Chapter 6
Not the carefully practiced expression I used when photographers asked us to stand closer.
I was smiling like someone who knew exactly where she belonged.
I stared at that younger version of myself.
“What happened to you?”
I whispered.
The bedroom door opened.
Vincent stood there.
He looked at the suitcases.
Then at the medical bag in my lap.
For a moment, he said nothing.
“I didn’t know you still had that.”
I looked down at my old hospital badge.
“Neither did I.”
His gaze lingered on the photograph.
“You were happy then.”
I almost laughed.
“I was tired all the time.”
“You looked happy.”
“I was.”
The admission seemed to hurt him.
He stood in the doorway for another moment.
Then he asked, “Do you want me to have someone help you pack?”
I looked at the two suitcases.
There were dozens of people employed to make Vincent Hale’s life easier.
Housekeepers.
Drivers.
Assistants.
Security officers.
People who could arrange almost anything he wanted.
But there was something none of them could do.
They couldn’t give me back the person I had been before I learned to disappear.
“No,” I said.
“I can do this myself.”
He nodded.
Then he left.
I stayed on the floor long after his footsteps faded.
I looked at the woman in the photograph again.
She had been brave.
She had been capable.
She had known how to make decisions under pressure.
Somewhere along the way, I had stopped trusting those parts of myself.
But as I put the photograph into my medical bag, I felt something unfamiliar move beneath the grief.
It wasn’t happiness.
Not yet.
It was the smallest beginning of hope.
And for the first time that night, I wasn’t thinking about the man who had stopped choosing me.
I was thinking about the woman I had stopped choosing.
Chapter 2: The Woman I Left Behind
The next morning, I woke before sunrise.
For several seconds, I forgot what had happened.
I lay in our enormous bed, listening to rain against the windows, expecting Vincent to be beside me.
His side was empty.
Of course it was.
He had slept in another room.
I sat up.
My wedding ring caught the faint morning light.
A simple platinum band.
Vincent had chosen it because he said diamonds were unnecessary when the woman wearing them was already extraordinary.
I remembered smiling at that.