Chapter 3

3: 3

The comments were a wall of praise, all of it about how the two of them were childhood sweethearts, a match made in heaven.

And Oswald, from start to finish, never offered a single word of explanation.

I was frozen numb all over, but my mind had never been clearer.

I turned on the guard outside the door:

"The game's void, everyone's supposed to be locked in the ice room. So why do they get to soak in the hot spring? Doesn't your lodge follow its own rules?"

The guard's face twisted with scorn as he looked down at me.

"Rules? Miss Henson, Mr. Stephens is one of the shareholders of Northshore Lodge. His word is the rule."

A shudder ran through me, and the blood in my veins seemed to freeze on the spot.

"What did you say?"

"Mr. Stephens holds the highest access at the lodge. He can come and go from the hot-spring suite whenever he pleases. He never needed to play the heart-matching game at all."

"He sank a fortune into his stake in the first place just to heal Miss Dickerson's body."

"Playing the game was only a way to pass the time with her."

"And you actually thought you mattered."

I stumbled back a step, cold all through, unable to speak.

When Oswald and I first got together.

Full of nerves, I'd told him I was born with a cold constitution and trouble carrying a child.

That my only hope was the Northshore hot springs.

Back then he'd looked at me, gentle and grave, and said:

"No matter how hard it is, I'll get us the right to enter that lodge."

But he tried for a whole year, and all he ever found was the entrance.

I'd been so grateful at the time, sure I'd met the man I'd spend my life with.

So from the very beginning, all of it was a con he'd carefully stitched together.

The ice room grew colder and colder, my teeth chattering, my mind going hazy.

That was when Oswald's call came through.

"Admit you were wrong, and I'll let you out."

Before I could say anything, Paige's voice came sweet and soft from the other end.

"Oswald, where did my underwear go? Did you hide them again?"

A violent wave of nausea rose in my stomach. I hung up without another word, without a shred of longing left.

I pulled up the group photo from the start of tonight's game and searched frantically for the one man who'd gone missing.

The moment I found him, I froze for a beat.

Even behind the mask, I knew him. Dale Morton.

Oswald's archenemy.

Seventeen rounds of the heart-matching game, and the one who'd matched me perfectly every single time was him.

I hesitated, then hesitated again, and finally pulled up his contact.

I gritted my teeth and sent a message:

"Tomorrow night's game. Could you not leave?"

Dale went still for a moment, then answered.

"After all these times, you're finally agreeing?"

"I'll definitely stay."

By then I was too frozen even to reply.

In the instant my thoughts scattered, I suddenly remembered.

The Oswald of before, whose eyes had once held only me, who had once held me in his palm like something precious.

He knew I had a cold constitution, knew a child would be hard, knew the illness wasn't easy to treat.

When he couldn't find Northshore Lodge, he'd searched the world for doctors as if his life depended on it.

In the heat of summer there was always a jacket over his arm; before winter even came he'd bundle me up like a nesting doll and hold me tight against him.

But none of it could measure up to one Paige Dickerson.

A second before the dark took me completely, a rush of frantic, stumbling footsteps came pounding closer.

"Lottie Henson! Do you have a death wish?"

Oswald threw himself into the ice room, stripped off his coat and wrapped it tight around my frozen body.

Then he swept me up and ran for the infirmary.

His voice carried a panic and dread I'd never heard from him.

"Why are you so stubborn, why do you have to fight me on everything?"

"Would it kill you to just admit you were wrong?"

His words were harsh, but his grip on my hand was fierce, and he couldn't stop it.

"Lottie Henson, you can't let anything happen to you..."

The infirmary was warm, and I came back to myself quickly.

The moment I opened my eyes and saw him, I instinctively pulled away.

"Mr. Stephens, we've already broken up. Please have some decency."

Oswald's brows knotted hard.

"What are you making a scene about now? If I hadn't come, you'd be dead!"