Carly signed a lease? When? Why?
The answer comes fast and brutal, snapping into place so neatly it makes me feel sick.
She was planning to leave. After the wedding, maybe right after, maybe the second she didn’t need me anymore.
My hands tighten around the steering wheel.
No.No, that doesn’t fit. Except it does. It fits too well.
She took the nanny job when she needed somewhere to stay. She needed a date for the wedding. She got both.
And all this time — these last five weeks, the sneaking around, the nights in my bed, the way she looks at me, the way she says my name?—
I grip the wheel harder.
My chest feels like it’s being split open with something blunt.
Anger gets there first, hot and immediate. Hurt follows so close behind it might as well be the same thing.
In the mirror, she’s still asleep, curled on her side, soft and defenseless and looking nothing like someone who could gut me.
But the text is right fucking there.
I keep driving through the dark with my jaw locked and my pulse hammering, her phone face-up on the seat beside me, shining like an omen.
She’s using me. She’s fucking using me. And worse, yet again, she’s planning a departure from my daughter’s life without a second thought.
It’s Halsey all over again.
Chapter 33
Carly
I wakeup feeling like someone has let a marching band rehearse inside my skull.
The room is too bright, my mouth tastes like regret and vomit and tequila, and every time I move too fast, my stomach threatens to bring up acid. For one long, miserable second, I keep my eyes closed and try to remember how I got home.
Then it comes back in pieces.
Sticky bathroom tile.
A girl whose name I never properly caught crouched beside me.
My phone in my hand.
Grayson.
A soft groan slips out of me as I drag a pillow over my face.I want to die.Except I can’t die today because today is the wedding.
I drop the pillow and stare up at the ceiling, willing myself not to throw up again just from the thought of putting on makeup andpretending to be a person. I vaguely remember Grayson getting me into the house last night. I remember cool water against my lips, his hand steady at the back of my neck, his voice more tense than usual, telling me to take another sip.
After that, everything gets fuzzy.
When I finally manage to dress myself in the dark red dress he’d bought me a couple of weeks ago and get down the stairs with my heels in hand, aiming for the kitchen for a coffee before we have to go, I find him in the living room.
He’s dressed in a dark grey suit, his white shirt buttoned to the collar, dark red tie to match my dress and clean-shaven. His salt-and-pepper hair is perfectly in place, and my god, he looks like he walked out of every fantasy I’ve ever had.
But when he glances at me, there’s no comment about my dress, there’s no little smirk, no checking how I’m feeling this morning. He just looks away.
