Chapter 3

Elena Hendricks POV

The warmth left Jameson’s face all at once, as if someone had wiped it off with a rag.

His posture changed.

His shoulders dropped. The eager returning husband was gone.

He slid his hands into his pockets.

“You went through my things?” he asked, his voice flat and low.

“You posted your own mess on Reddit,” I said, gesturing toward the kitchen. “That sunrise photo you sent me at six this morning is now the header image on your profile. Did you really think nobody in the world would put two and two together?”

Jameson stood in the middle of the foyer.

He was not rattled.

He did not apologize.

“That photo went out to eleven people before eight this morning,” he said. “You want to tell me which one of them wrote that?”

“You’ve been waiting for a reason to believe the worst of me since the day we met. Congratulations. You found one.”

I read the line out loud. “The stupid bitch has no idea.”

He looked at me for a long moment.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a silver cigarette case. He took out a cigarette.

He had never smoked a single cigarette in this house.

The lighter clicked. The tip caught, and a thread of gray smoke drifted up toward our white ceiling.

“So you saw,” he said, as if it were nothing.

“Nobody I know reads that cesspool. I wasn’t hiding from you. I was hiding from people who matter.”

I stared at him, my nails digging into my palms.

“You called me used goods to a crowd of strangers,” I said, my chest heaving. “You told the whole world my body disgusts you. Then why did you marry me, Jameson? You got down on your knees and begged me. You swore you loved me!”

Jameson looked down at the cigarette between his fingers, then up at me.

“I did love you,” he said evenly. “I still do, in my own way. But you have no idea what it’s like to walk into a marriage knowing you were handed someone else’s leftover prize.”

He took another drag.

Then, without so much as glancing down, he stubbed the lit end of the cigarette into the antique wooden console, grinding the ember into the polished mahogany.

That table was the first piece of furniture we had bought together after our honeymoon.

He had known I loved vintage furniture, and he had spent three weeks combing flea markets to find it.

Now there was a smoking black crater burned into the smooth wood.

“When Cameron had you, you were clean and whole,” Jameson said, his voice soft and steeped in venom. “Your first time was his. Your best years were his. I cleaned up his mess, I dried your tears, I bought you a big house. And every single time I touch you, something in my head screams that he was there first.”

“I was engaged to him, Jameson!” My voice climbed with disbelief. “You were his best friend! You knew everything about us before you ever came after me!”

“Knowing is one thing. Living with it, day after day, is another,” he cut in sharply, his eyes going dark. “It took me a while to see that I’d been played for a fool. I gave you everything I had, holding nothing back, and what did I get? A woman who spent five years in another man’s bed. It wasn’t fair. So I settled the account in Denver. Now we’re even.”

A cold, bitter laugh slipped out of me.

“Settled the account?” I said. “And you think sleeping with someone else cures that sick, twisted inferiority of yours?”

“At least now it feels fair.” He didn’t blink. “You don’t get to stand on moral high ground and judge me. If you hadn’t let Cameron ruin you back then, I wouldn’t have needed to balance the scales.”

The arrogance in his voice, so nauseating, shattered the last of my grief.

“I want a divorce.” I looked him straight in the eye. “Pick up your bag and get out of my house.”

Jameson let out a short, mocking laugh.

“A divorce?” he sneered. “Where would you go, Elena? Back to Cameron? Is that why his engagement date is your passcode? You’ve been waiting for an excuse to run back into his arms, haven’t you?”

“My passcode is our anniversary, you miserable coward!” I screamed at him. “October fourteenth is the day we got our marriage license!”

Jameson went still.

As the words landed, his pupils widened slightly.

For a second, something like panic crossed his face, and then his ridiculous pride tore it to shreds.

“So what. It doesn’t matter,” he said, taking a step toward me. “You are not divorcing me. I took you in when you had nothing. You carry my name, you live off my investments. You belong to me.”

He shot out a hand and clamped it around my right wrist, hard as an iron cuff.

“You’re not going anywhere. You stay right here,” he said, bending close, his breath on my cheek. “We are going to move past this. And you had better learn to be grateful for the life you have.”

I didn’t think.

I swung my left hand and slapped him across the face with everything I had.

The crack of it rang through the foyer.

His head snapped to one side.

He let go of my wrist and slowly raised a hand to his reddening cheek.

When he turned back to me, his eyes were terrifyingly empty.

Three years ago, in the parking lot of my old apartment, that was the look he had worn one second before he broke Cameron’s nose with a single punch.

That year, I had naively thought he was defending my honor.

Only now did I see it for what it was: he was marking his territory.

I backed down the hall toward the guest room, slipped inside, and slammed the heavy oak door.

His fist hit the door just as I threw the deadbolt.

“Open the door, Elena,” came his voice from the other side, unnervingly calm. “Don’t make this ugly.”

I didn’t answer.

I slid down the door and sat, my knees hitting the thick carpet hard.

Shaking all over, I reached into the pocket of my cardigan and pulled out the white pregnancy test I had hidden there that morning, before I ever picked up my phone.

Two clear, unforgiving lines.

I was pregnant.

A sob rose in my throat, and I forced it back down.

I gripped the plastic stick with both hands and snapped it in two. Then I tore the wrapper to shreds and shoved it down to the very bottom of the trash.

I would not let this child become the next weapon he used against me.