Chapter 3

Rosalie's POV

She pulled me inward. I let her. My legs moved because hers dragged them; I stumbled once, on purpose, and let my free hand grope out at empty air. The whispering receded like a tide, then surged back behind me.

"Hey, Rosalie."

Bryce's voice—less than a meter away now. Gentle. Careful. Precisely guilt-laced. A completely different man from the one who'd been swirling his drink thirty seconds ago. "The doctor said you've recovered pretty well?"

I lifted my head and "looked" toward him—past him, really, at a point over his shoulder, unfocused.

I saw his eyes.

Pale amber, warm-toned, the kind that made you feel looked after. For three months I had held onto them in the dark, every single day.

And now, seeing them for the first time, I understood: there was nothing behind them. Nothing at all.

"…Better," I said. My voice came out thin, and I let it. "Gemma drove me. I wanted to—" I stopped. Swallowed. "I brought lobster. For soup."

The silence that followed had a texture to it. Somebody stifled a laugh.

"Soup," Bryce repeated, and there was a beat of something—not guilt, I realized now, but distaste, quickly folded away. "You shouldn't have carried all that. Your hands."

"They don't hurt anymore," I said softly. Liar. Liar. My nails were biting into the plastic.

His hand rested casually at Chloe's waist. She leaned into his side, and I watched her arrange her face—that innocent, wronged, long-suffering expression, worn like a second dress.

"Rosalie." She pressed closer, her voice dripping sweetness, laced with a careful, almost charitable tenderness. "I have something to tell you." She paused, gathering it up like an enormous, precious happiness. "I have a boyfriend now."

Her fingers curled around the arm of the man beside her. "My Bry. We're getting engaged—this party tonight, it's for the two of us."

"Bry," someone echoed, with a suggestive laugh. "Cute."

"Finally." Another voice, thick with drink. "Held out this long—I was getting exhausted for the both of you."

Bry.

She thought I couldn't see. She thought she was simply sharing with a blind cousin a joy she could no longer contain—offering up an intimate little pet name I "wouldn't recognize." To a blind woman, what difference did a nickname make from a stranger's name?

But I saw it all, clear as day. The man she called "my Bry" was Bryce. The husband I'd believed him to be. The man who, for three months, had held my hand every day and read the marriage certificate aloud to me.

"Oh—that's—" I heard myself stammer, felt my own mouth curve into something that was supposed to be a smile and came out crooked. "That's wonderful, Chloe. I—I'm happy for you."

The words tasted like rust. My eyes were burning behind the dark lenses; I forced them wide open, forbidding the tears to fall, because a tear that fell the right way—toward the person speaking—would give me away. I had to cry at the wall, or not at all.

I chose not at all.

"He's so good to me." Chloe's murmur crawled into my ear, cloying, sticky-sweet. "This whole time, he's been the one by my side. You have to be happy for me, all right?"

"Chloe." Bryce laughed low—and there wasn't a shred of restraint in it now, only the excitement of misbehaving in plain sight. "Come here, you."

"What's there to be scared of?" The drink-slurred voice egged them on, not even bothering to lower itself for me. "She can't see! Go on—the two of you finally dare go public, don't chicken out now—"

"Kiss her!" Another voice, and a whistle. "Kiss her, kiss her—"

Chloe tipped her face up. Bryce wrapped an arm around her waist and bent down.

Not on the cheek. On the lips. In front of a room full of people, in front of me—a lingering, brazen, utterly unhidden kiss.

The cheering, the laughter, the crisp clink of champagne all mixed together. That soft, wet sound of the kiss burrowed into my ears, inch by inch.

I stood a meter away with a bag of dying lobster in my arms and watched my husband kiss my cousin, and I could not move a single muscle in my face.

Do you know what that costs? To watch, and hold still, and let your eyes stay soft and empty? My whole body was shaking with the effort of not shaking. I dug my thumbnail into the pad of my finger until I felt skin give.

"Shh—" A female voice, once the kiss broke, dropped low. Not truly low. Still laced with laughter. "Keep it down, she's still in the dark. Poor thing."

"She can't see anyway—what could she possibly know?" The speaker's tone went airy, offhand.

"Besides, burned like that? Even if she found out, what could she do about it?"

A ripple of restrained, knowing laughter, like an undercurrent beneath still water.

Finally. You two finally dared go public. She's still in the dark. What could she do about it.

So that was it. That "Bry" Chloe spoke of—the man who'd "been by her side so long," the man she was about to marry—every single person in this room knew who he was.

They held their champagne, laughing, egging them on, watching Chloe "kindly" break the news to the pitiful blind woman. The only one kept in the dark was me—the one they all assumed could see nothing.

The whole world knew. Everyone but me.