Nicole didn’t answer.She pushed away from the doorframe and walked slowly back to her room.
She sat on the edge of her childhood bed, the same one with the quilt her abuela had made, the same bookshelf full of old paperbacks and forgotten notebooks, and stared at the wall.
Her mother had lied.
Not outright.Not with words.But in that way, women like her mother always did with half-smiles and carefully placed silences.Tonight, Nicole had set the stage for uncovering the truth.Her mother might sense she was probing, testing the edges, but soon, subtlety would no longer be enough.She was done living with shadows.She would find out who had torn them apart, and why, even if it broke her all over again.
And now, for the first time in two decades, Nicole felt the terrible, shifting weight of doubt.
What if Tripp hadn’t separated them?
What if it had been the people who claimed to love them both?
Her heart twisted, unsure of what to believe.Her memory clashed with her logic, her instinct with her resentment.
She reached for her phone, hesitated, then opened her email.
There it was.Still saved.A scar she’d never deleted.
I’ve changed my mind.This was a mistake.Please don’t contact me again.
No greeting.No emotion.No closure.Nothing like the Tripp who had married her and loved her.
No mention of the wedding.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then, for the first time in twenty years, she hit reply.Would he answer?Did he still have the same email address?
She didn’t type anything.Just stared at the blinking cursor.
Quickly, she typed.She needed to make this clear.She had to try.
Someone is lying.
A few minutes later, she got a response.
I know,he wrote.I’m going to find out who.And it wasn’t me.Meet me at Charlie’s for dinner tomorrow night.
No.Time to let the past be the past.
They were on opposite sides of a trial that would determine a man’s life.She would not be meeting with him.And even if she could, she needed time to accept this new reality.
It wasn’t Tripp’s fault their marriage was annulled.But who had done this to them?
Chapter5
Tripp Masterson stared at the monitor long after everyone else in the office had gone home.His fingers hovered over the keyboard, motionless, his body present but his mind anchored twenty years in the past.
The past, it seemed, had just come roaring back with emerald eyes and black-as-night hair, wrapped in courtroom steel.
Nicole Reyes.
He hadn’t expected to see her again, especially not as opposing counsel in the biggest murder trial this town had seen in a decade.
And now, everything he’d buried, everything he thought he'd moved past, was clawing to the surface with a vengeance.
The hurt.
