Chapter 2

The nurse pushed open the door. "Mr. Lewis has finished the discharge paperwork. You're free to go."

I nodded numbly.

As I walked out of the hospital, I could still hear a few nurses whispering behind me.

"Poor thing. Her own fiancé drove her to this."

"What's so sad about it? He's gorgeous and loaded — he even pays for everything. It's not like he hit her. She should've just looked the other way. Some people don't know how good they've got it."

A year ago, words like that would have sent me into hysterics. Now, they couldn't even make me slow my steps.

Lewis was leaning against the Bentley, waiting.

I walked over to him.

He curled his index finger, reaching toward my face. "You've lost weight."

I tilted my head slightly and pulled back.

His hand hung in the air for a moment, then dropped.

He opened the passenger door. "Get in."

There was a used lipstick on the seat.

Lewis snatched it out of my hand, rolled down the window, and tossed it out.

"My assistant left that. Don't mind it."

I smiled faintly and said nothing. That lipstick was Mia's favorite brand — my best friend's.

Not that it mattered anymore. I'd stopped caring a long time ago.

At a red light, Lewis tapped his fingers lightly on the steering wheel, then finally spoke. "It's over between me and her. I threw out that couch — got a new one in the style you like."

"Mm." A soft sound from me.

He continued. "I had the housekeeper clean your things every day. Nothing got dusty."

"Thank you." I smiled faintly.

Lewis glanced over at me, his expression unreadable.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small red velvet box. "I had the ring remade. Bigger diamond than before. Do you like it?"

I didn't take the box. "Let's call off the wedding."

Lewis didn't take my words seriously. He just dropped the box into my lap.

"Enough of the drama. I slept with your best friend, you slept with my three friends — and you even came out two ahead. Call it even."

"The spot as my wife is still yours. I promised you that. Stop playing hard to get."

I stared at the little box in my hands and said nothing. I just smiled, quietly and bitterly.

I wasn't playing anything. I was simply leaving for somewhere else. Somewhere quiet — a little village, nothing like this city, where my parents were buried. A place without him, where it wouldn't hurt.

The car pulled through the gates of the estate. Nothing had changed.

I didn't go to our bedroom. I dragged my suitcase toward the guest room.

Lewis stepped in front of me. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I got used to sleeping alone in the hospital." I glanced back at the room that had once been ours. "And I don't want to sleep in that bed anymore."

The day I'd found out about him and Mia, I'd checked the security footage. It wasn't just the couch. They'd been in our bed too — the one he'd had custom-made for me. When I saw that, the pain nearly killed me.

Lewis stared at me for a few seconds, then let out a cold laugh. "Fine. But don't take it too far. You always do this, and then you end up back in the hospital."

I watched him walk away.

The old ache didn't come.

Maybe the treatment really had worked. I'd forgotten what it felt like to have my heart beat for him, to rise and fall with his moods.

Late that night, I lay in the soft guest bed, restless. After a year on the hard hospital mattress, I couldn't get comfortable.

During that year, Lewis never visited once. Fear had swallowed me whole. I used to scream and cry for the doctors and nurses, threatening to hurt myself if they didn't let me call him.

Once. Twice. Three times.

He never picked up.

Slowly, I went numb. And when I got better, I no longer wanted to call him at all.