Chapter 16

After that, Zachary lived like a ghost.

He didn't go back to Ashford Bay. He stayed in the Manhattan apartment his mother had given him, clutching photos of Sonia and whispering apologies, declarations, pleas.

Ember, claiming she had nowhere else to go, attached herself to him. He was too numb to care.

She ground her teeth bloody, unable to figure out how to reach him.

Then, the night before Sonia and Sheldon's wedding, Zachary went to the Sterling estate to try to see her one more time. Couldn't even get close. Came home and cried into a photograph.

Ember decided it was her last shot.

She went for broke. Slipped something into his whiskey. Bought a gown nearly identical to what she imagined Sonia would wear. Crawled into his lap and whispered she forgave him.

Drugged, grieving, he stared at the figure he'd been fantasizing about for weeks. The dam broke. He clutched her. "I'm sorry, Sonia, I'll never hurt you again, I'll get rid of Ember, I'll send her somewhere we'll never see her, I'll spend my life making it up to you, I missed you so much —"

Ember looked down at him, eyes burning.

She stroked his hair, matched Sonia's softer register. "It's okay, Zach. I forgive you. I love you."

She leaned in and pressed her mouth to his, thinking — Sonia is never going to forgive you. You're stuck with me.

Their lips touched for exactly one second.

Then Zachary recoiled and shoved her off.

He surged up and pinned her by the throat, eyes bloodshot. "You're impersonating her. You wanted her to hate me forever. You — you're going to die for this."

Ember was genuinely shocked. How had he recognized her so fast?

Tears flooded her eyes. She thrashed, screaming, "You pushed me to it! She's abandoning you! She's marrying someone else! You treated me like I was special — you made me think you cared — she doesn't want you, why shouldn't I fight for myself?"

He didn't answer. He just tightened his grip.

Choking, panicked, she begged, "Zach, I'm sorry, I'll never do it again, I won't bother her, please —"

He was past hearing her. She grabbed a lamp off the nightstand and smashed it against the side of his head.

He went unsteady. His hands loosened.

She scrambled back, got herself out of reach, and snapped.

"I set it up! The rescue! I wanted a way out of fish-stink poverty! I thought I'd get my ticket punched! But all you ever thought about was her. So I wrecked the two of you. I almost won — and then you chased her here. Her! How is she so special? You two split up weeks ago and she's already marrying someone else. She doesn't love you!"

He pushed himself up and went for her throat again. This time he collapsed after two steps.

She wiped her face. "You think rejecting me will make her forgive you? No. She's marrying him tomorrow."

And then, with a terrible satisfaction, Ember confessed the rest.

The day she'd "rescued" him hadn't been a coincidence. She and her family were sick of counting grains of rice, sick of reeking of fish. She'd gone looking for a rich boy who did weekend yachting. Zachary had been young, handsome, staggeringly wealthy — the perfect mark. Her family had rigged the accident. She had "happened by" to save him.

The original plan had been just to extract some money. But the more time she spent around him, the more she wanted to be Mrs. Blackwood. She had leaked the rescue story to the press herself, because she knew Gregory Blackwood worshipped the family's public image — he'd have no choice but to force his son into a long gratitude repayment.

Zachary had been too good, too decent. Everything had gone smoother than she'd dreamed. She played into his desperation to marry Sonia and locked in the "just keep me happy" promise. She used it to extract a house, a car, every emotional concession he kept making. When Sonia started to pull away, she coached Zachary herself — "girls need to feel jealous, she'll run right back to you if she thinks she might lose you."

He'd believed her.

Her final move: telling him she just wanted to be chosen, just once. If, when it mattered, he picked her — she'd count the debt paid and leave.

The "when it mattered" had been the crash. The crash that had ended him and Sonia for good.

Ember finished the confession, didn't even glance at him on the floor. She cleaned out his phone — drained every card she could reach — and stripped the watch off his wrist, the one Sonia had given him on his birthday.

He lay on the floor, blood and tears mixed under him. He had trusted her. Every inch of this was his own doing.

He couldn't stop seeing Sonia the morning after the storage-room "accident." Alone in a hospital, abandoned.

Had Sonia, that morning, felt the same thing he was feeling now?

Sonia knew none of it.

Because Sheldon had snuck out past his family and knocked, at midnight, on the door of her aunt's brownstone.

She was lying awake, too nervous to sleep, when she heard him. She thought it was Margaret with one last piece of advice.

It was Sheldon.

He stared at her like he was trying to memorize her. The want in his eyes was so naked she reached up and covered them with her hand. "What are you doing? We get married in a few hours. Sleep."

He pulled her hand down and kissed her palm. "Couldn't. I miss you."

A few weeks ago, she'd have called that line cheesy. Tonight, looking into his eyes, she just felt warm.

"Same," she said.

She wasn't someone who said that kind of thing out loud. Her cheeks flushed the second it left her mouth.

Sheldon stopped holding back. He pulled her in and kissed her, and kissed her.

She kissed him back.

He didn't leave until the sky was turning grey, and even then, unwillingly. He went home to collect the bridal party and come back for his bride.