Chapter 2

My phone rang. Mia Blake.

"Rena, did my brother piss you off again? He's such an idiot — don't let him get to you."

Mia's voice was as bright as ever.

She was the only person in this entire relationship who had ever been on my side.

"It's nothing," I said.

"Nothing? He literally just called me and told me to talk some sense into you. He said that Stella's wrist was peeling from the burn. He said you went too far."

My stomach dropped.

Peeling?

I looked down at the blisters rising on my own hand and almost laughed.

"Rena, who even is this Stella? My brother keeps bringing her up."

"An intern he hired."

"Just an intern? I don't buy it. You know how my brother is — when has he ever paid that much attention to any woman who wasn't you?"

I knew. Of course I knew.

Ethan had always been guarded around people, especially women.

Back in high school, he was the brooding overachiever the whole class had shut out. I was the only one who got close.

I pulled him out of that darkness. I walked through the worst of it beside him.

For a long time, his need for me had bordered on obsession.

When had things started to change?

Probably around the time he made something of himself. While I stayed exactly where I was — the woman behind the counter of a failing flower shop, with a useless hand.

"Mia," I said. "Ethan and I broke up."

Silence on the other end.

A long moment passed before Mia's voice came back, thick with tears. "Don't scare me, Rena. Eight years. You can't just — how can you call it over just like that?"

"He ended it."

"That's impossible. My brother loves you. He would never—" Her voice broke.

I didn't have the energy to explain. "I'm tired. I'll talk to you later."

I hung up and sat in the corner of the shop without moving.

Outside the glass, traffic moved and swirled.

Boston was a big city. There was no place in it that felt like mine.

Years ago, I'd turned down a full scholarship to RISD to stay in this city I hadn't grown up in — because Ethan had gotten into Harvard pre-med and said he would give me a future.

My professor had been heartbroken. She told me I was throwing away my talent for a man.

I didn't regret it.

I believed him.

So I learned to tend flowers instead of canvases.

I opened a small shop with the hand that couldn't paint anymore.

I told myself we would grow old like this — quietly, steadily, together.

I was the only one who ever believed that.

---

Evening came. The door of the flower shop swung open and the wind chime rang.

I assumed it was a customer. I didn't look up.

"Rena."

Ethan's voice.

My body went rigid. I still didn't move.

He walked over and crouched in front of me, looking at my face.

"Is your hand still hurting?" he asked. He sounded tired.

I said nothing.

He reached for my right hand. I pulled it back sharply.

His hand stopped mid-air, caught off guard.

"I checked the security footage this afternoon," he said quietly. "I was wrong to blame you. Stella tripped on her own."

"The cameras in your office have been broken for two years," I said flatly.

Ethan went still.

The cameras outside his office had been decorative for years — disabled to protect his privacy. He hadn't checked any footage. He was testing me.

If I'd followed his lead — admitted I was hurt, given him the opening to feel sorry — he would have offered a token apology.

And then, like every other argument we'd ever had, it would have dissolved into nothing.

But this time, I didn't give him that.

Ethan's expression hardened. "Do you have to be like this, Rena?"

"Like what?"

"Picking a fight. Needing to be right."

I pulled the corners of my mouth into something that wasn't a smile.

Two tears slid down my face without my permission.

"Who's picking a fight?" I looked at him. "Eight years, Ethan. Is that really all I am to you?"

He said nothing.

That silence was worse than anything he could have said.

He stood, reached into his pocket, and placed a small tube of ointment on the table beside me.

"It's imported. For burns. Use it regularly."

He was back to that version of himself — composed, elevated, dispensing care like charity.

Like he was the one doing me a favor. Like I should be grateful.

"And—" he paused, "—that money is yours. You earned it. Go live well."

He turned and walked out.

No hesitation. No looking back.

I watched his back — the one I had once thought was my steadiest place in the world.

Now it felt like a knife.

I grabbed the tube of ointment off the table and threw it at him with everything I had.

It hit him between the shoulder blades and dropped to the floor with a hollow thud.

His footsteps slowed. He didn't turn around.

The door opened. The door closed.

The flower shop left me alone with the wreckage.