LOGINChapter 52Riley stood in the middle of the quiet living room with her warm coffee cup held between both hands, and she just stared out at the clean lines of her new kitchen counters while the morning light poured through the big glass window. On the far wall, her eyes caught the bright crayon drawings that Iris had taped crookedly along the paint on their very first night because her daughter had insisted, with all the stubbornness in her little body, that a house could never be a real home until you stuck something personal to the walls.Even after a full week of living here, the apartment still did not feel completely real to her, and Riley half-expected her phone to ring at any moment with some landlord on the other end telling her there had been a huge mistake.Or that the rent she paid did not actually stand, and that she needed to pack up their bags and vacate the place by the end of the week.It had been three weeks since she first signed the papers, and yet no such phone ca
Chapter 51Julian found him exactly where the text said he'd be, hunched over an untouched whisky."You look terrible," Julian said, dropping onto the stool beside him without waiting for an invitation. He signalled the bartender, two fingers up, and didn't take his coat off. "Properly terrible. What happened, did somebody die?""Not yet," Ashton said. Julian studied him for a moment, the easy grin fading into something more careful. He'd known Ashton for years, and he knew the difference between Ashton annoyed and Ashton actually wrecked. This was the second one. "Talk." Ashton turned the glass slowly on the bar, watching the whisky catch the low light. "Hailey came to the hospital tonight." Julian went still. "Hailey Hailey? Your Hailey?""She's not my anything anymore.""That's not what I asked." Ashton didn't answer. The bartender set Julian's drink down and retreated to the far end of the counter, sensing that this particular corner needed to be left alone."She walked int
Chapter 50Her knees buckled.The pavement seemed to tilt beneath her heels, the streetlamp above blurring into a smear of sickly yellow light. She pressed a hand flat against her stomach, as though she could physically hold herself upright, keep her body from folding in on itself right there in the empty car park.The same day.He had left her standing at that altar and walked into a magistrate's office within hours, signing his name beside another woman's while she was still in her white lace, still trying to understand what had happened to her life. She hadn't even had parents there to catch her when it fell apart. Her mother and father had been gone not long ago, and she'd walked into that church already practised at holding herself together with nobody's arms but his own. There had been no mother smoothing her veil, no father waiting to walk her down anything. Just Aunt Josephine two glasses deep in champagne, and a bridesmaid named Nadia who kept checking her phone.So when t
Chapter 49The elevator kept sliding down, floor after floor, the number above the door counting away in a dull, mocking orange light.Riley didn’t answer him. She couldn’t. Her throat had constricted into a tight, aching knot, trapping every word she might have said. Instead, she stood with her shoulder blades pressed hard against the cold mirror, staring fixedly at the panel of buttons just to avoid the suffocating weight of his gaze. Her hands were shoved deep into her pockets, fists clenched so tightly her nails bit into her palms."Say something," Ashton said. The command was quiet, but it vibrated with a desperate, ragged edge he couldn’t quite hide."When did you divorce her?" She asked. Her voice didn't sound like her own... it was flat, hollowed out, stripped of everything. She finally forced her eyes to meet his.Ashton flinched slightly, as if expecting a different blow. He swallowed hard. "A month ago." The words made her blood run cold. She blinked, a sudden, bitter r
Chapter 48Ashton’s gray eyes went completely dark with anger as he stared at the woman standing in his doorway. He immediately stepped in front of Riley, using his tall frame to shield her completely from the woman's mean glare."What are you doing here, Hailey?" Ashton asked, his voice freezing cold.Hailey just smiled, a slow, nasty expression that did not reach her eyes at all. She walked further into the office, her high heels clicking loudly. She acted like she owned the place, casually looking around before fixing her eyes back on them."What sort of question is that, Ashton?" Hailey asked, her voice full of fake innocence. "Don't I have every right to be here? I'm your wife."Riley felt like she had been hit by a truck. Her mouth opened in absolute shock, and her chest felt completely hollow. She stood frozen to the spot, staring at the back of Ashton's head and then at the proud woman standing across from them.Wife.The word repeated in her head like a bad dream. A sudden,
Chapter 47He took them to a restaurant in the early evening, a warm, unhurried place with low lighting and wide windows overlooking the river.Iris sat between them in the booth and ordered pasta with the decisive confidence of someone who had been considering this option for some time.And then talked continuously for twenty minutes about Gerald, the drawings she was working on, and a detailed theory about which of the nurses on the ward had the best snacks hidden at their station.Ashton listened to all of it with his full attention, asking questions in exactly the right places, and Riley sat across from them and ate her food and felt something warm in her chest.After dinner he drove them to a small viewing point overlooking the lit city, where Iris pressed her nose to the car window and declared it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.And immediately began planning a drawing of it in her head, narrating the colour choices aloud. The three of them sat in the parked car wit
Chapter 5Riley didn't hesitate. The woman who had fiercely slapped him the night before disappeared under the crushing weight of a mother’s desperation. Slowly, agonizingly, she lowered her battered, aching body onto the gravel driveway, her knees digging into the sharp stones right beside his dr
Chapter 4The heavy smell of cheap disinfectant, sweat, and old plastic chairs filled the crowded emergency room waiting area. It was completely different from the freezing, rainy night Riley had just escaped.The nurses had rushed Iris through a set of double doors into a separate treatment room t
Chapter 3The moment they stepped out the front door, a sudden, loud crack of thunder shook the whole sky.The clouds burst, and a massive downpour slammed into the ground. The rain fell in heavy, blinding sheets, completely soaking the perfect, neat driveway.Iris gasped, shivering from the biting
Chapter 1“Mom, are you really sure he’s going to show up?” Iris’s voice had a hollow, heavy ache that no ten-year-old should ever have to carry. As Riley ran the brush through her daughter's dark curls, the strands slipped from her fingers. Today was Iris's golden birthday, a day that should ha







