Chapter 2

Liam was stunned into silence for a moment. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head, calculating this new, unexpected variable.

"I'm contesting the divorce," I repeated, my voice surprisingly steady. "And you have to come home. Stay here, with me, for the last thirty days. If you don't, I will drag this out. I'll make it public, and I'll make it messy. I don't think your firm's partners would appreciate the scandal."

He returned that night, his face a mask of fury.

"What is the point of this, Elara?" he sneered, his voice dripping with contempt.

The cancer was already starting to affect my vision. His face was a blur of angry lines and shadows. A wave of dizziness washed over me, and I stumbled, catching myself on the back of a chair.

"Liam," I asked, my voice frail, the strength from the phone call gone. "Can you just hold me?"

He recoiled as if I were diseased. Which, I suppose, I was.

"This changes nothing."

"Thirty days," I whispered, the words barely audible. "Give me this last month, and I will sign whatever you want. I'll disappear."

He stared at my pale, determined face. The angry refusal I saw forming on his lips died before it could be spoken.

"Fine," he spat out, the word tasting like poison. "But you better keep your word."

He slept in one of the guest rooms. In the morning, he was gone before I woke up. The emptiness of the house felt heavier than before.

A call came from the care facility in Austin where my older brother, Caleb, lived. He was having a difficult day. I made the long drive, my body aching.

I found him in the garden, clutching a worn-out baseball. He was convinced he was waiting for our dad, who had been dead for fifteen years, to come play catch. Caleb' s TBI, a cruel gift from a rodeo accident that had ended his championship career, had stolen his present, leaving him stranded in the past.

He didn't recognize me as his sister, but he knew me as a familiar, safe presence from his fractured childhood memories. I leaned my head on his strong shoulder, the one that used to carry me when I was small.

"Liam's leaving me, Caleb," I whispered, knowing he wouldn't understand, but needing to say it aloud. "I don't know what to do."

As I spoke, I felt a tiny flutter in my womb. A kick. A secret life in a world of pain.

When I got back to Houston, I found Chloe Sterling standing on my doorstep. She held one of Liam' s custom-tailored shirts in her hand, a casual, proprietary gesture that made my stomach clench.