Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Dumped in front of everyone on the day of my own proposal, by the man I’d loved for years. Everyone assumed I’d be furious. Heartbroken.

They all looked at me with pity.

But I just watched, calmly, as the roses Lucas had brought got tossed into a corner and trampled into pulp as people came and went.

Lucas had been an upperclassman at my college. Back then, he volunteered as a peer counselor on the campus crisis hotline.

Two months into my freshman year, late one night, I called that hotline. He was the one who picked up.

After that, he was the only person I let in. The Claire whose birth parents had left her. The Claire who’d been passed from one foster home to the next.

He held me, his eyes red. “Claire, from now on, I’m your family. The one you chose. The one who’ll never leave you.”

He spent two years helping me climb out of severe depression.

I spent eight years by his side.

And before he ever proposed, it was already over.

Serena asked to meet me.

A coffee shop in Midtown. When she saw me, she raised a hand to cover her belly, her eyes wary.

“Claire, I know I’ve wronged you. But the baby’s innocent. You wouldn’t want him growing up the way you did, would you? Passed around foster care, with no one?”

Her lashes trembled, and the tears spilled over.

“You went to an Ivy. You can survive without anybody. I can’t.” She grabbed my hand. “Without Lucas, I’ll die.”

I shook my head. “Serena—”

The hand gripping mine let go, and she toppled backward.

Lucas came out of nowhere. He shoved me aside and caught Serena in his arms, his eyes blazing.

“Claire, you psycho!”

I landed hard on the floor. Something slid out of my bag and clattered across the tile.

A dagger.

Blunt. Unsharpened. The edge had never cut anything.

That year, after Lucas found the scars on my arm, he’d had it made for me and pressed it into my hand. “Claire, what you need to do is beat it. Every time you want to hurt yourself, hold this instead, and remember you’re stronger than it.”

I’d carried it in every bag I’d owned for ten years.

I reached out and picked it up. I only wanted it back.

I got to my feet with it in my hand and took one step toward him.

Just one.

The next second, he shoved me so hard I went flying. The back of my head cracked against the tile, and the world went white.

Through the ringing, I heard his voice, soft and tender.

“Are you hurt? Serena, tell me, did you get hurt anywhere?”

Not once did he look back at me.

The door chimed. They were gone.

A barista knelt beside me. “Ma’am, don’t move. I’m calling an ambulance.”

“Don’t.” I touched the back of my head. My fingers came away wet and red. “I’m fine.”

I wasn’t. The room was tilting. But I knew exactly what came next if I lay there and let it.

I’d go home. Lucas would come back late, guilty and gentle, and say I panicked, you scared me, you had a knife. Serena would cry. Friday would come and go. And sometime next week I’d open my inbox and find Miami had quietly gone to someone else, the way my job almost had.

Ten years, I’d let him decide what I could survive.

I sat up against the counter, the dagger in my lap, and pulled out my phone.

The email from the Miami office was still at the top of my inbox. Please confirm your start date in writing by Friday.

I hit reply.

Confirmed. I will report to the Miami office on Monday at 9 a.m.

Sent.

Then I booked a one-way flight. JFK to Miami, Friday, 7:05 a.m. I booked movers for Thursday. I emailed the landlord that I wouldn’t be renewing. I changed my email password, then every password I had, one after another, while the barista pressed a wad of napkins to the back of my head.

The last thing I did was look at the dagger.

He’d given it to me so I’d stay alive.

I was going to keep it. Because I had.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

The flight confirmation had gone to my inbox thirty seconds before I’d changed the password. And Lucas still had the app open on his phone.

Lucas: Miami?

Lucas: Claire. Answer me. Where do you think you’re going?

I looked at the screen. The blood was drying in my hair.

Three days. I just had to get on that plane.

This time, no one was deciding for me.