Chapter 4

I lunged forward and tried to unbuckle the watch from his wrist.

My hands were shaking too badly to manage the clasp.

Ethan's patience snapped. He grabbed my wrists.

"You want it that badly? Fine. You can't have it."

He wrenched it off and slammed it onto the floor.

The sound it made was small and final.

Time stopped.

The watch lay there, the crystal face spidering into cracks from the center outward, glass scattered in a wide circle at my feet, like tears thrown across the marble.

A roaring sound filled my ears.

All I could see was my father. Blood at the corner of his mouth. Eyes red and unfocused, reaching for me.

"Don't cry, Vivian. As long as you carry it — our time together never ends. I'll always be—"

I had given that watch to Ethan on what felt like the best night of our lives.

Now it lay broken in the middle of a ballroom floor.

I dropped to my knees and started gathering the pieces with my bare hands. A shard opened my palm immediately. Blood welled up, bright and sudden.

"Stop it!" Ethan grabbed my arm and knocked the fragments from my grip. "Are you insane? Do you want to lose your hands?"

The pieces scattered again. Some slid further, some ground into smaller shards.

I reached for them anyway.

Serena stepped forward.

Her heel came down directly on the watch face.

The last faint ticking — I wasn't even sure I'd heard it or only imagined it — went silent.

Something surged up inside me. I moved toward her, trying to push her back.

She shoved me first.

I went down hard into the glass.

The shards pressed in from every angle, deep and shallow both. Pain shot through me like current.

The ballroom had gone completely still.

Every eye in the room was on me.

Ethan reached for Serena first.

"Are you all right? Did any glass get you?"

Serena's lip trembled. Her eyes filled on cue.

"She just came at me — I was so scared—"

Ethan looked at me where I sat in the glass, blood on my palms, and his expression hardened into something I couldn't name.

"Your father was unstable, and your mother was a disgrace." His voice was measured and precise, like a doctor delivering a verdict. "Turns out you inherited the best of both. You're unhinged and you're vindictive."

Once, he had stood at the departure gate with my mother and told the world: Vivian loves flowers. She is the flower I will spend my life protecting.

A few years. That was all it had taken.

From his flower. To this.

I collected what fragments I could hold, pulled myself upright, and stepped back.

Someone snickered.

Someone called me a head case.

Serena pressed herself into Ethan's chest, making herself small and fragile. He murmured something softly to her, something about making me apologize.

His voice faded as I walked away.

I had brought a suitcase. I dragged it behind me and walked into the rain.

It hit the car window in sheets.

In the back seat of the taxi, I opened my bleeding palm and tried to piece the watch back together by feel, fragment by fragment.

It wouldn't come back.

The tears came then — not from the pain.

From the knowledge that my own stubbornness had let my father break apart in front of me a second time.

I raised my eyes to the rearview mirror.

Pale face. Red eyes. A complete wreck.

When Ethan called, I ended it. Then I removed the SIM card from my phone.

The next morning, when Ethan arrived at the office, he looked terrible.

He pushed every meeting back a full day. Then he called the number that had been going to voicemail since the night before.

The line rang out. A recorded message told him the number was unavailable.

He couldn't sit still. He grabbed his keys and drove home.

The housekeeper met him at the door.

"Where is she?"

"Miss Vivian went out last night. She hasn't come back."

He stopped.

"She left with a suitcase," the housekeeper continued. "I thought the two of you were traveling together—"

A suitcase.

The word hit him in the chest.

He made himself think back. Two nights ago. Vivian standing in the half-dark in front of the open wardrobe, a case on the floor beside her. Later the case had been put back. He'd assumed that settled it.

He hadn't looked again.

He hit the stairs at a near run, shoved the bedroom door open.

The room was empty of her.

Even her scent was gone.

He opened the balcony doors. The roses, the hydrangeas, the little cluster of succulents she'd arranged over months — all gone. Only the ceramic planters remained, blank and weightless.

Tucked under the corner planter was a card.

The balcony with the flowers — I don't want it anymore. Give it to whoever you like.

Ethan read it and felt his whole body start to shake.

She grabbed her heels and fled.