Chapter 2

They were pressed together like they'd been that way for years.

My chest went tight, and the hand holding the phone dropped to my side.

In ten weddings, Olivia had never once taken a picture like that with me.

"I'll go," I said.

Nathan nodded.

"All right, Mr. Reed. I'll set it up.

"Someone will come for you in three days. Use them to say your goodbyes."

The only family I had left in the world was my mother.

I took her out to dinner and told her I was leaving.

She cried.

Not because she wanted to stop me. Because she knew exactly what Olivia had taken.

"You knelt on a hotel floor in front of one of her investors so he wouldn't pull out on her."

She said it like an accusation, though it wasn't aimed at me.

"Remember that?"

I did.

"And when those people came after her, you went to them alone. By yourself, Ethan."

Her eyes moved to my right hand.

"That's why you can't close that hand right anymore. That's why you gave up the piano."

My throat tightened.

Before Olivia, I'd been a concert pianist. The stage was the one place in my life where everything made sense.

Then the hand was ruined keeping her safe.

She never knew any of it.

"She should know," Mom said. "If she knew what you gave up for her, she'd never forgive herself."

"She doesn't need to know."

I looked down at my hand.

"Those were my choices. I made them because I loved her.

"I just don't want to love her anymore."

Noise broke out near the entrance.

I looked over.

Olivia had come in wearing a formal dress with an armful of roses, and she was looking at Julian with a tenderness I'd spent eight years waiting for.

"Julian. Loving you is the one thing in my life I've never regretted."

I went still. The pain in my chest arrived a second later, all at once.

Eight years, and we'd never celebrated a single anniversary.

"I love you, Julian."

Then she kissed him.

Mom was out of her chair before I could stop her.

"Olivia!"

She crossed the room.

"How can you do this to my son?"

Olivia's face changed the second she spotted me. The warmth drained straight out of it.

"Ethan. What is this?

"You brought your mother down here to wreck my night?"

She was on me in three steps, fisting my shirt, teeth clenched.

"I'm telling you right now. Take her and get out. Or I swear I will never remarry you."

Then she shoved me.

My hip caught the table. I threw out a hand to catch myself and came down on a cast-iron skillet still hot from the kitchen.

The sound I made wasn't a word.

Mom got to me first. When she saw the burn, whatever was left of her patience went with it.

"Olivia! My son gave up everything he had for you, and this is what he gets?

"Do you even hear yourself?"

"Shut your mouth.

"What's between me and Ethan has nothing to do with you.

"And we've already worked it out. We're remarrying in a few days."

Then she shoved my mother too.

Mom's head hit the wall. She went down and didn't get up.

Something in me came apart.

"Olivia! You put your hands on my mother!"

My mother had loved her once. When Olivia was sick that winter, Mom sat up with her two nights running and drove ninety miles at dawn to get the prescription filled.

And this was where it had landed us.

Julian hurried over and pulled Olivia back, arranging his face into something wounded.

"Olivia, this is on me. We shouldn't have gone down to the city hall today. Of course he's angry."

Olivia's eyes went soft.

"Julian, none of this is your fault. He's the problem. He's selfish.

"I explained it to him. All of it. And he still dragged his mother here to make a scene."

I wasn't listening anymore. I was trying to get Mom up off the floor.

Then Olivia picked up a glass of wine and threw it in my face.

My skin lit up.

I'm severely allergic to alcohol. A splash on bare skin is enough to swell it shut.