Chapter Three

Wren's POV

That night I sit up in a first-floor guest room until morning.

The sky is barely light when I pick up my suitcase and head out. The whole house is still quiet, just the faint sound of someone moving around in the kitchen.

I don't want to deal with it. I only want out of this place that's been suffocating me.

But the second I reach the living room, the kitchen door opens.

Kaylee comes out with an apple in one hand and a paring knife in the other.

When she sees me holding my suitcase, surprise flickers across her face, then hardens into something mean.

"You've really got the nerve to walk out, Wren?" She keeps her voice low and comes at me one step at a time. "You think walking out makes you some kind of saint? I'm telling you, I am not letting you off easy."

I look at her, cold. "Move."

Right then Preston's door opens upstairs, and I hear him calling out. "Kaylee? Where are you? Are my shirts pressed yet?"

Kaylee smiles, and something about it makes my skin crawl.

She lifts the paring knife and draws it deep across her own left forearm. Blood wells up fast and drips onto the floor.

My eyes go wide. Before I can even react, she throws the knife down and drops to the floor, screaming.

"Help! Please don't hurt me! I'm sorry, please! Preston, help me!"

It happens so fast I'm frozen where I stand.

"Kaylee!"

Preston comes flying down the stairs, takes one look, and pulls her bloody body into his arms.

Kaylee is white as a sheet, shaking, curled against him. "Preston... she's lost it... she was going to kill me... she said if I was dead, you'd come back to her..."

Preston's head snaps up and he stares at me like I'm some cold-blooded murderer.

"Wren, you evil bitch!"

He roars and shoves me, hard.

I don't see it coming and lose my balance, slamming into the cabinet beside me. My forehead catches the edge and everything spins. I go down onto the floor, something warm running down my forehead, blurring my vision.

Then I hear Marlene scream. She runs out of her room, sees the blood on the floor, and backs away fast. "She's a murderer! Wren, you crazy woman, you're trying to kill her!"

Preston lifts Kaylee up like she's made of glass, his voice frantic. "Don't be scared, I'm taking you to the hospital right now. Hang on."

He carries her toward the door in long strides, then stops when he passes me.

I force my eyes open through the blood and look at this man I once loved so much.

"Wren, I must have been blind to marry a woman as vicious as you." His voice is ice. "If anything happens to that baby of hers, I'll make you pay for it. You sit here and think about what you've done, and I'll deal with you when I get back."

Then he's gone, out the front door without a backward glance, Marlene hurrying after him.

I sit on the cold floor and touch the blood on my forehead.

It hurts, but my heart is calmer than it has ever been.

So Kaylee's pregnant. No wonder they were in such a rush to force me to back down. No wonder Preston didn't ask a single question before he decided I was guilty.

Once despair piles up high enough, all that's left is a dead, empty quiet.

I brace myself against the wall and get up, go to the bathroom, clean the cut, and tape a piece of gauze over it.

I go back to the living room and take out the divorce papers I already had ready in the lining of my suitcase, and I set them on the coffee table. In the section for splitting up the assets, I cross out every line and take nothing. Because every dollar of Preston's money makes me sick now.

I slide the ring off my finger and drop it on the papers. He bought it for me seven years ago with his first bonus.

Once that's done, I pick up my suitcase and walk out of the cage that's held me for seven years.

Somewhere along the way it started pouring. The rain hits my face and washes off all the stupidity and weakness I used to carry.

I call a car and go straight to the bus station. In the back seat I take out my phone and set that file I packed up long ago to send on a timer.

In three days, Preston will get a nice little present.

That done, I scroll through my contacts and look at that familiar number on the screen.

He hasn't called once. Maybe right now he's happily playing house with his little housekeeper and that unborn baby, and I haven't even crossed his mind.

But whether he thinks about me or not doesn't matter to me anymore.

I pull the SIM card out of my phone and drop it out through the cracked window into the rain.

A few hours later, I board the overnight bus to Clearwater.

The bus tears through the dark, the lights outside racing backward past the window. I lean back against the seat and close my eyes.