Chapter 4

It was raining when I walked out of the reception hall.

August storms came fast and hard. Huge raindrops slammed into the pavement, splashing white against the ground.

I was still wearing the red reception dress Lydia had mocked. In my high heels, I walked step by step into the rain.

Within seconds, my hair and clothes were soaked. The red fabric clung to my body, cold against my skin.

Behind me, I heard my mother calling, "Tanya! Tanya, come back!"

Then Charles's mother: "Honestly, how can she be so immature? Making a scene like this at her own wedding. What will people think?"

I didn't turn around.

My heel slipped in a puddle, and I nearly fell.

I took off my shoes and walked barefoot over the wet pavement.

Rainwater mixed with mud, cold and filthy, but I no longer cared.

When I reached the hotel entrance, the security guard looked at me as if I were crazy.

And maybe I did look crazy—a bride in a red dress, walking barefoot through the rain.

My phone kept vibrating inside my purse.

I pulled it out. My mom had called more than ten times, my dad five, and Charles three.

There were also messages from relatives and friends, all asking what had happened at the wedding and whether something had gone wrong.

I turned off my phone and flagged down a cab.

The driver hesitated when he saw how soaked I was, but he let me in.

"Where to, miss?"

I gave him the address of the apartment where I'd shared a place with a friend during college.

My friend had moved away after graduation, but the apartment was still empty. I'd never returned the spare key.

The cab drove through the rain for forty minutes. I shivered the whole way, not knowing whether it was from the cold or something else.

When I arrived, I dug through my purse and found only two hundred dollars in cash and a bank card.

My phone was dead. I couldn't even order food.

Upstairs, I unlocked the door. The apartment was almost empty, with nothing but a mattress and a chair.

I changed out of my soaked dress and crawled beneath the old blanket my friend had left behind, wrapping myself up like a cocoon.

After a long time, the tears finally came.

It wasn't hurt. It wasn't anger.

It was an emptiness I couldn't explain.

I'd loved Charles since I was a little girl.

When he chased away those bullies for me at five, I thought he was the most amazing person in the world.

When I scraped my knee at eight, he crouched down and carefully put a bandage on it, clumsy but gentle.

When his grandfather suggested we get engaged at ten, Charles's ears turned bright red, but he never said no.

When I did badly on my high school entrance exams at fifteen, he comforted me over the phone. "It's okay, sweetheart. Don't cry."

When I got into college at eighteen, he gave me a pink crystal bracelet and said, "Look at you, princess. All grown up."

But when had everything changed?

Was it the day Lydia showed up?

Or had it happened even earlier?

Maybe I'd always been nothing more than a little sister who needed looking after—a clingy shadow he couldn't shake.

He wasn't kind to me because he loved me. He was kind because he was used to me.

Used to having me follow him, used to hearing me call him Charles, used to my sweet talk and constant attempts to please him.

Lydia was different.

She was independent and assertive. She said whatever came to mind. She didn't need him to protect her; she could even argue with him as an equal.

Maybe, in Charles's eyes, that was what a mature, balanced relationship looked like.

Not a childish, dependent princess who needed him to reassure her every five minutes.