diane. What is it. You've got that face."

"What face?"

"The one where you're about to lie to me."

She swallowed. "I really do have to find my husband."

"Diane."

"It's nothing, Aurora, I swear." She squeezed my wrist, and there was pity in it, actual pity, and that scared me more than anything Margaret could say. "Just, whatever happens tonight, you didn't deserve it. Alright? You never did."

"Whatever happens?"

But she was gone before I could answer, threading into the crowd like water closing over a dropped stone.

I followed where her eyes had gone.

Damien stood near the stage in a black suit I hadn't picked out, laughing at something, one hand loose in his pocket. My chest did the stupid thing it always does. Seven years and it still does that.

Then I saw who stood beside him.

Vanessa. His secretary. Red dress, red lips, a little girl balanced on her hip in a dress that probably cost more than my car.

His hand wasn't in his pocket anymore. It was resting on the small of Vanessa's back, easy, like it had been there a hundred times.

Something cold slid down my spine.

"He's been ignoring my calls all week," I said out loud, to no one, just to hear it be smaller than it felt.

I started toward him. Weaving between shoulders, murmuring sorry, sorry, the gift box still crushed in my hand.

"...poor thing still doesn't know," someone whispered, close, wine on their breath.

"Shh, she's right there."

I stopped. Turned. Two women, one behind a fan of her fingers, both suddenly fascinated by the ceiling.

"Know what?" I asked.

"Lovely party, isn't it," the fan-lady said.

I kept walking. My heels were too loud on the marble. Everyone's eyes felt like fingers on the back of my neck.

"Aurora."

Margaret. My mother-in-law, silver-haired and straight-backed, materializing in my path like she'd been waiting behind a pillar for exactly this.

"Margaret." I made myself smile. "It's a beautiful event. I wanted to help plan it, but Damien said..."

"You're here." She looked at me the way you look at a stain. "I did wonder if you'd have the sense not to come."

"It's our anniversary."

"Is it." She adjusted a bracelet. Behind her, Richard stood carved out of ice, his eyes passing over me like I was a waiter he hadn't summoned. He didn't nod. He didn't blink. He looked through me to the wall.

"Richard," I said.

Nothing.

"He's busy," Margaret said. "As are we all. You should find a seat at the back."

"I'll stand with my husband."

Her mouth curved, thin and slow. "We'll see."

She swept off. Richard drifted after her without ever once landing his gaze on my face.

My hands were shaking now. I pressed the gift box against my stomach to still them.

I got to within ten feet of him before he noticed me.

"Damien."

He turned. For one second, half a second, his face did something. Flinched, maybe. Then it smoothed.

"Aurora." He said my name like a closed door. "You came."

"Of course I came." I laughed, and it sounded wrong. "I've been calling you. All week. Did you not get my..."

"It's not a good time."

"It's our anniversary."

Vanessa shifted the little girl higher on her hip and didn't move away from him. Didn't even pretend to.

"Aurora, right?" she said, warm as poison. "I've heard so much."

"I don't think we've properly met."

"No," she agreed. "I don't think we have."

"Funny. You work for my husband. You'd think we would have."

"I work closely with him." She let the word sit there, closely, and tilted her head. "He needs a lot of support. Late nights. Weekends. You know how he is."

"I know exactly how he is."

"Do you." She smiled down at the little girl and smoothed her hair. "I sometimes wonder."

I looked at Damien. "Can we talk? Just, five minutes. Outside, or somewhere that isn't..."

"Later."

"You always say later."

"Aurora." Low. A warning. His jaw ticked, that little muscle I used to kiss. "Not here. Not now."

The girl on Vanessa's hip reached out and grabbed a fistful of his sleeve, and he let her. He looked down at her and something in his face went soft, and I have never in seven years seen him look at me like that.

"Who is she?" I asked.

Vanessa smiled.

"Damien," I said again, and I hated the crack in it. "Who is the child?"

"Ladies and gentlemen." A man at the podium tapped the microphone, and the whole room turned. "Please, if you'd take your seats. Mr. Blackwood would like to say a few words."

"We'll talk after," Damien said, and stepped away from me toward the stage, toward the lights, and Vanessa went with him, and no one told her not to.

I stood there in the middle of the floor with a handmade gift going warm and damp in my fist, and nobody offered me a chair.

I found a spot against the wall. My legs didn't feel like mine.

Damien took the stage. The applause was thunderous. He soaked it up the way he soaks up everything, chin lifted, that easy half smile, and for a second I let myself remember the man who used to eat instant noodles at my kitchen table and swear that one day he'd fill a room like this.

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you all for coming."

I clutched the box.

"Seven years ago," he said, and my heart leapt, actually leapt, because he was going to say it, he remembered, "seven years ago, I was nothing. A man with a bad suit and a worse bank account and one very foolish dream."

Laughter. Warm laughter. I laughed too, wet and hopeful.

"And tonight," he went on, "standing here, in front of all of you, I realize something. Today isn't just an anniversary."

Say my name. Look at me. I'm right here.

"Today is the beginning of my new future."

The room went quiet in a way that made my skin prickle.

"New future?" I whispered.

He wasn't looking at me. He was looking down, off to the side of the stage, into the wings where a red dress waited in the shadows with a child on her hip.

"Some of you already know this remarkable woman," Damien said. "The truth is, I don't know where I'd be without her."

No.

The box slipped in my sweating hand.

"Damien," I said, too quiet for anyone to hear, "what are you doing."

He smiled at the crowd. He smiled at everyone but me.

And then he reached out his hand toward the wings, toward Vanessa, his fingers open and waiting, and the whole room turned to follow it.