Chapter 3

The next morning, Zayne showed up with breakfast.

I was taking the pictures off my bedroom wall. He leaned against the doorway and watched me for a while.

"Still mad? Come on, let it go already. Raina told me she was so scared last night she couldn't sleep."

My hands stopped moving. "Why was she scared?"

"She thought you might actually fall out with her." He said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "She's got a big mouth, but she's not a bad person. You're her older sister. You can't hold every little thing against her forever."

I put the last picture into my suitcase. It was one of Zayne and me from our first year together.

He suddenly noticed my hair. "You cut it that short?"

"Yeah."

He stared at it for two seconds. Then, to my surprise, he laughed. "Actually, it looks pretty good. My mom's been saying for ages that your old hair was too long and made you look unkempt."

I looked up at him. "Your mom?"

"Yeah." Zayne stuck a straw into the soy milk and held it out to me. "She told me last time that after we got married, you should really cut it short. I never had the nerve to bring it up myself. Raina accidentally did me a favor this time."

I didn't take the soy milk. "So you're the one who made her cut my hair?"

His expression faltered for a moment. Then he smiled again. "A few days ago, she asked me what she could do to get the biggest reaction out of you."

My fingers slowly curled into fists, but Zayne still hadn't noticed.

"I just casually mentioned your hair. How was I supposed to know she'd actually cut it?"

I stared at him. "You knew I'd spent seven years growing it."

"Of course I knew." He looked at me as though I were the one being unreasonable. "That's what made it funny. If she'd messed with anything else, you wouldn't have cared. What would be the point?"

For a moment, the room fell completely silent.

After saying that, Zayne even laughed to himself. "Don't look at me like that. I just like seeing you get worked up. You keep everything bottled up all the time. Raina's the only one who can get you to act like a real person."

Like a real person.

So all those times I'd been so angry I cried, so frightened I trembled, so humiliated I stood there while everyone laughed at me...

To him, that was me finally showing some life.

Raina came back in from outside just in time to hear his last sentence. She immediately rushed over with a grin. "See? I told you! Zayne knows exactly which buttons to push."

She counted off her little triumphs on her fingers. "Remember that white dress I wore when I met your parents last year? Zayne was the one who reminded me about the lipstick, too."

My breath caught.

Zayne's expression finally changed. "Why are you bringing that up?"

Raina still hadn't realized anything was wrong. "Didn't you tell me that white dress was the thing Blakely treasured most, and that I shouldn't mess with anything else?

"And the year before that..."

"Enough." Zayne cut her off sharply.

The room went quiet. I looked at him.

The first time I'd met his parents the previous year, Raina had smeared lipstick across the back of my white dress. Throughout the entire dinner, Zayne's mother had kept looking as though she wanted to say something but couldn't bring herself to.

I didn't discover why until I got home. Someone had drawn an enormous red heart across the back of my dress, right over my butt.

I'd cried all night.

Zayne had held me and comforted me for a long time. He had said, "Raina was completely out of line. Next time, I'll give her a piece of my mind for you."

So all along, he'd been the one handing her the knife.

Zayne seemed to remember that night, too. He looked guilty for a moment, then his tone grew even harsher. "How long ago was that? You're not seriously going to dredge up the past over something like that, are you?"

Raina stood beside him and muttered under her breath, "Exactly. You're way too petty, Blakely."

I suddenly let out a laugh. They both stared at me.

I nodded. "Yeah. I'm not going to bring it up again."

Zayne visibly relaxed. He reached out to hug me. "That's more like it. Once you've cooled off in a couple of days, we'll go get our engagement photos taken again."

I didn't pull away. I just looked at the large, pale rectangle left on the wall where the picture had been. "Okay."

That afternoon, I called the event company and canceled our engagement party, which had been scheduled for the end of the year.

I'd paid the deposit myself. They deducted part of it as a cancellation fee and refunded the rest to my account.

Then I put Zayne's spare house key, the bank card he'd given me, and the engagement ring he'd bought with me earlier that year into a paper bag.

Raina poked her head into my room from the living room. "We’re having fondue tonight. Mom picked up your favorite shrimp dip."

I zipped up my suitcase. "Okay."

She didn't notice that half the closet was already empty.