Chapter 3

The dinner was at my favorite restaurant.

The moment I pushed open the private room door, Sarah rushed at me and threw her arms around me.

She laughed and cried against my shoulder.

"Chloe, you woke up. You really woke up. He didn't lie to me."

She pulled back and punched my arm hard.

"Chloe, how could you do this? Five years. How could you make me wait five years?"

The hit barely hurt.

My eyes burned anyway.

Then Sarah saw James behind me.

Her face changed.

A few minutes later, she wiped away her tears and looked at me.

"David is handling a case in Europe,"she said.

"He already knows. He'll deal with things there and fly back as soon as he can."

Her hand closed around mine and stayed there.

She held on so tightly that my fingers ached.

She acted as if I would vanish again if she let go.

My throat tightened.

This was what seeing someone again after five years should have felt like.

Someone crying because I was alive.

Someone angry because I had been gone.

The door opened again.

Emma stood there with a gift bag in both hands.

Her shoulders curled inward as she looked at me.

Sarah's face twisted.

"James, what the hell does this mean?"she snapped,"You brought her here? Who are you trying to disgust?"

James frowned.

"Emma wanted to apologize to Chloe in person.She made a mistake back then, and she's spent these years trying to make up for it."

Sarah gave a short, bitter laugh.

"Make up for it?"She stepped toward him.

"Chloe lay unconscious for five years because of her. If she wanted to make up for it, she should havespent every day on her knees beside Chloe's hospital bed."

Emma's eyes filled with tears.

Sarah kept going.

"Instead, she worked at The Shadow, stayed glued to your side every damn day, and played the part of a repentant little saint. All while serving as your assistant, waiting on you hand and foot like your own personal maid. Some punishment that was."

"Sarah,"James warned.

"Oh, shut up."Her voice rose.

"You always said you hated her. You said you would make her suffer. You said you would never let her live easily after what she did to Chloe."

She pointed at Emma.

"So how did you punish her, James? In your bed?"

Emma dropped the gift bag.

The sound hit the floor between us.

She covered her mouth, ran out of the room, and slammed the door behind her.

James stood frozen beside the table.

He did not go after her.

The dinner ended there.

Sarah kept sitting beside me, her hand still holding mine, but nobody touched the food.

James barely spoke.

I stared at the untouched plates until the restaurant staff came in to clear them away.

By the time we left, my favorite restaurant had become another place I did not want to return to.

James drove home with both hands on the wheel, though his mind was somewhere else.

The car drifted toward the vehicle ahead of us.

"James,"I said.

He jerked the steering wheel and swerved back into our lane.

His phone kept ringing.

He picked it up, stared at the screen, and put it down again.

A minute later, it rang once more.

He repeated the same thing until the phone lit up again in his palm.

This time, his thumb moved across the screen.

Emma's voice filled the car.

She was crying so hard that her words kept breaking apart.

"I know Chloe is back. I should leave. James, I only loved you. Why does it hurt this much?"

My fingers pressed into the seat.

Emma sobbed.

"If I had been the one hurt five years ago, would you remember me?"

James' jaw tightened.

"Maybe everything was a mistake,"Emma said.

"Maybe I should have died in that accident."

The brakes shrieked.

My body pitched forward against the seat belt as the tires scraped across the road.

James' face looked terrible.

For a few seconds, he said nothing.

His fingers stayed on the steering wheel while Emma's crying continued through the phone.

At last, he turned toward me.

"Sarah went too far,"he said.

"I'm worried Emma might do something stupid. She isn't as strong as you are."

The words settled in my chest.

She isn't as strong as you are.

He said it as if strength meant I could be abandoned.

He reached across me and unfastened my seat belt.

"You get out first,"he said.

"I'll make sure Emma is okay, and then I'll come home."

I looked at him.

Five years ago, he had promised that we would be each other's family forever.

Now he was leaving me beside the road to find another she-wolf.

"Fine,"I said.

I opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk.

James drove away before I had fully shut the door.

His taillights disappeared at the end of the street.

I stood there for a moment, breathing through the ache in my chest.

I had no desire to spend another minute in his car, anyway.

The scent of Emma's perfume still clung to the seats.

It made my stomach turn.

I raised my hand and stopped a taxi.

"The pack cemetery,"I told the driver.

My parents' photographs smiled at me from the headstone.

I stood in front of their graves until my legs gave out, then lowered myself onto the grass.

James and I had grown up together.

When James was six, a group of rogue wolves attacked him.

My parents found him first, but there were too many of them.

They died saving him.

James' mother had held me after that.

I still remembered her arms around me, her tears falling into my hair.

"Chloe,"she had whispered again and again,"from now on, we are each other's only family. We will never be apart."

After that, James treated me like the most precious thing in his life.

He used to follow me everywhere.

He used to put himself between me and every danger.

He used to say that he would protect me for the rest of his life.

Now, he had left his precious thing by the roadside and rushed to another woman.

I looked at my parents' faces.

"It's been a long time since I came to see you,"I said quietly.

"You aren't mad at me, are you?"

My lips shook.

"I didn't mean to stay away. Don't be so petty."

The night breeze stirred the trees in the cemetery.

Something cool slid down my cheek.

I lifted my hand and touched my face.

Tears covered it.

I had not even noticed when I started crying.

The wind carried my voice through the dark.

"What do I do, Mom? Dad?"

I pressed my palm against the cold stone.

"I think I don't have a home anymore."