Chapter 4

I shook my head.

Whatever she'd done, I'd decided to let it stay in the past. She wanted me to have forgotten, so I'd forget.

"She and I are just friends," I said, and my voice didn't move at all. "There's nothing for her to be lying about."

"And there was never any money to take." I gave him a tired smile. "I'm broke."

"If you think a crime's been committed, talk to the police. I can't help you."

He looked at me like I was beyond saving, then turned for the door, and on his way out he said one more thing.

"If I were you, I'd run while I still could."

My head came up so fast the room swam.

That cadence. That exact, unhurried delivery. I'd heard it once before, through a phone, from behind a black mask.

Cold went straight down my spine and my hands started shaking.

It couldn't be a coincidence.

I got myself out of bed and followed him down the corridor with one hand on the wall, and he turned twice and stopped in the stairwell. I stayed around the corner and held my breath while he took out his phone.

"I tested him. He really doesn't remember. He thinks the two of you were only ever friends."

"You're cold, you know that? The man half killed himself for you for five years and you dropped him the second a rich boy showed up."

"And now you want to hand him over for money, just so you can buy a new watch. Unbelievable."

"Relax. As long as the money's right, this goes in the ground with me."

I don't remember getting back to the bed.

Something in my chest was being pulled apart an inch at a time, and I couldn't get air past it.

There it was, all of it, raw and bleeding in the open.

That video call had never been real. It was a breakup, staged, produced, and performed, because she couldn't be bothered to end it like a person.

She could have simply left me. She didn't, and I couldn't decide whether that was because she wanted a grieving man waiting at home in case things went badly.

And now she was going to sell me.

The cold went all the way through.

The next day Blake and Chloe came to the hospital together.

I watched her hang off him, and the last thread of anything I felt for her went out.

Blake looked down at me with the corner of his mouth turned up.

"Shame I didn't finish the job. Not like a man in your position has much to live for."

I came off that bed like something let out of a cage. I got two fists in his hair and put his head into the wall, and then I did it again, and I was laughing while I did it.

You want Blake West, Chloe? Then you'll have him with this between you forever. Every time he reaches for you, he'll think about this.

You earned it.

"I'm in love with Chloe," I shouted while I hit him. "She came after me. She's the one who took my hand."

"I'll kill you, Blake, and I'll have her."

"She wants your money. She has never wanted you."

By the time the police pulled me off him, Blake was on the floor barely moving, and he was staring at Chloe like he wanted to take her apart.

I'd done it. I'd put a crack between them that would never close.

"Blake, no, it isn't true. Let me explain, there was never anything between us! I've never loved anybody but you!"

I was deported.

Somewhere over the ocean, a clear woman's voice spoke up inside my head.

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