Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 11 - Chapitre 20

I always thought he'd decorated this house for me. It's the kind of thought I never questioned until tonight.The arched doorways. The warm wood tones. The crown molding traced with delicate carvings that I used to run my fingers over, just to feel the craftsmanship under my palm. Every room leaning soft instead of the sharp modern lines he used to favor. I thought it was because he knew I loved musical theater, all that old European grandeur, velvet curtains and gilded frames, the kind of set design that used to make my chest ache with longing when I was still performing. I thought, foolishly, achingly, that he'd built this house around who I was.Watching him now, his shoulders loosening, his voice dropping warm the second Elizabeth steps into the hall, I understand it was never about me at all. It never was.Elizabeth drifts in on Soren's arm and stops in front of the flower arrangement at the center, an explosion of white peonies, too perfect for the season, petals still dewy like

I wake up on the dining room floor with a stiff neck and a dead-cold cheek pressed against the wood.Pale light creeps through the windows. The table is still set for ten. The chandelier hangs crooked above it, half its crystals gone. Dried blood has glued my dress to my leg, and when I sit up, the cut pulls open and stings.I stare at the wreck for a long time. Glass everywhere. Petals browning on the marble in the hall.Then I breathe in. Out. The rage is gone. What's left feels like a house after a storm, empty, wet, and very quiet.I limp upstairs and clean the cut in the bathroom sink. Cold water. Soap. A strip of white gauze, wrapped twice around my calf, taped down with shaking fingers. In the mirror, my eyes are puffy and red, my scar is bright pink from all the crying, and my hair is stuck to my face."Okay," I tell the girl in the glass. My voice cracks. "Okay. That's enough."My phone buzzes on the counter. *Professor Hale.*"Venice, darling." Her voice is warm and brisk. "

"I'm sorry to call so late." Elizabeth sniffles. On the small screen, she dabs the corner of her eye with a tissue, and her lip trembles. "I couldn't sleep. I just needed to know you got home safe."Soren pushes himself up from the bed and picks the phone off the pillow. His thumb smears across the glass. "Liz. Don't cry.""I'm not crying." She laughs, weak and wet. "Okay, I'm crying a little. I feel so awful about tonight, Soren. Your wife must hate me so much."Her eyes flick past his shoulder. Just for a second. They land on me, curled against the headboard with my knees tucked to my chest, and they glint.Then they drop back to Soren, soft and sad."It's okay." Her voice wobbles on the last word. "Really. I don't need a title. I don't need to be anyone's wife, or have a ring, or my name beside yours. I know I have no official place in your life now." She presses her fingers to her mouth, and her shoulders tremble. "As long as you stay by my side, that's enough for me. I'll take wh

SOREN The first thing I notice is her hair.It's tucked behind her left ear. For six years, I've watched Venice comb it down across her cheek every morning in the bathroom mirror, slowly and carefully, as if she were drawing a curtain closed. She thinks I never saw her do it. I always saw. I just never knew what to say, so I said nothing at all.Tonight, the curtain is open. The scar runs from her cheekbone down to her jaw, pink and glossy under the golden lamps, and she walks into a room full of strangers with her chin held high and her fingers wound so tightly around her purse that her knuckles have gone white.I should look away. Instead, I stare, and my chest squeezes so hard that I have to remind myself to breathe.Liz shifts against my arm, and without meaning to, I glance from one woman to the other. Liz, with her smooth, flawless skin and her soft pink dress. Venice, with the ruined cheek and the green silk. The comparison drops into my mind like a stone into a well, and the

The front doors swing shut behind them with a heavy, final thud, and for a few seconds, nobody in the banquet hall seems to remember how to breathe.Then Professor Hale crosses the floor in four fast steps and pulls me into her arms. She smells like floral perfume and warm wool, exactly like the rehearsal room ten years ago, and she holds me so tightly that my ribs creak."Oh, my girl," she says into my hair. Her voice is shaking. "Oh, my poor girl. I'm so sorry.""Professor, it's not your fault.""Of course it's my fault! I sat across from that man at the restaurant and smiled at him like he was a prince." She pulls back to look at me, and her eyes are wet and furious. "You told me he was your husband, and I thought you were teasing me. I laughed! God forgive me, I actually laughed.""You couldn't have known.""I should have known. I've been looking at that boy's face for years, and I never saw." She cups my cheeks, the right one and the left, scar and all, and her thumbs are warm an