Chapter 3

"I'm fine. Just morning sickness."

Kane pulls me in tighter. Worried. Sweet.

"Baby. You've been through hell. We rushed the wedding. Never even got the pictures done. I already ordered you the dress. The one you kept staring at. Let's shoot tomorrow. Before the bump shows. Yeah?"

I look up at him. And I almost want to laugh in his face.

Those soft, loving eyes. That worried little frown. He's made a fool of me over and over. And I fell for it every single time.

If he knew I wasn't ever going to push out this bastard baby, I'd end up right next to that maid on the floor.

"I'm going up to lie down. You guys keep talking."

I make it to the bedroom. I make it to the bathroom. I throw up until there's nothing left but bile.

I slide down next to the toilet. My face is soaked.

My body hurts. But it's nothing. Not next to what's happening in my chest.

It takes me a long time to get back up.

When I come out, I see it. His phone. Sitting on the coffee table where he left it.

I don't even know why I pick it up.

I try my birthday. Wrong. His birthday. Wrong.

Cecily's birthday.

The screen unlocks.

His lock photo is her. On her toes. Kissing his cheek. Laughing like she owns the world.

It's a second phone. Hidden inside his phone. A whole life he keeps away from me.

There's almost nothing on the home screen. A few albums. One messaging app.

I open the albums.

Over eight thousand photos.

Every single one is her.

Four folders. Each one labeled with a single word. Read them in order and they spell it out:

My. Wife. Ceci. Always.

My tears drop onto the screen.

It's not the lying that's killing me. It's that I gave three years of my body and my heart to the man who set my life on fire.

I wipe my eyes to keep scrolling. And that's when I see it.

Her right shoulder. In photo after photo.

A birthmark. Shaped like a rose.

My hand goes to my own shoulder.

Same spot. Same shape. Exactly the same.

I've known Cecily since we were kids. We had sleepovers. We shared pool days and locker rooms and bikini tops. She has never—never—had a birthmark on that shoulder.

But six years ago, I told her a story.

I told her about the night I was working as a volunteer doctor down in Saint-Marin. About a man I found in an alley by the docks. Nine stab wounds. Half dead. Bleeding out on the pavement. I saved his life with my bare hands and a suture kit.

Right after I told her that story, she started pulling away from me.

A few months later she showed up on Kane Locke's arm. His sworn little sister. The girl who supposedly saved his life six years ago in Saint-Marin.

That's why he worshipped the ground she walked on. Because in his head, she was the one bleeding on that pavement with him.

Except she was never in Saint-Marin.

Not once. Not ever.

She used to trash-talk the whole country to my face. That place? God, no. All that war? All those poor sick people? Why would anyone ever go?

My knees give out. I grab the edge of the table before I hit the floor.

A picture is putting itself together in my head. And it's making me sick.

I press my face into my hands.

A sound comes out of me that isn't quite a laugh and isn't quite a sob. Something in between.