Chapter 2 The Photo

Mia's POV

Taylor had posted again.

I knew better than to look. I looked anyway. Three posts since morning. The first: Kyle at the airport, taking her luggage, his head bent toward her in the rain. He was holding the umbrella entirely over her. His shoulder was dark with water. In ten years, I had never once seen him get wet for anyone.

Then the two of them at Lumière, golden light, her hand resting on the tablecloth an inch from his. A velvet box. An emerald bracelet, glowing against the dark like something alive. He always knows what I love, the caption read.

He didn't. I knew, because I was the one who had chosen it.

Last week he'd dropped a catalogue on my desk without slowing his stride — pick something a woman would like — and I, fool that I was, had lingered over the pages. I chose the emeralds because they matched my mother's eyes. Because some starved little corner of me thought, maybe it's for me.

I put the phone face-down on the vanity and looked at myself in the steam-blurred mirror. Of course it was Taylor. It had always been Taylor. Everyone who worked at K.T. Enterprises knew the legend — how Kyle Branson had built the most powerful company in the city in ten years and named it for himself and the woman he loved. Their initials, entwined. K.T.

A monument, emblazoned across every building, every document, every paycheck I had ever earned. I had signed my name beneath their initials a thousand times.

And I knew Taylor better than anyone. She was my stepsister.

I was fifteen when my mother died. One week — one week — and my father brought home his new wife, and her daughter. That's when I learned the ugly truth: he'd been seeing them for years. He'd married my mother for her money. Within days, Mom's things were in the attic. Within weeks, the house wore another woman's taste.

Everything you have will be mine, Taylor told me that time, thirteen years old and certain as a prophecy.

My father. My home.

And then, because fate has a sense of humor, the only man I ever loved.

I heard the front door. My hands stilled on the towel.

Kyle came into the bedroom loosening his tie, and his eyes found me — damp hair, bare shoulders, wrapped in silk — and darkened in that particular way I knew.  He crossed the room without a word and kissed me, his hands sliding to my waist, and he smelled of rain and cologne and her, I was certain he smelled of her, and my mind, traitorous and vivid, showed me everything. The umbrella. The tablecloth. The emeralds against her wrist. Him, bent over her the way he was bending over me now, this exact mouth, these exact hands—

My stomach heaved.

I twisted away and gagged, one hand braced on the vanity, the room tilting.

"What's wrong with you?" Kyle's voice behind me.

"Something I ate," I whispered.

A pause. Then, cooler: "You're still taking the pills?"

The pills. Always the pills. No pregnancies permitted.

"Every day," I lied, and was surprised how easily it came.

He reached for me again — and stopped. His thumb had found the inside of my thigh, the bruise from the parking garage, ugly and yellow-edged. He went very still.

"How did you get this?"

"I fell."

"You fell." His eyes came up to mine, narrowed. "Where? When? "

"It's nothing," I said.

What good was rain after the harvest had rotted in the field?

He opened his mouth to press — and his phone rang.

"Hey," he said, and his voice, gentle and warm. He walked out into the hallway with it.

"...Thursday works..."

When he came back, he was already reaching for his coat. His sleeve caught my handbag on the chair; it tipped, spilled — lipstick, keys, and a crisp white card that slid across the floor and came to rest, face-up, at his feet.

Harrison & Lowe. Specializing in Divorce Cases.

Time stopped. He bent. Picked it up. Turned it over once in his fingers, and my heart slammed so hard I thought he must hear it.

"Someone was handing out flyers by the office," I heard myself say. "I forgot to throw it away."

Kyle looked at the card. Looked at me. Then he set it on the dresser and shrugged into his coat, and the something was gone.

"Don't wait up," he said.

The door closed. I let out the breath I was holding, and it broke apart on the way out, half laugh, half sob.

I was still standing there when my phone buzzed. A message. Taylor.

No words. Just a photo — a hotel suite in low amber light, sheets in ruins, her bare shoulder pressed to a man.

I sat down slowly on the edge of the bed and looked at it.

Don't cry. Don't cry anymore. I said to myself.