Chapter 2

Rosalie's POV

Chloe and Bryce? The two of them? The person closest to me had been with him all along? No, no, it can't be—

My heart plummeted. I clutched at my chest, unable to breathe, like someone drowning, fumbling shakily over my body for the anti-anxiety pills.

But before I could find them, his voice reached me like something rising out of hell.

"I owe Rosalie," Bryce said, a weariness in his voice I'd never heard before. "She ran into that fire to save me. I can't just abandon a woman who's gone blind. That would be too—"

"Seriously, man," a male voice cut in, tinged with drink and mockery, "marrying her makes you a saint. If you ask me, you've done more than enough. Anyone else would've bailed long ago."

"A saint?" Bryce laughed.

It was a laugh I'd never heard—with an edge of impatience.

"Sean." He swirled his glass; I heard the ice click against crystal. "Do you know what it's like to coddle some heiress? Whatever she wants to hear, I say it. 'You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen.' 'In my eyes you'll always be the most beautiful.' Three times a day—said it so much I made myself sick."

A burst of laughter.

"But you cashed in too," the one called Sean laughed. "That blind girl used to be the prettiest of all those socialites—plenty of men lined up to chase her."

"Pretty?" Bryce bit down on the word. "Sure, her face was to my taste—if she hadn't been beautiful enough, I doubt I'd have put up with her this long. You know how she is—buried in that lab all day, reeking of chemicals, late to every date, three sentences into a conversation and she's off on molecular structures. Pretty, fine. But a face is a face."

"Hahaha, Bryce, you're brutal."

"I'm being honest." He lowered his voice, and I could almost hear him leaning back, unhurried, a man appraising secondhand goods. "None of you have seen what's under those bandages. Three months, and she's never once dared take them off. She knows it herself—dodging every mirror, day after day."

My free hand had found the wall. I pressed my palm flat against it, and the old scars there caught on the cold paint. Every mirror. He'd been the one to move them. He'd told me, so gently, that the light hurt my eyes.

"You mean…"

"I don't dare guess how bad the burns are." Bryce sighed. "Bottom line, a blind woman—the face is probably gone too. So what do you expect me to do? Marry her and keep her like some enshrined relic?"

"But didn't you say before that you'd registered the marriage—"

"To humor her." He said it lightly. "She's blind. Whatever I read to her, she believes. You've got to give her something to hope for, so she'll cooperate with treatment and sign what she needs to sign."

Sign what she needs to sign.

The bag of lobster shifted in my arms. The plastic rustled. I clamped it still against my ribs, and felt the frantic, muffled scrape of the claws inside—alive, all of them, the way I'd wanted them: fresh enough for the bisque he loved.

"Well, you've done right by her," another voice put in, smoothing things over. "She did run into a fire for you—"

"She ran in on her own," Bryce cut him off. "I never asked her to. That's the type she is, you get it? Has to prove she loves you enough to die for you. Fine, I'll accept the gesture." He paused two beats. "But one life-saving debt doesn't buy her the rest of my life."

"So what about Chloe?"

"Chloe's waited for me all these years," Bryce said, and his voice finally warmed. "She deserves an answer too. Once the trust comes through, it'll all be settled. I'll set her up in some care facility, hire two aides—more than enough money. Lying there blind, she's better off than being with me."

"Slick." Someone whistled. "Nothing less from an Aldridge."

A ripple of agreeing laughter. Someone said, "You really are a considerate man."

I don't know how long I stood there. The white noise rose in my ears, a wall of it, like the whole ocean bearing down. My knees had locked.

I was distantly aware that I'd stopped breathing, that my jaw ached from clenching, that the bag was cutting a red line into the crook of my arm—and I couldn't feel any of it, not really.

The trust. The shares. A clean break. Pay her off.

The words carved into me, cut after cut. This hand—still thinking of coming back to make him bisque.

"Rosalie?!"

The saccharine voice sliced through everything. Chloe. My whole body flinched—an ugly, involuntary jerk—and I felt the color drop out of my face, that cold, sick drain, as if someone had pulled a plug in me.

"Rosalie, when did you get here? Nobody even told me!"

The music dropped low. I heard the room turn toward me all at once—the shuffle of feet, the hush, the slosh of a glass set down too fast.

Steady. Steady. You can't see. You can't see anything. I made myself tilt my head the wrong way—toward the wall, not toward her voice—the way I'd trained myself these three months. My heart was slamming so hard I was sure they could see it moving under my dress.

Heels clicked over. "You came alone?" Chloe's hand closed around my arm—warm, soft, and I nearly recoiled. "How dangerous—what if you'd fallen on the way? Here, let me help you. Careful, there's a step."

There was no step. She was performing.

She turned, raising her voice. "Bryce! My cousin's here!"