Chapter 4

"I don' t want the shoes, Chloe," I said, my voice quiet but firm. I slipped the shoe off and placed it carefully back in the box.

She saw the look on my face and started to panic. "Look, Ethan, don' t make a big deal out of this." She rushed over to her purse, pulling out the bank book for our joint savings account. "Here. You take all of it. The whole down payment. I don' t want any of it. Consider it... payment for all your help over the years."

Payment. Like I was an employee she was laying off with a severance package.

The coldness inside me finally ignited into a slow, burning anger.

"Was that all I was to you?" I asked, standing up. "A stepping stone? Someone to pay the bills until you found something better?"

"Don' t you dare!" she snapped, her guilt twisting into indignation. "Don' t you try to morally blackmail me. I grew up. I changed. That' s not a crime." She took a defensive step back. "My life is different now. Brendan-my colleague-he understands me. He understands the world I' m in."

Brendan. So he had a name.

A sharp, stinging pain shot through my hands. I looked down and saw the angry red chilblains on my knuckles, cracked and raw from a week of working outside in the wet cold without proper gloves. I' d forgotten to buy a new pair.

Chloe' s eyes followed my gaze. For a second, a flicker of the old Chloe appeared. "Your hands..." she said softly. "They look bad. Did you put the cream on them?"

The question was a painful echo of a time when she did care, or at least pretended to. Two years ago, she had been the one to buy me a tube of medicated cream for the same problem.

"I ran out," I said.

"Oh. You should get more," she said, her moment of concern vanishing as quickly as it had come. Her attention was already back on her phone, which had just buzzed. Her expression softened as she read a text. She smiled, a genuine, happy smile I hadn' t seen directed at me in months.

She typed a quick reply, completely forgetting my hands, the cream, everything. She grabbed her briefcase. "I have to go. Brendan is waiting."

She walked out the door without a second glance.

The apartment was silent again. The rage drained out of me, leaving a hollow, aching emptiness. I sank onto the edge of the bed and the memory I had been pushing away finally broke through.

It was last week. I' d finished a late shift and was walking home. It was snowing, fat, wet flakes melting on the grimy pavement. Under the orange glow of a streetlight, I saw them. Chloe and a tall man in a tailored coat. She was laughing, her head tilted back in a way that used to be just for me. He leaned in and kissed her.

It wasn't a quick peck. It was a long, deep kiss, right there on the public sidewalk.

I had hidden in the shadows of a doorway across the street, my heart pounding in my ears, watching them until they finally walked away, his arm wrapped securely around her waist.