Chapter 10

Someone had stayed up all night in the drawing room.

The floor around his chair was littered with cigarette ends.

I packed at first light. I was leaving the Ashford estate that morning. After last night, there wasn't any future for me inside this house.

Ravenport was washed clean from the rain overnight. The air tasted new.

I called Dominic and asked him to come pick me up.

But the person who arrived first wasn't Dominic. It was Eleanor.

She'd been out of town for the two days following the last round of the old family sanction. She'd come home to find that Julian had physically put his hands on me on top of everything else.

She nearly passed out from the rage. Tess, I was fairly sure, had not spared any details in the retelling.

Eleanor walked in, took one look at Julian, and slapped him across the face.

Hard enough that his head turned. Hard enough that his whole upper body went sideways with it.

He took it without a sound.

Then she looked around. She saw my suitcase by the door.

She turned on him again, cold with fury, thinking he'd thrown me out.

"Have you completely lost your mind? You don't get to decide who leaves this house. Do you want me dead on the spot? Do you — "

I cut her off quietly.

"It isn't his fault, Eleanor. I'm the one leaving."

I told her it was my choice.

Dominic arrived a moment later. He greeted Eleanor with a short, respectful nod, then moved to my side and took the suitcase out of my hand.

The gesture was as clear as a headline.

Eleanor understood. She closed her eyes, shook her head, and let out a tired, sad breath.

"All right. All right. My son's a fool and he doesn't deserve you anyway."

Later, Tess told me Eleanor went back inside and disciplined Julian one more time — a bad one.

Celeste Pemberton was sentenced that February.

I moved into Dominic's house. I spent the rest of that year opening my own design studio. Building something of my own. Walking forward.

By the time anyone brought up the Ashford name again, it felt like a story from another lifetime.

Except —

At the end of every month, there was a long black sedan idling at the foot of the villa drive.

Dominic and I had a quiet agreement to pretend it wasn't there.

On New Year's Day, Eleanor called. She told me Julian had been personally blocking the public announcement that our engagement had been dissolved. He'd dug his heels in. No one could move him.

I didn't answer. I wasn't going to try to understand whatever it was he was doing.

Time moved fast, after that.

Months later. The first day of spring — March twenty-first. My birthday.

Without warning, the Ashfords issued the public statement. Every paper in Ravenport ran it.

Dominic was on his phone when the news broke. He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, chin resting on my shoulder.

"Huh," he said. "The kid finally did something decent."

Then he pulled me in closer and turned us both toward the window.

The overcast sky had broken open. Light was coming through.

His voice at my ear was soft.

"The first day of spring."

Yes. The first day of spring.

I reached up and closed my hand around his.

I started laughing. Quietly. Under my breath. The kind of laugh that means, at last.

Look back with me on old winters, and greet this spring by my side.

Vera Harrington and Dominic Blackwood — together now.

Walking into the new year.

THE END